God has feelings too

When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction was so utterly complete that it wiped out everything in the valley. There were other cities in that territory—Admah, Zeboim. (Deuteronomy 29:23)

Amos 4:11 says, “I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.”

Jordan explains, “The destruction God is going to place on Israel in that captivity is going to be like Sodom and Gomorrah, but it’s going to be so thorough it’s going to get the whole territory. And what He says in Hosea 11:8 is, ‘How can I do that to you? How can I just bring an utter end to Israel?’

“The verse says, ‘How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.’

“The Lord says to Jeremiah, ‘I will not bring an utter end to Israel. I’ll do what verse 9 says: I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.’

“The context here is, ‘I’m heartsick about what’s happened.’ Isaiah calls judgment 'His strange work.’ You see how He says in verse 8, ‘mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together?’

“ 'How shall I give you up? I got to punish you but I’m just not going to execute the fierceness of mine anger—the finality of wiping you out completely. I’m going to restore you. I’m going to fix it so that your heart is turned back to me.'

“Verses 8-9 is an amazing passage where God talks about being heartsick about the necessity of punishing, chastening and disciplining His wayward people.

“When He says ‘mine heart is turned within me,’ He’s going this way, then He goes that way. Then He goes this way, then He goes that way. ‘I got to punish them because of their sin but I love them and want to deliver them. I got to punish them because of their sin but I love them.’ He’s back and forth and He calls it repentings.

*****

“You’ll see it in Genesis 6. God tells Noah, ‘It repented me that I made man.’ How is it that God can repent? First of all, if you don’t understand what repentance is in the Bible, and you think it’s sorrow for sin, you’d have a problem because God has no sin to be sorry for.

“If you get your theology from Billy Graham and from Rome, and you think repentance is just being ‘sorry for your sin,’ which is the common, religious, fundamentalist adage, then you got a problem with this.

“In the Bible, repentance means to change your mind. God says, ‘I am the Lord, I change not.’ The issue isn’t God changing His mind in the sense of vacillating. What you see there about ‘mine heart is turned within me’ is you’re seeing the various facets of the nature of God conflicted.

“You would understand that. You would understand someone that you loved who had messed up. That judgment would say they have to pay for that and you understand that, and yet you love them and you don’t want to see them damaged and hurt. A parent can understand that about their children.

“Well, God has a nature; He has feelings about these things. He can be grieved. That’s what you see here; you see grief over their sin.

“God doesn’t change His mind in the sense that He changes; what happens is man changes in relationship to God and now that man is shifted, God relates to man where he is.

“Here’s an illustration. Wasn’t it really warm today? We’ve been cold and today is warm. Now, did the sun get hotter? What happened is the relationship between the earth and the sun changed. You follow that?

“That’s what’s going on here, but it causes problems for people’s theology who believe God can only be one way and that He’s not free to react to His creation. What you’re going to discover in Israel is that isn’t the case.

“Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, ‘How often I would have gathered you as a momma hen gathers her chicks. How often I would have gathered you to myself but you would not.’ That’s the Luke 13 and 19 version of what’s going on here.

*****

“In chapter 12, Hosea talks about the mechanics of restoring the nation. Verse 12:9 says, ‘And I that am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast.’

“In other words, ‘I’m going to take you back into the land and I’m going to fulfill those feasts back there in Leviticus 23 about the regathering of Israel, the restoration into the land and the tabernacling in the kingdom.’

“All those things, in verse 10 He says, ‘I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.’ All these illustrations and dress-rehearsal events in the Old Testament point to Israel’s restoration.

“Hosea 13:9 says, ‘O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.’ You get one little verse now and then that just kind of encapsulates everything.

"You go back in chapter 4 and it says, ‘Israel hath destroyed itself for lack of knowledge.’ Not because they didn’t have knowledge, but they rejected it.

“Hosea 13:14 says, ‘I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.’

“God’s going to restore Israel; He’s going to redeem Israel, He’s going to resurrect Israel and He’s going to avenge Israel’s enemies. He’s going to restore the nation. The future for Israel is, as Hosea comes to the end, ‘Hey, they’re going to be cast away into the captivity because of their failures but God isn’t through with them.’

“One of the great things to get in these prophecies back here is that God promises to finish what He told Israel He was going to do--what He covenanted with Abraham to do, give them a great nation in the land, permanently living in the land as His people; Him be their god and they be His people.

"There’s that spiritual blessing, that physical nation living in that piece of real estate that God promised to them. A literal, physical, visible, earthly, Davidic promise God made and is fulfilling through the nation Israel.

“All of those things are rejected by 98.7 % at least, if not more, of Christendom. All the big-shot scholars that you hear, every denomination and denominational seminary and school in the country, actually the whole world, rejects these things.

“Hosea’s real clear, so what you do is you either believe what the Bible says or what the scholars say; what religion says. If you believe what the Bible says, you know He’s not threw with Israel and He’s going to restore Israel. Now the question is, how come?

“And, of course, we understand the reason is that God’s interrupted prophecy with a secret program called the ‘dispensation of grace’ where we live today. And if you don’t understand how to rightly divide the Scripture, you’re never going to be able to get the Scripture.

*****

“Chapter 14 begins with, ‘O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.’ That’s basically the whole sum of the Book of Hosea. He details the indictment through the book, but the summary is right there. Verse 2 says, ‘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.’

“Hosea, in essence, told Israel, ‘Cast yourself upon God’s grace. Just bring words. Come with your confession and tell the Lord, Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously.’

"When they do that, verse 3 says, ‘[3] Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.
[4] I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.
[5] I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

“You just go on down through the passage and you see the glory that’s going to be Israel’s when He restores them into the kingdom. They’re going to bring words and speak graciously.

“In the words of Jeremiah 31, He says they’re going to find grace in the wilderness. This is a chapter that contains the new covenant for Israel. That wilderness is being cast out into that Fifth Course of Judgment; being cast out among the nations into the dessert places (the wilderness) as they wandered in Exodus.

*****

“Hosea 2 says, ‘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.
[16] And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.’

“That’s the wilderness of Jeremiah 31. They’ll find grace in the wilderness. That’s what they should have found; that’s what God tried to teach them back in Exodus when He brought them into the wilderness to start with.

“They weren’t designed to live in the wilderness for 38 years back there. They were designed to go out and it was just going to be a few weeks when they would leave Egypt and He’d take them into the Promised Land. But He schooled them in His grace.

“You go back and read Exodus 14-18 and you see Him take them through a series of five specific events that was to teach them about His providing for them everything they needed. He’d delivered them out of Egypt; now He’s going to be their provider, and they didn’t get it.

“They came to Mt. Sinai and what did they do? He says, ‘Let me give you a test and see if you’ve learned the lesson.’ And the lesson was, ‘Every time you have a need, I’ll do it for you.’

“They come to the place and the water’s bitter, He says, ‘Here, I’ll heal water.’ Next chapter, they don’t have water, He says, ‘Here, I’ll give you water out of a rock.’ They need something to eat and He says, ‘Here’s manna.’ You got an enemy attacking you? ‘Here, I’ll defend you.’

“I love the similitude thing in Exodus where Moses strikes the rock and water’s a picture of the Holy Spirit. The Book of John, when He puts His Spirit into them and it flows out of them, and as soon as that happens--the Amalekites in the Scripture are a type of the flesh. They didn’t attack Israel until they got water. Your flesh doesn’t attack until there’s something to attack.

*****

“We were talking Sunday night, in I Timothy 2, about lifting up holy hands in prayer. People say, ‘Well, that’s a justification of holding your hands up like that when you pray.’ Problem with that is it says ‘holy hands.’ You never had a pair of holy hands in your life, so you know when he says ‘lifting up holy hands,’ he’s not talking about you!

“When you try to make posture in prayer a prerequisite, well then you’ve forgotten Galatians 3:3: it’s your access to God through the spirit.

“In Exodus 17 is a great illustration. Joshua’s down in the valley fighting the Amalekites. Moses is up on the mountain and, as long as his hands are up, Joshua's in the battle and the sword prevails, but as soon as  he gets tired his hands come down, Joshua doesn’t prevail anymore and it’s a picture of the word and prayer working together.

“Joshua’s down there whipping up on the Amalekites until Moses gets tired and his hands come down so Aaron and Hur, Moses’ sidekicks there with him, literally set Moses down on a rock and hold his hands up FOR him!

“Years ago, when I worked at the rescue mission in Mobile, they had what they called an A&H Club. The Aaron and Hur Club was people they enlisted to be prayer partners for the rescue mission and to support the mission and hold up the hands of the mission--not physically, but so the Word would prevail when the mission was going forth.

*****

“Well, all that stuff back there in Exodus is designed to teach Israel about God providing for them what they couldn’t provide for themselves and how God would do it, and it takes them through five lessons in Exodus 15-18; specific things to teach them about Him being their provider.

“He told Moses, ‘Go tell them I am that I am.’ Sort of like Popeye: ‘I yams what I yams.’ You say, ‘What kind of a name is I am?’ Well, it’s obviously an incomplete sentence. It needs a completer; you write ‘I am’ and you need to fill in the blank. Well, what do you fill in the blank with?

“What God was doing was demonstrating to Israel what to fill in the blank with. ‘Fill in the blank with me! What do you need?! You need healing, I’ll heal you! You need victory, I’ll be the one who provides victory for you! You need water; I’ll be your provider!’

“And there are all those compound Jehovah names in the Old Testament that demonstrate what God is going to provide for Israel.

“There’s a bunch of names, but those seven primary names, you go to Leviticus 23 and you take those seven feasts, including the Passover and so forth, and there are seven Jehovah compound names that fit each one of those feasts.

“If you go to the Book of John, there are seven times Jesus said ‘I am.’ I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, the life. I am the door. I am the vine.

“Those seven match those seven compound Jehovah names that match the seven feasts back here and what that’s telling you is God’s going to provide for Israel everything they need to carry out that calendar of redemption from the exodus all the way into the kingdom.

“He’s going to do it for them! He began to educate them in that when He brought them out of Egypt.

*****

“In Hosea 2, Achor is where Israel had sinned against God and Aiken had hidden the Babylonish garment. Joshua, you know, they all went up and conquered Jericho, and went up to Ai and got the britches beat off of them, because Aiken had disobeyed God.

"They went out in the valley of Achor and judged that sin, put it away, and He said, ‘I’ll give you that place of judging sin in Israel and putting it away as a door or hope and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt.’

“The standard is going to be bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. There was an educating process going on at that point with Israel. By the way, the problem is that in Exodus 19 when they got there, having been instructed all that information, God gave them a test and said, ‘You know, I’ll make you all this stuff. I’ll make a deal. If you keep my commandments you can have all that. Deal or no deal?’

“Now if they had learned the lesson, they would have said, ‘Hey, no deal!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘You already promised it to us!’ But they didn’t do that. They went about seeking to establish their own righteousness and didn’t submit themselves to the righteousness of God.

“They said, ‘Yeah, whatever you say, we’ll do it.’ And in Exodus 19 they blew it.  He added the law to teach them that they couldn’t do it themselves. It doesn’t work for sinful man just for God to show them what he will do for them. The grace of God only accepts faith as a response, but it requires faith. And if you add your effort, the grace of God is taken out of it.

“Brother Lange used to call it ‘The Bible’s Biggest If.’ IF you’ll keep . . . they should have just said, ‘No thank you. Bad deal. We already got a contract. We already got you swearing it, putting it in an oath. We’ll hang on with that.’

“But they didn’t. They thought they could do it. What they didn’t do is they didn’t learn they couldn’t, so they didn’t cast themselves simply on His grace.

“He’s going to take them out into that wilderness, the Tribulation, and that last stage of that Fifth Course of Judgment is going to convince them there’s nothing in them that they can ever trust. It’s only going to be in the Lord. That’s where they find God doing for them what they couldn’t do for themselves.

“And so the restoration of Israel, if you go to Hosea 11, comes about because they come into the wilderness, they see their guilt, they see they’ve been put away and they cast themselves only on the Savior, the Messiah, to be the one who will restore them.

*****

“God starts out in verse 1: ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.’ That’s almost a quote of Exodus 4:22-23. Notice in your mind as you go down through here how often He references the Pentateuch.

“Hosea 11:2 says, ‘As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.’ Just as surely as prophets called Israel to be His son, Israel went away from Him. Just as quick as God said, ‘Here, come do this,’ Israel said, ‘Uh-huh, we ain’t having that,’ and they refused.

“In other words, He loved them and called them, gave them this special sonship position, and yet they weren’t grateful for it. They said, ‘We’d rather have what Baal can do for us.’

“Verse 3 says, ‘I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.’

“They’re like a little child He picked up and said, ‘C’mon, let me teach you to walk.’ He said, ‘Look, I called you to be my son and then I’m educating you. I’m trying to teach you how to walk as my son.’

“Verse 4 says, ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.’

“You look at that and you see His love. When He drew them with bands of love--the tug. If you have a rubber band and you put your hand in it and stretch it out, it pulls it back together. He said, ‘I reached out and put a band around your heart and sought to pull you to myself.’ He wasn’t driving them; He was pulling them with what? Love.

“And when He did it, then He took the yoke of bondage off of them. Then He laid provisions on them. You look at that and you say, ‘Man, what did they do?!’

“They were just intransigent. He loved them but they weren’t grateful. He taught them, sought to educate them, but they didn’t understand. They knew not it was He that healed them. Just totally insensitive to what God’s doing. Then He drew them with bands of love and they just refused. Spurned it.

“You see all that and you say, ‘Wow, they were really a bunch of spiritual knuckleheads!’ But you shouldn’t judge them too much because they were the only people in the earth who still had any relationship with God and they represent exactly what all people do. If they were the best of human flesh, then you and I didn’t measure up even to that, so it’s an example to us all.” 

Preoccupied with communing

Paul says in Ephesians 5:18, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”

“Why would Paul make that kind of a connection?” says Alex Kurz. “You understand what alcohol ultimately does; it takes control. It begins to possess you; it influences you. It distorts reality. Paul says, ‘Don’t be drunk with alcohol, but instead be saturated, be consumed, be intoxicated with the Spirit.’

 “The Spirit of Almighty God is consumed in the glorious eternal achievements of Jesus Christ, who did it all for free for who? For you! You don’t think that excites God?! Oh, you better believe, when God can take earthen vessels, those of us who were consigned to Satan himself for Satan’s own personal use, and give us life . . .

“And the Holy Spirit is so fired up and excited, He’s busting at the seams! The things that excite God the Holy Spirit are the things we have in Jesus Christ, and the Spirit just enjoys revealing them through the objective, authoritative source called Scripture, revealing to us the glorious details—‘Look what you got! Look at who you are! Look at who you have! Look at what’s going to happen to you!’

*****

“Walking after the Spirit is just meditating, reflecting upon, minding the things of the Spirit, and the one all-consuming passion of God the Holy Spirit is what Jesus Christ is doing and we’re invited now to let Him lead us.

“Romans 8:16 says, ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.’

“The Holy Spirit is consumed in telling us what Jesus Christ achieved on our behalf, and if we’re going to walk after Him, we’re going to MIND those things, and the more we mind the things of the Spirit, the more we learn all about those details.

“Verse 2 says, ‘For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.’

“You understand what a law in science is. In a law, at what speed does an object drop? If you drop an object 10 million times, will it always fall at the same rate? That’s an established law.

“The idea of a law is it’s an established, fixed rule. An established, fixed rule is, ‘You sin and the consequences are death. The wages of sin is death. Whether it’s literal, spiritual or functional, death, death, death.’

“So what’s the purpose of the Holy Spirit? Hey, He’s made us free! We don’t live under the operating system of that sin debt. We’re living in newness of life. Verse 3 says, ‘For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
[4] That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
[5] For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
[6] For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

*****

The Holy Spirit is preoccupied with who you are and what you have in Jesus Christ. That’s what He’s thinking about. And if we want to walk after Him, where are we thinking? We’re minding the same things.

“Let’s get rid of all of the Christian silliness about walking after the spirit. All of this craziness about being moved or having impressions, inner impulses, desires, feelings, sentiments.

“In Acts 2 we see some Holy Spirit-produced activity and it’s supernatural. Visions, dreams, tongues, etc., but when we’re introduced to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8, we don’t see any of that. We’re focused on, ‘What are you THINKING about?’

“Paul prays in II Corinthians 13:14, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.’

“It’s not your love for Him; it’s ‘the love of God.’ Remember Romans 5:5: ‘And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.’

“He wants you to live and be possessed by His unconditional acceptance of you and His unconditional love of you; the highest regard the God of the universe could ever have towards you. That’s where we’re supposed to be dwelling. It’s supposed to possess our thinking.

*****

“Are you having ‘communion with the Holy Ghost’? Forget all that silliness: ‘Yeah, he’s moving and leading me; I had this burning, this impulse, this feeling.’

“What does it mean to have common union; notice it’s communication? Are you having communion with the PERSON of the godhead? It isn’t to be ‘slain in the Spirit’ via some strange experience as the result of your praying in the closet and then ‘Kaboom.’

“How do I enjoy this deep fellowship and common union with the Spirit? If I’m preoccupied with the things He’s preoccupied with, guess what I’m having?

*****

“Here’s one illustration in Exodus 25:22: ‘And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.’

“How is Jehovah God going to commune with Moses? ‘I’m going to give you some information, Moses, that you now transmit and entrust to the nation Israel.’

“It means we lend a listening ear; hopefully two ears. Jesus Christ in the Book of Isaiah says, ‘I have given mine ear as the learned.’ God the Father is instructing His Son in the ways of edification.

“I cannot mind the things of the Spirit, according to what the Scriptures teach, unless He’s telling me something.

“Communing with the Holy Ghost is objective. It’s via an objective means of communicating and revealing information. It’s not through some whispered voice. You’ve heard this one: ‘I heard the voice of God speaking to me.’

“You know, why do people resort to those kinds of crazy clichés instead of just studying, ‘What saith the Scripture?’

Philippians 2:1-2 says, ‘If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,
[2] Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.’

*****

“I hope we recognize that the Holy Spirit is a real person; it’s not an influence, it’s not an idea, it’s not a philosophical system, it’s not a force, it’s not a power.

“Please, I hope you don’t think that, ‘Oh, to walk after the Holy Spirit is walking after some nebulous metaphysical force, influence, unidentifiable thing’—kind of that New Age concept.

“When the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, He’s as real a person as the Father and the Son.

“In Acts 5:3-4, Peter says, ‘Ananias, you lied to the Holy Ghost.' And then he says in the next verse, 'You didn’t lie to men, you lied to God.' Verse 3 refers to the Holy Ghost and the next verse talks about God. I took algebra. What we know from this passage is the Holy Ghost is God; He’s a person, a member of the godhead.

“I Corinthians 2 says, [9] But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
[10] But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

“Question. Is there any possible way for you to know anything about God via this self-generated, self-initiated, introspective, subjective moving of the heart? Your heart cannot know anything about God. Jeremiah says, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’

“God does not use the eye; He does not use this external, visible, scientific--God does not use the scientific approach when it comes to knowing God.”

'A drop of Drano anyone?'

Dispensationalists for generations have placed the fall of Israel at the Cross but that’s not where it took place.

“Israel got a renewed opportunity of repentance coming out of the Cross and that’s what the first part of the Book of Acts is all about,” explains Jordan. “In Acts 1-7 they get another opportunity to repent and receive Christ and then in Acts 7, with the stoning of Stephen, they fall.

“Paul says in Romans 11:11, ‘I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy.’

“As the consequence of the stoning of Stephen, the next thing you read about is the salvation of Saul of Tarsus.

“Jesus warns the religious leaders of the nation Israel in Matthew 12:31, ‘When God the Father sent John they rejected him.’ Harod cut his head off. With Jesus Christ, God the Son, they demanded that Rome kill Him. The Holy Ghost comes, and if you reject Him, where do you go?!

“From the Father you could go to the Son, and from the Son to the Holy Spirit, but then you’re out. You know the saying, ‘Three strikes and you’re out’? There’s nowhere else to go.

“The whole of the godhead is exhausted and you’ve rejected all of them. So if you reject the Holy Spirit, there’s nothing left for you but wrath. There’s no salvation; 'it won’t be forgiven in this world or the world to come.' There will just be wrath and judgment.

“In I Timothy 1:13, Paul says, ‘Before I got saved I was a blasphemer.’ He was standing right there when Stephen was killed.

“Tell me something, if he blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, was there any salvation for him back here? Any salvation for him over here?

“In order to save Saul of Tarsus, He had to introduce a NEW program. People ask, ‘When did the church the Body of Christ begin?'

"Something new began with Saul of Tarsus because the only way he could have gotten saved, being a blasphemer, was through a new program.

"That’s why he writes in I Timothy 1:16, ‘Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.’

“Saul is a pattern for a group of people who are going to believe. Something new does begin, but it’s not in Acts 2, it’s at the salvation and commissioning of the Apostle Paul and takes place historically in Acts 9. Progressively you see more and more about it through the Scripture.

******

“There are three big events in Acts you have to get. One is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Why did he do that? He did it in fulfillment of Joel 2. There’s the outcry against Stephen where the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit takes place. Then there’s the outgoing to the Gentiles through Paul’s ministry.

“Hebrews 2: 3-4 says, [3] How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;
[4] God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?

“The Pentecostal era, according to Hebrews 2: 3-4, is a continuation of what Jesus taught in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; His kingdom salvation. It’s Israel’s program; it’s not something new.

“The compulsion to have it be something new is just tradition. The compulsion to start the church the Body of Christ in Acts 2—you know, you hear people say, ‘I thought the church was birthed at Pentecost.’ Well, that’s what you thought but that’s not what the Bible teaches.

“You say, ‘Well, my Scofield Reference Bible says that. Dr. Ryrie says that. Larken says that.’ I know a lot of people say it but that don’t make it true. It’s what does the Book say?

“I realize that’s a shift that bothers people, and the reason it does is because you get so plugged into tradition and saying that that’s us, that when you read it and it’s not you, and you didn’t want it to be you anyway because there’s all kind of stuff in Acts 2 you didn’t like . . .

“You didn’t like the baptismal forgiveness of sins. You didn’t like tongue-talking. You didn’t like having ‘all things in common.’ You didn’t like having it be to Israel first. You didn’t like all that so you just ignored it.

“You say, ‘Well, now we aren’t going to have the Great Commission to go by,’ but you weren’t going by the so-called Great Commission anyway! There’s not one person you ever met who ever followed Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20 or Acts 1—all of them or any of them!

“Think about what they say. In Matthew 28, Jesus says, ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.’

"When is that commission going to be accomplished? When He’s with them! When is He going to be with them? Well, He’s going away. He’s not with them there. He’s going to be with them over here. You know when that commission’s going to be accomplished? When He’s there. Think about what it says.

“ ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations.’ Go ye. He’s talking to His disciples, isn’t He? Numbers 23 says that Israel is not to be reckoned among the nations. If you follow Matthew 28:19 you can’t preach to Israel.

*****

“I’ve got a friend who runs a Jewish ministry out of Miami, Florida and he uses Matthew 28:19 as his proof text. And I tell him, ‘Brother, you can’t preach to Israel if that’s your verse because that verse says to ‘teach all nations.’ Numbers 23:9 says Israel shall not be reckoned among the nations.

“Look at all those verses where He separated Israel apart from the nations. You say, ‘Well, why wouldn’t we preach to the nations?’ Hebrews 8 says that when the new covenant comes into effect and Israel gets her kingdom, ‘they will all know me from the least to the greatest.’ No more need to teach neighbors.

“It’s redeemed Israel, converted Israel. All Israel’s going to be saved in that kingdom. They’re not going to need to evangelize each other anymore; that’s what the new covenant’s all about. The nation is redeemed and now the redeemed nation goes and preaches to the Gentiles.

“But when does that happen? You can’t do that today because the text tells you what to do and you can’t do what the text tells you to do. He says, ‘Teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you.’

*****

“In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 Jesus says, ‘Anybody that doesn’t teach the law can’t be great in the kingdom.’

“Now, that’s what He commanded them. Go read Matthew 5:19-20. He that’s great is going to teach the law; the commandments. Well, Paul says you’re not under the law but you’re under grace. How are you going to do that?

“One of the commandments is, ‘Keep the Sabbath day holy.’ Saturday’s the Sabbath, not Sunday. People say, ‘Well, it’s the Christian Sabbath.’ Where’d you read that in the Bible? You didn’t; you read that in a bunch of church history.

“You see, sooner or later you’re going to read verses that are going to contradict what the preacher says. You’re going to go ask the preacher about those verses and he’s going to say, ‘You’re trying to cause trouble; beat it!’ Some of us have been there, done that and then we say, ‘Well, now what?’

*****

“Mark 16:15. Don’t you love that verse? ‘And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’

“Who couldn’t love that verse? But you know, when you leave it in its context it doesn’t sound so good.

"Jesus is talking to His disciples and says, ‘[16] He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
[17] And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
[18] They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’

“Two days before He died, He told them in Matthew 24, ‘And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.’

“You know anywhere in your Bible between the time He said that and five days later when He told His disciples to go preach the gospel, where He changed the gospel? No. What gospel are they going to preach? The gospel of the kingdom.

“You know they preached the gospel of the kingdom for three years and didn’t know Jesus was going to die on the Cross and be resurrected? Can you preach the gospel today without knowing that?

“So the gospel message was different. Besides that, He said they would be ‘damned.’ You say, you mean you got to be baptized to be saved? That’s what it said. All you got to do to be damned is don’t believe, but to get saved, you got to be baptized.

“You don’t preach that. You go to missionary conferences, you see Mark 16:15 on the wall, but you never see verse 16, unless you go to a Campbellite or Apostolic church.

*****

“Then it says, ‘They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.’

"I was in a meeting one time with a guy who believed all that and I brought a can of Drano with me and took it out of my briefcase and put it on his desk and said, ‘I want to see you demonstrate the verse.’

“He said, ‘You’re trying to tempt God.’ I said, ‘I’m not trying to tempt God; I’m tempting you. You’re the one running off at the mouth about how you can do what this verse says. Let’s see if it works.’

“You know what, he didn’t do it. He knew it would kill him. He knew those verses didn’t work.

“Now, why don’t they work? You know what fundamentalists and evangelicals do? They redefine them. They say, ‘Well, when you get saved, you speak with a new tongue. You quit cussing and lying.’

“That’s got nothing to do with what that verse says. How do I know? I read Acts 2 when they spoke with new tongues; they spoke in the tongues of all the languages that they previously hadn’t learned so that all those people could hear the message.”

Christendom just a 'bastardized form of Judaism'

Here is the second installment to the article posted April 2, entitled “Why not ‘sell that you have’?":

Mark 1:14 says, [14] Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,
[15] And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

Jordan says, “What does he mean, ‘The time is fulfilled’? God gave Daniel a time schedule and told him that from the commandment to, ‘Go forth and rebuild the temple until Messiah the prince should come,’ is only going to be so much time and after that, there’s going to be a seven-year period and then the kingdom’s going to be established.

“They had a time schedule, and when that time schedule for the days of Messiah arrived, John the Baptist showed up.

“They went 400 years with God not talking to them. Then there’s a man sent from God named John and he’s the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’ He’s doing exactly what Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 said would happen. He’s the messenger.

“He said to them, ‘When I came baptizing with water, I did it because He that sent me SAID unto me . . .’ God the Father spoke to John personally, commissioning him and sending him.

“God told them back there in the Prophets, ‘I’m not going to talk to you for 400 years.’ You know what, they knew there was a time schedule! You know why those wise men were looking for that star? Daniel gave that prophesy in the east in Babylon.

“You know why Anna and Simeon were there in expectation, looking for the Messiah? They knew what the schedule was. They could figure out within a three-year period of time when He was going to be born. They weren’t running around just reading the tea leaves; reading the horoscope in the newspaper every morning, wondering what’s happening.

“When He tells these guys about the kingdom, they know, ‘Hey, after He goes away . . .’ That’s why they said, ‘Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom? They know they’re on a time schedule because in Daniel, 69 weeks after which Messiah the prince is cut off, there’s a period of time between the 69^th and 70^th week when the time clock isn’t going and they say, ‘Okay, how soon before this thing starts up again?’

“They know it’s not going to be a millennium later. They could sell their stuff and not worry about it.

“What’s going on in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is they’re preparing. The Book of Matthew presents the Lord Jesus Christ as the King of Israel; it documents His kingly authority. The Book of Mark presents Him as the suffering servant of the Lord. The Book of Luke says, ‘Behold, He’s the man touched with our infirmities.’ The Book of John says, ‘He’s Jehovah God in human flesh.’

“He matches all of the four criteria that Israel is told to look for in order to say, ‘He’s the Messiah.’ That’s why there are four gospels and not one or six; it’s because He matches all those ‘branch’ statements back in the Old Testament that told them, ‘When Messiah shows up He’s going to be a carpenter with four identifying markers.’

“By the way, He’s called ‘the carpenter’ because that’s what Zechariah said He would be. I mean, you’d have to be blind in one eye and couldn’t see out the other to miss Him and, of course, they were blind.

“Those books are not written to be your doctrine today. They’re written to present to the nation Israel who He was, gather that believing remnant together and prepare them for this period of time over here because in prophecy, THAT’S the issue.

“They couldn’t know anything about the church the Body of Christ because if that had been revealed back there, Satan would have known about it and he wouldn’t have crucified Christ.

“So when you’re reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you’re reading about the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ to the nation Israel. That’s why He says, ‘Don’t go to the Gentiles.’ That’s why He says, ‘I’m not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ That’s why He told the woman at the well, ‘Salvation is of the Jews.’

“It wasn’t because He didn’t love everybody; it’s because God’s purpose and plan in the earth is to go through the nation Israel.

“Don’t get me wrong, I taught the Book of Luke in my church for 6-7 years. I taught the Book of John for five years and I just finished it about a year-and-a-half ago and started teaching the Minor Prophets.

“You study those books for what they really are, and when you leave them where they are, wow, what a blessing! When you try to make that stuff you, and your pattern, you’ll wind up in confusion because it isn’t who you are.

“You wind up trying to teach people to be somebody they’re not. Christendom today is a bastardized form of Judaism and it comes from people going back into those passages that don’t have to do with us and trying to make them theirs.”

Journey of the firstborn

God testifies in Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”

Jordan explains, “We love people because we think we’re going to get something out of it, but that’s not love. Love is giving. John 3 says, ‘For God so loved the world, that he GAVE his only begotten Son.’ Ephesians 5 says, ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and GAVE himself for it.’

“In II Corinthians 12:15, Paul gives you a great definition. He said, ‘I’m willing to spend and be spent yet the more I love the less I’m loved.’ You know what loving is? It’s spending and being spent for someone.

“Jeremiah 2 says, [1] Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
[2] Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.
[3] Israel was holiness unto the LORD, and the firstfruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall come upon them, saith the LORD.

“That’s what Revelation 2 says about those folks in Israel leaving their first love. It was a love relationship God had with Israel.

“Hosea 11:1 takes you back to the beginning when He brought them out of Egypt. When He uses that term ‘my son,’ He’s referring back to Exodus 4: [21] And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
[22] And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:
[23] And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

“Notice what God calls Israel. God desired to have a nation that He called ‘my son.’ In Scripture, a son is not just a descendant.

“In Galatians 4, you see this thing about a son really being about the doctrine of adoption: [3] Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
[4] But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
[5] To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

“Israel is a child when they come out of Egypt. He’s literally teaching him to walk in the Lord’s way. He’s still a child but he’s a child who is going to be His son because that’s who you make a son out of in the Bible.

“By the way, God had other sons. In Genesis 6, you read about ‘the sons of God,’ which is a reference to angels. But they were not born; they were created. The first time God gave birth to a son, He gave birth to a nation.

“Now, He had given birth through Abraham to have Isaac; He gave Abraham and Sarah the ability to have a child.

“But in Deuteronomy 32, Moses tells Israel, ‘Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.’ You go over and read Ezekiel 16, 60-plus verses, and you read how he literally describes the birthing process of bringing Israel out of Egypt.

“It’s actually quite gruesome to read. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a child being born but I think that’s one place a man doesn’t belong.

“Psalm 89 is about the Davidic Covenant. The definition in verse 27 says, ‘Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth.’ That term the ‘firstborn’ is a reference to having that position of headship in the family.

*****

“There’s a real interesting problem verse in Matthew 2:13 that people get real bent out of shape about. It says, ‘And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.’

“This is the story of the wise men that came to see Jesus. He’s not a baby in the manger; He’s a young child in a house. When you see the nativity scene with the wise men there, with Mary and Joseph and the babe and the cattle and all that, that’s just a bunch of religious bunk.

“The wise men don’t go to the manger. The wise men weren’t there when the shepherds were there. The wise men didn’t see a baby—He was a young child as much as two years old.

“There weren’t three wise men, by the way. The reason they say there were three is because they brought gold, frankincense and myrrh, the three gifts. But they brought the three gifts because of the fact Jesus Christ was going to be the prophet, priest and king. That’s where the three comes from.

“There may have been two wise men and there may have been 30. You don’t know how many there were. All the stuff about their names is just Roman Catholic mythology.

*****

“In Matthew 2: 13, that quote is Hosea 11:1, but when you read Hosea 11:1, obviously he wasn’t talking about the Lord Jesus Christ back there.

“People say, ‘Why in the world would Matthew quote Hosea when Hosea was talking about Israel, not Jesus?’ That’s one of those places where you have to sit and think just a little bit.

“You see, God gave the name ‘my son’ to Israel and Jesus; the Messiah. He said, ‘This is my beloved son in whom I’m well-pleased.’

“John 15:1 says, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.’ We studied in Hosea 10 that the vine tree in the Bible is the nation Israel. Well, if the nation Israel is the vine tree that God plants in the earth, then why would Jesus say, ‘I am the true vine’? Because it’s only Israel IN Christ that’s going to be the blessing and going to get the inheritance.

“It isn’t just any Israeli. Romans 2:28 says, ‘For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.’

“He’s not saying what people say: ‘Oh, when you get saved, you get spiritually circumcised and now you’re a spiritual Jew.’ Look back at verse 17. He’s talking to Israelis; physical descendants of Abraham.

“A real Jew is not just a descendant of Abraham; he’s got a spiritual circumcision of the heart. In that passage in Deuteronomy 30, God told Moses, ‘I’m going to circumcise not just your flesh but your heart.’

“In John 8, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of Israel and they say, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ Jesus says, ‘Big deal, your real father is the devil.’ God’s the Father of all them that believe.

“Isaiah 45:17 says, ‘But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.’

“Israel’s going to have salvation, but where’s their everlasting salvation going to be? In Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“By the way, in verses 21-23 is that passage in Philippians 2 that Paul quotes as a reference to Jesus Christ. So right here in the passage you have an identification of Jehovah as Jesus.

“Verses 24-25 says, Surely, shall one say, in the LORD have I righteousness and strength: even to him shall men come; and all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed.
[25] In the LORD shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory.

“You see, it’s Israel IN Christ--not just Israel in her flesh--that is going to be the redeemed nation God uses to be the head of the nations. So when He talks in Hosea about the ‘firstborn,’ that title is really the title of the Messiah because it’s going to be the nation IN Christ; the true Israel of God.

“The Lord Jesus Christ, by the way, in His earthly ministry, literally retraces the history of Israel, and His going down into Egypt and coming up out of Egypt--that’s where the nation came from. So He’s going to come from the same journey that His nation does.”

Deeply corrupted condition

“In the Bible, when sodomy shows up in Israel--go back and trace it through Kings and so forth--it almost always shows up in a religious context, which tells you the thing that keeps sodomy out of a culture is the teaching of God’s Word,” says Jordan.

“When Israel would reject God’s Word and go into the lie program--go into Baal worship and all--that’s when sodomy would raise its head.

“In Romans 1, Paul says they don’t like to retain God in their knowledge. That’s when it shows up. That perversion, that violence, that idolatry--all of that is wrapped together in Judges 19 and that was back before there was a king in Israel.

“Hosea 10:9 says, ‘O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah: there they stood: the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them.’

“That takes you back to Judges 19. Hosea 9 says, ‘You know how bad you are? It is with you just like it was back in Judges 19.’

“The last verse in Judges 19 says, ‘And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.’

“There’s something that happened in Judges 19 that was the worst--it sunk lower down than ANY Gentile nation on the earth at that time. Israel had sunk morally, spiritually and culturally so low they were down LOWER than the nations God sent them in the land to destroy. Judges 19 is a standard of that.

*****

“In a nutshell, what happened in Judges 19 is there’s a Levite and he had a concubine and the concubine, well, they didn’t have such a great relationship. In verse 2 she went out and played the harlot, the whore, and went away from him. Remind you of the whore in Hosea?

“She goes back to her daddy’s house. The Levite goes and gets her; he starts taking her home. He comes down by Jebus (it’ll be Jerusalem after it’s taken away from the Jebusites by David) and verses 12-13 says, ‘And his master said unto him, We will not turn aside hither into the city of a stranger, that is not of the children of Israel; we will pass over to Gibeah.
[13] And he said unto his servant, Come, and let us draw near to one of these places to lodge all night, in Gibeah, or in Ramah.’

“An old man takes him into his house so he didn’t have to sleep on the street (I’m duding this up a little for you here). When he takes him into his house, and gives him hospitality, you remember what happened to Lot in Sodom when the angels came?

“It’s the same thing going to happen here. Gibeah was morally, spiritually, culturally corrupt—in fact, more corrupt than Sodom was. So verse 22 says, ‘Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him.’

*****

“If you look up the ‘sons of Belial,’ you’ll find those are certain special satanic operatives Satan placed in the land to hold the land and make Israel function in a way that they couldn’t accomplish God’s purpose in the land.

“So these are satanic emissaries. It says ‘that we may know him.’ They’re not talking about checking his ID. This is a homosexual assault, trying to take this stranger that they hadn’t known; take him out and have their way with him. 

“The passage goes on, 23] And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly.
[24] Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing.
[25] But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

“Look at the value system they got there! I mean, to save face--his honor as a hospitable dude--he’s willing to take his virgin daughter and throw her to the dogs, take the concubine and throw her to the dogs, he’s thinking, ‘Well, at least that’s not a homosexual thing.’

“You see why he said the spirit of the men is mad and the prophet’s a fool? This is what it leads to.

“Read verse 25. Say what you want to about the guy but they didn’t have a very good relationship. She goes a-whoring on him and now he’s going to throw her out to the dogs to save his neck.

“Verse 26 says, ‘Then came the woman in the dawning of the day, and fell down at the door of the man's house where her lord was, till it was light.’

“I read that and I say, ‘I don’t know about you, but if my wife had been taken out like that I don’t think I’d have gone to bed and had a good night’s sleep. I think I would have been pacing the floor most of the night.’

“This dude just went to sleep. You know, the value system! Verse 27 says, ‘And her lord rose up in the morning, and opened the doors of the house, and went out to go his way: and, behold, the woman his concubine was fallen down at the door of the house, and her hands were upon the threshold.’
 
“He’s leaving town! It didn’t say he went out looking for his wife! He’s figured that’s a done deal.

“The chapter ends, [28] And he said unto her, Up, and let us be going. But none answered. Then the man took her up upon an ass, and the man rose up, and gat him unto his place.
[29] And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.
[30] And it was so, that all that saw it said, There was no such deed done nor seen from the day that the children of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt unto this day: consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds.

“Finally the guy got mad! He takes his dead wife, cuts her up into 12 pieces and sends each piece to one of the 12 tribes of Israel. Now people get mad at him for doing that, but the problem here is not what he did to her; it’s what was done to her by the people who killed her.

"That’s why he says what he says in verse 30. The thing they’re objecting to is not him cutting her up and sending her away. What he’s doing is saying to Israel, ‘Look what’s happening in our midst and you don’t care anything about it!’ He used a little shock treatment there to get their attention. You keep reading,  you’ll see that he does.

“The point of the story in Hosea is that the nation had gotten to that corrupted condition that they were guilty of the same sinful abominations that Israel was back there; the same carelessness of life.

“And Hosea said, ‘What it was back there, there would have never been a day like that, that bad, but now you guys are WORSE than that and that’s why judgment’s coming!’

*****

Signs and wonders belong to the nation Israel; it was their national birthright. When God sent Moses to deliver Israel Moses said, “How are they going to know that you sent me?” God answered, ‘I’ll give you two signs.’ One was healing and the other was picking up serpents.

“So when Jesus Christ comes in His earthly ministry and casts out serpents and devils and heals people, He’s demonstrating Himself to Israel that He’s the greater than Moses.

“In the program, where those kind of supernatural things were part of what God did with Israel, there were fakers. But you notice in Deuteronomy 13 there are fakers but they’re not fakers: 'If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
[2] And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them.’

“This is not a Benny Hinn kind of thing. This isn't any of these TV guys healing people when they don’t really get healed. This is a sign that you can follow behind and it’s real.

“It’s too easy when you look at people claiming these things just to look at the charlatans because they all are charlatans. But what happens when you really see it?

“You know what’s going to happen in the Tribulation when the Antichrist shows up? The false prophet is going to be able to make an inanimate object speak. He’s going to give life to the image of the beast. He’s going to be able to perform supernatural events.

“The issue is not whether it’s supernatural or not. In Matthew 7:22, Jesus said to some people, in that day of judgment, ‘Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?’

“He doesn’t say, ‘No you didn’t; you’re a faker.’ He just said, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.’ They were workers of iniquity doing supernatural demonstrations.

“II Thessalonians 2, talking about the coming of the Antichrist with lying wonders, says, ‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’

“Now all of that stuff is coming through there to deceive and seduce Israel into believing a lie. Israel was subject to that because John 4 says they wouldn’t believe accept they see a sign. They want a confirmation; they’re hard-headed.

“So here comes a guy who says, ‘I’ve got a word from God and here’s the sign that proves it.’ What are they to do?

“Moses said, ‘If somebody comes along and shows you a sign, gives you a word from God, and that word tells you to disobey the written word that God gave you, don’t believe them.’

“Deuteronomy 13:3 says, ‘Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.’

“How would they know if they loved the Lord their God with all their heart and soul? They’d find out by whether they obeyed the written Word of God.

 

*****

“They were doing that back at the time of Hosea and he says, ‘These guys are fools and they’re mad men. They’re out of their gourd!’ Hosea 9:7 says, ‘The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.’

“That’s what’s driven them mad. Now what would the hatred be toward? Verse 8 says, ‘The watchman of Ephraim was with my God: but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.’

“There’s a religious hatred aimed toward God’s people, the nation Israel, God’s truth, the Word of God. It says, ‘They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins.’

“The prophets are snares; they’re out there trying to catch you. That’s all that stuff about the seductive program—in Mark 13 He talks about how even the elect would be seduced. They’re trying to seduce them out of the truth into the lie program and it’s seducing spirits teaching doctrines of devils that produces the hatred of God’s Word and God’s plan IN God’s house.

“So you had the temple of Jerusalem, the temple of God, turned into the temple of Satan. Revelation 2 calls places associated with it ‘the synagogues of Satan.’ Baal worship has never ceased in Israel; that’s the idea about them being deeply corrupted.

"That’s like Revelation 2:24 when he talks about the depths of Satan: ‘But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.’ ”

Where the slippery slope is . . .

Talking about the controversial new movie “Noah,” Jordan informed, “If you’re trying to judge the Bible by that movie, you’re going to be disappointed. The movie was not written by a Bible-believer; it was done by a man involved in the Jewish mystic cult Kabbalah. In that world of the occult is where most of the movie’s details come.

“You remember the movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’? That was a dangerous movie to go see because it puts in your mind, as a Bible-believer, scenes, impressions and views about what happened at Calvary so that when you read the Bible, you see those pictures.

“When Israel went into Canaan, one of the things God told them to do was destroy the pictures of the Canaanites. They had pornographic pictures all over the land and He said, ‘Destroy the pictures because they put images in your mind and when you think about that topic, that image comes up.’ You know how your mind works that way.

“If you watch ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ what happens is when you think about the Lord Jesus Christ going to the Cross, or being on the Cross, you think of the Roman Catholic version of those stories.

“You think of the ‘Stations of the Cross’ because the guy who did that movie, Mel Gibson, was a radical fundamentalist Roman Catholic. He actually imported his own priest and set up his own church in California in order to promote this real strict view of Catholicism.

“To see the movie ‘Noah’ is not going to do that to you because it’s not trying to be the Bible. What I remember about the book (the movie was adapted from) was right in the beginning, Noah’s dad comes in and he’s got the skin of a snake around his arm.

“What do you reckon a snake represents? Where’d the snake come from? Genesis 3. There’s all this symbolism that, unless you’re familiar with the occult world, you wouldn’t catch it, but it’s there, and that movie’s full of that stuff.

“As a Bible student you’re not going to think that stuff is the way it really happened, but the world out there—you think of the 30-somethings and younger that don’t know anything about the Bible story and that’s what they’re going to think the Bible’s all about. That’s where the slippery slope is.

*****

"The story of Noah and the Flood resides in every culture of the ancient world. That’s one of the things that tells you the Flood was a historic reality because every culture still has a remnant of that story in their past.

“When Noah gets out of the ark, he replaces Adam. Genesis 9. He’s going to give Noah exactly the same commission he gave Adam, so you’ve got a renewed situation here. Noah goes out and has a problem with the grape, just like Adam and Eve had a problem with the grape (as the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil).

“Genesis 9:20-21 says, 20] And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
[21] And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

“Every time you see nakedness in the Scripture, the Bible wants it to be covered up. So when we’re talking about the issue of clothing, it has to do with covering up the nakedness. The animal creation has its own built-in clothing but man doesn’t, and since we lost the original covering we have to devise our own garments.

*****

“I Timothy 2:9 says, ‘In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.’

“That passage is easier for a woman to understand than a man and it’s the silliest thing in the world for a man to be the one who dictates what modest apparel is. But here’s what people do and I’ve always loved this one:

“Deuteronomy 22:5 says, ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.’

“That’s the verse that’s been used for the last 50 years to say women shouldn’t wear pants. The problem with that is look down at verse 12: ‘Thou shalt make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture, wherewith thou coverest thyself.’

“Tell me something, if you’ve got on a pair of pants, how in the world are you going to get four corners to make fringes on it?! You’re not. You know what you make fringes on the four corners of? A skirt! Did you know that’s what men wore back here in the Old Testament?

“Look at Ruth 3:9: ‘And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.’

“There’s Boaz, a type of the Kinsman Redeemer, wearing a skirt! Now, if a woman’s not to wear ‘that which pertaineth unto a man,’ what shouldn’t she be wearing?

“You see, people use verses the way they want to use them to prove what they want to prove, whether or not they’re what the Bible says. There’s not a verse in the Bible that says a woman can’t wear a pair of pants. The verses say she can’t wear a skirt!

“You can go on and on with this. Look up the word ‘skirt’ in your concordance and you’ll find a bunch of guys wearing skirts.

*****

“If you’re trying to use Deuteronomy 22:5 as a good verse, wouldn’t 2-3 more be better? Look at verse 8: ‘When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence.’

“How many of you have a fence around the top of your house so nobody falls off? Well, that’s as much a commandment by Moses to Israel as verse 5 was.

“Verse 9 says, ‘Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with divers seeds: lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown, and the fruit of thy vineyard, be defiled.’

“You can’t plant two different kinds of seeds in the same spot. Down South you’d plant pole beans with the sweet corn so the beans could run up the corn stalk. That way you didn’t have to put up a fence to run the pole beans. Deuteronomy 22 says you can’t do that.

“I knew preachers back in the ’70s who were doing just what I said in their garden, preaching that women can’t wear pants. Grace preachers were doing that; not just denominational preachers.

“Verse 10 says, ‘Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together.’ You can’t take an ox and a donkey and plow with them together. Now maybe that means if you got a John Deere tractor you can’t pull an Allis-Chalmers trailer? Well, you know that’s silly, but that’s as much a law as verse 5.

“Verse 11 says, ‘Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.’ Well, I’d wind up in bad shape here because I’ve got on a coat made of about three different kinds of garments. I’ve got a shirt made out of two. I’d be like the Naked Cowboy in Times Square if I was going to obey that.

“You see, if you’re going to take one verse and run to the hill with it, you ought to take all of the verses and run to the hill with them.

*****

“Adam and Eve sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. The old Geneva Bible said they made themselves britches and that’s why it’s called ‘The Britches Bible.’

“The apron is like the one the priests had in Exodus and so forth—it’s not like when you think about a little apron to wear in the kitchen. It was a covering garment and there are some doctrinal issues about the apron and the priesthood, etc. They were establishing their own righteousness. They were attempting to make a religion; make themselves acceptable to God. But the point is they knew they needed a covering.”