How Europe's going to fall . . .

Studies in the business and economic world bear out a basic sociological truth that says that within any group of people—a local church, a Boy Scout troop, a university, etc., etc.--10 percent of the people of the organization, thoroughly committed to one idea, can control the whole organization and carry it in the direction of that ideal.

“In the business world you hear about the 80-20 rule (80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of the activity), but the rule of social movement is all you have to have is 10 percent committed to something to control it,” explains Jordan.
 

“I say that because if you have 10 percent of the populace that is committed to the truth, you can influence it. By the way, when 10 percent of the populace becomes Muslim, are they not thoroughly committed to what they do?

“You watch what’s happening in Egypt today; that’s what’s going to happen in Europe. That’s how Europe’s going to fall, just that way. And as you watch those events, you’re just seeing the foretaste of all that.

“Eventually that stuff will come here; it will come here in a different form, because when it hops the pond it has to get over here where we are and all of the Americas have been different.

*****

“The things that hold a culture together have long been dissolved here in the United States and now you have a generation of people with no understanding of what our culture is about.

“Right now, for example, there’s a fight about what Thanksgiving is about and when you present information out of the journals of Bradford and so forth--those who were there telling you what they did and why they did it--people say, ‘No, that’s not what it’s about.’

“It’s a revisionist kind of idea and even the simple cultural foundations, and the understanding that carries your culture along, is gone and you’ve had people come along who’ve had that educated out of them. Those people are now beginning to take the control reins of culture.

“People in the 40-60 age group are the people who control the power stroke in a culture. You’ve got these folks who in their 30s now who’ve been completely educated out of any understanding of what made America or Western culture the way it is.

“I’ve told you before about meeting the attorney in Chicago, a graduate of a big law school who practices in a big law firm, and we were talking about the Good Samaritan Law and I asked him if he had any idea where that name came from. He said no and when I told him it came out of the Bible he said, ‘No, that’s not possible. That’s not right. Separation of church and state; you can’t do that.’

“Here’s a young guy, thoroughly educated, who didn’t know what the Parable of the Good Samaritan was. I mean, you don’t have to be a Believer; you just understand there’s certain things like David and Goliath and Noah and the Ark that are metaphors a culture uses to pass on its values and the things that underpin its thinking.

“You ever hear people say, ‘We just study the Bible as literature; not as a religious thing’? That’s what they’re talking about. There was a time in the not too distant past where you were considered not to be properly educated if you didn’t have a working knowledge of the King James Bible.

“In fact, I was fascinated back at the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible, a number of professors at universities, including literature experts, wrote books about the social-cultural impact of it. They understand that our language, many of the phrases you and I use just naturally, come right out of your Bible.

“That’s because it’s been a cultural underpinning, but that’s being done away with and you have generations of young people now who’ve been educated without any of that attachment. So as they begin to take control what takes the place of the Scripture is paganism.

“Paganism is a religious philosophy all the religions of the world focus in. The Bible says there’s God and there’s man but paganism says, ‘No, there’s only one bucket; it’s all just the same.’ When you have God and man, you have the master-servant, Lord and man, absolutes that mean there’s a right and wrong. There’s someone to define what a marriage is, define what life is, define what good is, define what evil is and so forth.

“We use all these fancy terms like ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘relativism’ and all that, but all that is in its ultimate form is just an expression of paganism.

“The thing you have to understand is the course of a nation in the dispensation of grace is determined by the amount of sound doctrine resident in the populace; that’s going to determine the strength of the true church; not the institutional, civil religion, but the true church and our impact.

“We don’t have to be the majority, we never have been, but the spiritual impact of truth is so powerful. Paul says, ‘As unknown and yet well-known,’ and that’s the way we are, but when that is so diminished it comes to the place where there’s no ability to affect the culture.”

Worldly worship

Jordan frequently points out how Christians would rather read books about the Bible than just read the Bible and that this is a critical mistake.

“If you're going to study geography or algebra, you study the subject, you don't study books about them,” he explains. “When you read Paul's epistles, if you did nothing but just read them, that edification design would bring you through to a place of maturity.

“You start out reading about the 'believing Romans,' and then about the 'baby Corinthians,' and the 'foolish Galatians,' and the 'faithful 'Ephesians,' and you get over to the mature saints—the Colossians and the Philippians.”

*****

The problem with Christian churches for decades now has been their almost complete “dumbing down” to focus on music, drama and cute anecdotes from short sermonettes by entertaining preachers rather than just pure Bible study.

“Worship is not singing; it’s not the song service at church,” says Jordan. “That's what the world does with it. Evangelical, fundamental, Bible-believing Christianity has been so permeated, and so taken over and influenced by the Charismatic-emotional-touchy-feely- experiential-based stuff, that even the music and the manner of church service has been taken over by Pentecostal-jitter-bug-Jesus-kind-of-stuff.

“Words mean something and what that is is heresy. It’s the idea that, ‘We're up here singing and worshipping God and you're just studying the Bible.’ ”

*****

The word “worship” comes from the word “worth,” meaning “value,” and the word “ship,” meaning “state of being.”

“When you want to demonstrate what is valuable to you, that's what worship is, and that life as a Believer in Jesus Christ is to be lived 24/7; it's not something you do going to a hootenanny on Sunday mornings,” says Jordan. “It's life, is what it is.”

Now compare this definition of worship to the one Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren, author of the mega-bestseller “The Purpose-Driven Church,” lays out for fellow pastors who look to Warren as their mentor:

“God’s presence must be sensed in the service. More people are won to Christ by feeling God’s presence than by all of our apologetic arguments combined. Few people, if any, are converted to Christ on purely intellectual grounds. It is the sense of God’s presence that melts hearts and explodes mental barriers. Worship without this yields few evangelistic results.”

Revealing his total ignorance of what Paul is really communicating to the carnal Corinthians who were hooked on faking tongue-talking, Warren writes in defense of the phony Pentecostal practice: “Because genuine worship can have such a profound impact on unbelievers, we need to be very sensitive to their fears, hang-ups, and needs when they are present in our worship services.

“This is the principle Paul taught in I Corinthians 14:23. Paul commanded that tongues be limited in public worship. His reasoning? Speaking in tongues seems like foolishness to unbelievers. Paul didn’t say tongues were foolish but only that they appear foolish to unbelievers.”

Under the sub-heading, “Making Worship Understandable,” Warren sums up: “Making a service ‘comfortable’ for the unchurched doesn’t mean changing your theology. It means changing the environment of the service—such as changing the way you greet visitors, the style of the music you use, the Bible translation you preach from, and the kind of announcements you make in the service.”

In bold letters, he emphasizes, “We must be willing to adjust our worship practices when unbelievers are present.”

For him, Jesus Christ is not about a personal relationship; it’s a matter of “smart marketing.”

(Editor's note: New article tomorrow . . . )

It could be (and will be) a lot worse

In his study tonight, Jordan talked about how even though it may seem to America’s Christians that were ripe for the Rapture, that’s just an “internal” perspective.

He mentioned an evangelist in Nigeria who, accustomed to being nearly beat up for preaching the gospel, recently came to America and marveled at just how nice and friendly things are here.

*****

One of the things I see happening more and more is a numbing and deadening of people’s consciences.

Paul says people can sear their consciences “as if by a hot iron.” He says about the times leading up to the Rapture, “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”

A lot of the result is a general indifference to anything that doesn’t personally effect a citizen’s day-to-day activities.

A favorite evangelist of mine, Oscar Woodall, used to make the point, “America is gospel-hardened.” Unbelief by a person results in calluses that harden the longer they’re unsaved, making it harder for the individual to be receptive to the truth.

Jordan warns, “Your children are being raised to believe that worshipping God is just singing songs about how much you love Him. And I want you to know that really impresses God. He’s really bowled over in heaven when you sing, ‘Oh, we love you, you’re so great!’ He knew all that; He told you about it. You know what impresses God? When His Word takes root in your life and He sees what He’s doing living in you.”

*****

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m now bordering on a “senior citizen” (having turned 50 in June). Just like old people say, “Boy, it all flew by so quick!” I’m experiencing the same realization.

I expect the rest of my life to go at a near-meteor clip judging by how fast the last few years have gone. I mean, I can’t even remotely grasp the fact we’re now only a month away from another holiday season.

“Those of you who are 50, aren’t you glad you’re not as dumb today as you were when you were 40?” says Jordan. “You see, if you’re 35, you don’t understand that because you don’t think you were all that stupid when you were 25, but wait ’til you’re 45 and you’re going to realize you were an absolute blank at 25.

“Somebody says, ‘Don’t you wish you were 20 again?’ Heavens, I hope I’m never that dumb again! What it’s about is the older you get, the more maturity you get, and the more you realize how it used to be. When I was 30 I thought, ‘Boy, was I dumb when I was 20,’ and when I was 40, I thought I was dumb when I was 30, and then when I was 45, I thought I was dumb when I was 40.

“I got to be 50 and I thought I was dumb when I was 45. Now I’m down to thinking I was just real dumb last year. The time compression with age comes in.”

(Editor’s note: New article tomorrow)

From daemon to Beersheba

“Satan, the real master of the New Age, delights in mysterious code words and phrases because they allow his agents, when questioned, to escape public censure by hiding behind a verbal mirage.”

-- Texe Marrs, author of Dark Secrets of the New Age.

 

Much of the New Age plot behind the “modern versions” of the Bible is accomplished  through either omitting or changing God’s use of phrases and words—including the connotations of words—to make verses support Satan’s cause.

 

One of hundreds of great examples is the change of the word “devils” to “demons” in the New King James Version, along with the other corrupt bibles published since the King James Bible.

 

In Webster’s dictionary, “demon” is defined as “a tutelary divinity,” while the word “devil” comes with the explanation, “In Jewish and Christian theology, the personal supreme spirit of evil and unrighteousness.”

 

Madame H.P. Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society and recognized as “the mother of the New Age Movement,” once wrote:

 

“[T]he Church is wrong in calling them Devils. . .[T]he word demon however, as in the case of Socrates, and in the spirit of meaning given to it by the whole of antiquity, stand[s] for the Guardian Spirit or Angel, not a Devil of Satanic descent as Theology would have it. . . Demons is a very loose word to use, as it applies to. . . minor Gods;. . .there are no devils.”

 

Indeed, in The Theosophical Dictionary, demon is said to have “a meaning identical with that of ‘god’, ‘angel’ or ‘genius’. Under the word “demon” in The Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology, Socrates is quoted as saying, “[A] voice has been heard by me throughout my life. . . I call it a God or a daemon.”

 

*****

 

To the Greeks, the word “daemon” meant “demigod” and Socrates taught that a daemon was a “spiritual something that put him on the road to wisdom.”

 

In her 1993 book, New Age Bible Versions, author Gail Riplinger writes, “All of the world’s religions, except biblical Christianity and Judaism, believe that those entities which the Bible calls evil spirits are demigods, worthy of veneration or placation.

 

“In the West, New Agers are told that Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘ascribe[s] some measure of importance and success to his prompt obedience to the wise Daemon’s direction.’ Eastward, Buddhists tell of ‘good demons,’ mosri sho shu and mischievous demons, nushi sho shu. . .

 

“By switching to the globally acceptable ‘demons’, new ‘International’ versions follow their admitted philosophy of choosing words which ‘allow each reader to decide for himself’ what a verse means. God, however, has already decided. . .

 

“(New Testament) Greek dabblers may jump to the floor with reference to the Greek’s use of both diabolos and daemonium to refer to Satan and the devils, respectively. Any objection to translating two different Greek words as one English word fails disastrously since new version editors themselves translate two different Hebrew words, shed and sair, as one word ‘demon’.

 

“Scholars who live in glass houses should refrain from throwing ‘original language’ stones, particularly when their house of cards appears to have been designed by a New Age architect.”

 

*****

 

On the subject of satanically corrupted modern bible versions, Jordan reminds:

 

“Jesus Christ says, ‘I am the way; I am truth.’ Jesus Christ was and is truth personified in  person. He once prayed for His disciples and said, ‘Sanctify them by the word; thy word is truth.’

 

“Just like Jesus Christ was the perfect truth of God, He said His Word was the perfect truth of God. That’s what Paul said when he wrote, ‘Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.’

 

“If you’ve got a bible and you don’t believe it’s the truth—and I don’t mean generically the truth; I’m talking about when you read a specific verse and the words in the verse—

then you have an entirely different attitude toward the Word of God than God Himself does.

 

“That’s why the bible version issue is not just something to take casually because if we went around this room and took up all the different versions, they wouldn’t all have the same verses in them, and there would be a lot of verses you’d read that wouldn’t say the same thing.

 

“The King James Bible has a great heritage; it’s the text that matches the Bible that’s been used from the time of Paul all the way until now. It’s the proper translation of the proper text. It’s truth, and if you can’t say that about the bible you’re using, then you’re saying it’s not truth. It’s not the w-o-r-d-s of truth.

 

“I understand there’s a lot of folks who don’t like what I say. I used to work with people who didn’t believe that and when they began to tell me I couldn’t believe my Bible was all true, and that I had to believe it had errors in it, I had to then say, ‘You know, I don’t think we can work together anymore.’

 

“You see when Satan came to Eve, he said, ‘Yea, hath God said?’ And if that’s the question—‘Is that really what God said?’—Paul said we’re ‘not as many which corrupt the Word of God.’

 

“That’s what Satan wants to do—come in and corrupt that thing. You see lie can have a lot of truth in it but truth can’t have any lie. Satan’s methodology has always been to take the truth and make it look like the lie. He’s done that all through the Bible.

 

“II Cor. 11:13 says, ‘For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.’ They counterfeit themselves.

 

“The passage goes on to say, ‘And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.’

 

“They’re going around telling people how they ought to live right. Satan’s plan to propagate the lie is to make the lie look exactly like the truth so you can’t tell the difference easily; so that you can swallow the lie.

 

“Therefore, he copies it just as close as he can. Satan’s ‘transformed into an angel of light.’ Think about that. God is ‘light in whom there’s no darkness at all.’ So Satan says he’s an angel of light.

 

“Jesus Christ is an angel (Paul calls him an angel in Galatians 4) so Satan transforms himself into an angel.

 

“Jesus Christ, He’s the Christ, He’s the anointed one of God (Acts 4 says He’s the Lord’s Christ). Ezekiel 28 calls Satan the anointed cherub. He’s a Christ too. Jesus Christ has ministers. Satan has ministers.

 

“Jesus Christ is God. In Hebrews 1:8, God the Father says to God the Son, ‘Thy throne, O God.’ Satan is ‘the god of this world.’ Jesus Christ is called ‘the prince of peace.’ Satan’s called ‘the prince of this world.’

 

“Jesus Christ is identified as ‘the lion of the tribe of Judah.’ So Satan is a ‘roaring lion.’ Jesus Christ has a church. Satan has a church called ‘mystery Babylon the great, the mother of harlots.’ (Rev. 17)

 

“The Great Counterfeit; that’s always been the way he’s done it. He started back in Israel. Baal worship was introduced in Israel through the tribe of Dan in Judges 17, and you know how Satan did it—he used a priest. God makes priests; now Satan’s got a priest. The priest was called ‘Father.’

 

“Did you ever wonder why anybody would call a priest ‘Father’? Kind of a strange title for a priest. It comes out of Baal worship. They had a house of god. God had a temple so they had a temple. They had aids to worship. They were called idols. They made sacrifices. They wore long robes or ‘vestments.’ You could just go on and on and on with this stuff!

 

“And you know what happened? It got introduced into Israel in the tribe of Dan up north above Galilee and wound up at the time of Solomon’s death having Jeroboam institute it in the northern kingdom. And when he did that, he set up the idols and the house of god in Bethel and Dan of Beersheba, reasoning, ‘We don’t want people to go back down to Jerusalem, so let’s set up a church close to them.’ He persuaded the people, ‘Go to the church of your choice that’s near you. You don’t have to travel so far; we got something up here just like what they got down there.’

 

“Dan takes Israel into Babylonian captivity and what does he do? He says, ‘Look Israel, I’m gonna take some of your religion and put it over here in my religion. Let’s just all worship together.’

 

“And after Israel left Babylon and returned to Palestine following that corruption, Jesus looked at the religious leaders of Israel and said, ‘You are of your father the devil.’ Now why were they of their father the devil? Because they were a part of that satanic counterfeit program; that religion. And that thing goes all through the Bible.”

 

(Editor's note: another article tomorrow . . . )

 

Quenching a burning longing (and thirst)

(Editor’s note: This is Part Two of a piece posted Oct. 15)

The Lord gets the woman at the well’s attention when, as John 4:15 reports, “The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.”

“She says, ‘I want that stuff! I want what you got! I’ll buy what you’re selling!’ ” explains Jordan. “Then in verse 16, He says right out of the blue, ‘Go, call thy husband, and come hither.’

“Now, that’s a problem because the woman answered, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus replies, ‘Thou hast well said, I have no husband. For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.’

“Whoa, mercy! She’s a five-time loser. Now, think about how she’s talking to a guy who says, ‘I’ll give you water that will never let you thirst again.’ She’s realized He’s talking about something that’s going to quench that burning down in her soul, and she’s got the itch—I mean, she’s already had five husbands!

“Barney Google said, ‘Pity the man with a soul so tough to say one wife is not enough,’ but I got to tell you, five husbands would be a lot too! And besides that, the one she’s living with isn’t her husband. In other words, she’s living in a sinful state of immorality.

*****

“You see what Christ is doing? When He talks to her about that, what’s the first thing she’s going to feel? Shame, guilt. Her conscience has to be awakened because there’s more going on here than just Him giving her a gift. There’s a thirst that needs to be quenched, and the truth of her spiritual condition is brought right out on the table with her sins laid bare.

“By the way, He says, ‘Go get your husband and come hither.’ That’s grace. He didn’t say, ‘You can’t have this because you’re a dirty rotten, sinful, filthy . . .’ He doesn’t condemn her; He just says, ‘You need to own where you are and then come.’

“There’s that great old song, ‘Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that thou bid’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!’ Here’s what this lady’s learning.

“A wonderful verse in Luke 15 is when the Pharisees mock the Lord Jesus Christ to His disciples and say, ‘Your master eats with publicans and sinners; he’s a friend of sinners.’

“I say, ‘Well, I’m so glad He is!’ They that are whole don’t need a physician but they that are sick, Jesus said, ‘I didn’t come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.’ And that’s where she comes to.

“She says in verse 19, ‘I perceive you’re somebody who talks for God.’ He shakes her out of her lethargy, brings to her the place of some spiritual awareness. By the way, He did it by supernatural means. He told her, ‘You had five and now you got somebody who isn’t your husband.’

“Later on, she’s going to tell the people of Samaria, ‘Come on, I’ll show you a man who told me everything I ever did.’ Now, you know she did more than just have five husbands. The point is, she knew He saw right through her.

“You remember what happened back in chapter 1 when He saw Nathaniel? It says, ‘Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
[48] Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
[49] Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.’

“That same kind of supernatural knowledge He used to awaken Nathaniel He used to shake this little woman out of her physical sphere into spiritual consciousness that, ‘The one I’m talking to isn’t an ordinary guy!’ So her conscience felt and owned the guilt. The songwriter says, ‘My conscious felt and owned the guilt and plunged me into despair.’

*****

“Now, where do you run when you get plunged into despair and don’t know where to turn? One of the places people run is religion. So watch her do that.

“John 4 goes on, [19] The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
[20] Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

“When somebody’s just come along and told you the mind of God; spoken to you and you understand He’s a prophet. She said, ‘I recognize the voice of God and what you’re saying,’ but she’s not saved yet. She’s not there trusting Him yet. She’s getting there but for now she’s going to try to skirt the issue:

‘I realize I’m facing a prophet. Well, our fathers (back in verse 12 it was our father Jacob and now it’s our fathers) worshipped in this mountain. Ye Jews say it’s in Jerusalem where men ought to worship. So let’s talk about this great religious controversy, about where should people worship. I mean, if you’re a prophet maybe you can answer this great religious question of the ages for me.’

“I think, ‘Geemanibidee! Isn’t that just what people do?!’ What relief is she going to get in some place of worship? How’s that going to unburden her heart and salve her conscience? It doesn’t. But it’s that attempt that your conscience makes to try to skirt around the issue of guilt.

“When you talk about the place, the mechanics, notice it’s anything but Christ.

“Jesus answers, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.
[22] Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.
[23] But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
[24] God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.’

“It’s interesting that Christ answers the question for her. Once and for all, authoritatively, He puts an end to the speculation between the Samaritans and the Jews and He settles the disputed point in one statement: ‘Salvation is of the Jews.’ Boom!

“You see, back in Deuteronomy 27, when God told Israel about where to worship, the Samaritan Pentateuch corrupted that chapter into saying that they should be worshipping in Mt. Gerizim. Now, by corrupting the Word of God to match their religious system, they had a false worship system.

*****

“By the way, when Jesus says in this mountain, go back to Genesis 22. Abraham is going to go into Moriah to a certain mountain that God has already picked out and that’s where he’s going to offer Isaac. Abraham actually named it the Mountain of Jehovah.

“In II Chronicles 3:1 it says that mountain in Moriah where David purchased the threshing floor is the same mountain where Abraham offered Isaac. That’s the mountain where Solomon built the temple—we’re talking about Jerusalem. And when He says in John 4 that you guys say ‘in that mountain up in Gerizim,’ they had corrupted the Scripture to make it go up there because they had tried to make the worship of Jehovah in the northern kingdom, which turned into Baal worship.

“They tried to have a religious system like the one in the southern kingdom, but the real place where worship was going to be done was the place God had selected and that’s where he built the temple and that’s Mt. Moriah.

“So, there’s a lot of (major historical) discussion this woman’s trying to bring up here. And what Christ does when He says in verse 22, ‘Ye worship ye know not what,’ He’s saying, ‘You guys up here, you’ve got an apostate, vain, corrupted religion and you’ve got no idea what you’re doing; salvation’s of the Jews.’

“Now that’s slamming the door hard on the religious discussion by saying, ‘you know what you’ve got? You’ve got a bunch of false doctrine.’ Wham-O. Now what that did was turned her hot water into cold and cut it off to just a drip. While she’s trying to focus on all the religious stuff, Christ just wipes it right out of the way.

*****

"You notice what happens to the woman: ‘The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.
[26] Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.’   

“That’s the Lord’s reward for being patient and dealing with this woman this way because she got it.  She said, ‘I know Messiah’s coming and He’s the one I really need,’ and Jesus said unto her, ‘I that speak unto you am He.’

“She got it and she immediately becomes a follower of Christ and a testimony to her people.

“You go down to verse 28 and it says the woman left her water pot and went away to her people, telling them: ‘Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?’ She’s saying, ‘Don’t just look at me, look at Him and let Him speak for Himself.’

“Now, you’ll notice I skipped verse 27: ‘And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?’

“The disciples came back just at the moment to see the harvest--just at that moment to see the woman respond in faith to the testimony, ‘I am He.’ They came just at the moment to see God’s salvation wasn’t simply going to be restricted to Israel, it was going to gather in Samaria, and obviously they didn’t get it. They were unaware, so there’s going to be some conversation with them about what they need to learn.”

'Apostates are pretty nice people'

It’s been a big week here in Akron.

First of all, in case you haven’t heard, a nurse treating the now-deceased Ebola victim in Texas decided she didn’t need to “self-monitor” and got on a flight to Cleveland for a weekend in Akron picking out bridesmaids dresses, etc., in preparation for her upcoming wedding. She now has full-blown Ebola.

As you might guess, it’s the talk of the town, on the same scale as when Akron native LeBron James, an NBA all-star on the same page with Michael Jordan, announced in July he was returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Secondly, the “Akron Beacon Journal” newspaper has had a week-long expose on Pentecostal televangelist Ernest Angley, 93 years old and a native of North Carolina, who has “reigned” from Akron for the last  six decades.

He’s been compared in the articles to Jim Jones and accused of being a homosexual who has for years “inappropriately touched” underling pastors, etc., among lots of other horrendous charges.

What’s funny to anyone who lives here is Angley’s “Grace Cathedral” is a major landmark in town, partly because of an unfinished 494-foot tower erected in the ‘60s by another nationally known televangelist, Rex Humbard.

Also, his daily lunch buffet on the campus of “Ernest Angley Ministries,” next to the eyesore tower, is widely regarded for being a good meal at a cheap price. My mom even has a close friend who likes to eat there with her husband at least once a month on her day off.

Today’s “Beacon” article was about Angley’s Boeing 747-SP jetliner, reported to be “so large that it literally won’t fit inside any hangar at its home field, Akron-Canton Airport.”

Reporter Bob Dyer writes, “Angley is proud of his bird, which he uses a few times each year for distant mission trips. He says the Lord promised it to him long ago, and he is doing the Lord’s work with it, evangelizing across the globe.

“But some folks, both inside and outside of his church, question why a man who relies mainly on donations from individuals in his congregation and in the TV audience would own a gigantic, customized airplane that cost a fortune to purchase and costs a smaller fortune to operate.

“Personnel at the airport who did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to talk about a private plane said Angley’s jet holds about 48,000 gallons of fuel. Current price of Grade-A jet fuel: $5 per gallon. One fill-up: $240,000.

“Although the plane has remarkable range — a whopping 6,500 nautical miles — Angley’s trips frequently require multiple fuel stops in each direction. The country where he spent two weeks earlier this year, South Africa, is 8,400 miles from Akron.

“Add in landing fees, maintenance and other related costs and, if Angley takes three trips a year averaging 16,000 miles round trip, the annual operating cost is about $2.16 million.

“Angley won’t reveal the original price of the plane — “We don’t tell,” he said with a smile. But a former longtime employee of his, Steve Nelson, estimated the figure at about $26 million.”

*****

Here’s a great passage from R. Dawson Barlow’s 2005 book, The Apostasy of the Christian Church:

“But just to make sure we are not deceived by the niceties of some people and human ‘sweetness,’ it is at this point we must be very clear about the nature of apostasy. Apostasy does not usually deny the existence of God. It does not behave itself unseemly and cry out that it hates God.

“In fact, apostates are pretty nice people whose life philosophy is to get along with everybody, offend no one and attempt to make the world a better place. Apostasy pursues to serve a ‘god of his/her own imagination’ and serve ‘he, she, or even it’ through a form of religion whose foundation of authority is the subjective feelings they have on a certain matter.

“It matters not what the revelation of God says, the final, ultimate authority is, ‘How I feel about any issue in my heart!’ It rejects the objective authority of the Word of God as the final court of appeal, and, in the process of this rejection, embraces the deceitful, subjective message of the human heart and misinterprets it as God’s authoritative message.

“The buzz word of this growing number of people is, ‘Well, you have to do whatever is right for you.’ The conclusion is that nothing is really right or wrong, but what is right and wrong  for me! This is nothing but a denial of any absolute truths.”

*****

Two times in Paul’s epistles he warns against “enticing words.”

He argues in I Cor. 2:4, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

In Colossians 2:4, he emphasizes, “And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words.”

Jordan explains, “That idea of enticing words—it’s words that are really enticements, where you’re trying to entice somebody into doing something for some other reason than what the real issue is.

“If you were in the commerce world, they’d call it ‘bait and switch.’ Entice them to come in and then switch them to something you really wanted to do with them. In religion, it can be as simple as, ‘Come worship with us and we’ll have a 30-ft. long submarine sandwich!’

“Down in Alabama there used to be this thing about having the biggest attendance: ‘If you can get bigger attendance at your (service) than they can get at theirs, the loser’s got to swallow a goldfish.’

“Or it can be the Catholic (method) of, ‘Come and get your blessing that you can’t get any other way except through us, and do our rites and ceremonies and all the stuff.’ The message is, ‘If you come and do what we want you to do, you’ll get more from God then if you don’t.’ ”

*****

In I Cor. 1:17, Paul writes, “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

Jordan explains, “That ‘wisdom of words’; that’s talking about making your own way, giving your own explanation. It’s human viewpoint; man’s plan to do things. And what it does is make the gospel ‘of none effect.’

“That doesn’t mean you don’t believe the gospel, it just means it doesn’t have its impact. It doesn’t mean you don’t know the Bible, or read the Bible, or study the Bible; it just means the Bible doesn’t have the impact on your life God’s designed it to have. Galatians 6 is another explanation of that. When he talks about ‘fleshly wisdom,’ he’s talking about religious show.

“Galatians 6:12 says, ‘As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.’

“This thing about ‘constraining you to be circumcised’; it’s not really an issue of stopping sin because the people trying to get you to do the religious operation—they don’t keep the law either. They don’t perform the perfection either. They just really want to make a ‘fair show of your flesh.’

“They got a system they’re promoting. And it gets to be this big fleshly operation. And Paul, he talks in chapter 11 of II Corinthians about the Corinthians ‘being corrupted from the simplicity that’s in Christ.’

“He starts out in the chapter by saying, ‘For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.’

“He’s saying that it’s been ‘with simplicity—that’s how I’ve held my conversation with you and with others. My manner of life has been such that it’s just been who God has made me in Christ that’s the issue; not a bunch of human viewpoint. I’m not trying to build systems and followings and movements and all the rest, but just have the life of Christ be the issue.’

“That word conversation; look at I Peter 3. Sometimes you hear that word conversation, and oftentimes it’s chaffed at because it’s an Old English word that has more meanings to it than what we generally talk about.

“We usually mean our speech. You know, sit around and have a conversation, discussing things with people. But a conversation is more than just a conversational chat; it’s an entering into an inner play.

“I Peter 3 says, ‘Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.’

“Now, notice that’s the wife’s conversation; it doesn’t say that they may hear your conversation. If the word conversation was only meant to refer to something that you’re saying, they would say ‘when they hear your conversation.’

“But what does it say they’re going to do to your conversation? Behold it. Your conversation is not simply something that you hear with your ear; it’s something you can see with your eye. It’s more than just words. It’s something literally that you can see in someone. It’s the way they converse with life; it’s the way they interplay with life.

“Somebody said conversation means ‘a manner of life.’ It’s more than that; it’s literally life itself and it’s something that can be held. And I say that to you so you understand the translators of the King James Bible—when they use that word, they did not use it simply to refer to words—because you cannot behold words. It has to do with who you are and the whole circuit; the whole of what your life is about.

******

“II Tim. 3:10 says, ‘But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience.’

“Timothy knew what Paul taught. When he says ‘my manner of life,’ now, that’s his conversation. He’s saying, ‘You’ve known the things I teach and you know the way I live; my purpose; my faith; my longsuffering; my charity; my patience; my persecutions and afflictions.’

“Timothy knew all about Paul! And it mattered to Paul that Timothy knew more than just the doctrine. He wanted him to know how the doctrine lived in his life and how he ministered that to others.

“In Philippians 1:29-30, Paul says, ‘For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake; Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.’

“That’s his conversation: ‘What you see in me, what you hear to be in me’; his manner of life. And Paul says to the Corinthians, ‘When you looked at my life, you know the way I’ve lived with you, and it’s been in simplicity. It’s not been a duplicitous life. I haven’t been one way over here and another way there. And it’s been in godly sincerity.’

“In II Cor. 1:12, he says it was ‘not with fleshly wisdom.’ In 2:17, he says, ‘For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.’ In II Cor. 4:1-2, ‘But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.’

“Now, if you’ve renounced something, you must have once used them, right? You see, Paul was once a religious zealot. He’s saying, ‘We’ve renounced all that, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully.’ He’s saying, ‘That’s what I used to do.’

“But what is he doing now: ‘Manifesting truth, commending to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.’ I think that’s one of the greatest verses in the Bible to give to a preacher or a believer—anybody who does the Lord’s work—on how to do it.

“ ‘I’m not gonna try to use guile to catch you. Not gonna handle the Word of God deceitfully. Not gonna give you the impression the Bible says one thing when it really says another. But what we’re going to do is by the manifestation of the truth. .  . we’re just going to teach the truth. And if teaching the truth will commend itself to your conscience, then your conscience and my conscience are at one.’

“I’ve learned for years that if you’ll just teach the doctrine—just manifest the truth—the truth will commend itself to a man’s conscience that wants the truth, and when it doesn’t commend itself to someone, you know why it isn’t. Because what they’re looking for is something different. What good is it to just go out and try to gather a big crowd of people and have a big show in the flesh?

“You can get hundreds and scores of people, and big movements and big things, and it looks powerful, and it looks big, and looks great, but if it was gathered on some basis other than the simple manifestation of the truth—commending itself to people’s conscience in the sight of God; if it gathers them for some other reason—then what did you really create and gather? Well, you gathered something other than what God’s doing.”

Rivers of life so free

In John 4, a weary Jesus Christ sits at Jacob’s well and asks “the woman at the well” to give Him something to drink while His disciples have gone into the city to buy meat.

Verse 9 reads, “Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”

Jordan explains, “The Lord Jesus Christ broke two of the taboos of His day. One, He spoke to a strange woman (someone He didn’t know) in public, which was something they didn’t do and two, worse than that, she was a Samaritan and the Jews didn’t have dealings with them. But Jesus Christ wasn’t one who was bound by religious tradition and social custom. His life and ministry isn’t controlled by those things.

“When she says, ‘How is it that thou, being a Jew?’ she doesn’t have any insight into what’s going on here other than just seeing the physical things that are happening. She hasn’t any perception. She’s just as ignorant about spiritual things as Nicodemus was in chapter 3. She’s without the Jews’ religion but she’s just as far away from God.

“Christ is going to begin to deal with her and try to whet her appetite for something more than just looking at the physical things.

“Verse 10 says, ‘Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.’

“ ‘If thou knewest the gift of God’--that’s an interesting way of saying that. The assumption is God demanding and requiring and what Jesus is saying is, ‘God really wants to give you something. He wants to enable you to have something and if you had perceived the gift . . .’ That’s what she needed.

“If she had perceived her need AND who it is that said to her; who He was. Those two things are inseparably connected. The gift and the provider.

“You see, she thought that she was going to do the giving and what she needed was for Him to become the giver. She misunderstood what He was talking about.

“Verses 11-12 reads, [11] The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
[12] Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?

“When she says ‘living water’ she’s not saying the same thing He’s saying. She thinks He’s talking about running water; instead of it sitting in a pond, it’s running.

“Now I imagine when she said, ‘Art though greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well . . . ?’ she kind of drew herself up to her full 4’ 10” height and said, ‘By the way, do you realize this is Jacob’s well? He’s our father.’

“She begins to claim antiquity and heritage and so forth. She claims the greatness of her own family and descent. I mean, this well goes way back to the beginning. She’s saying, ‘Who in the world do you think you are anyway saying what you’re saying?!’

“So He answers her in verses 13-14: ‘Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
[14] But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’

“You see, He brings her to the place where now she’s not looking just at this water; now she’s going to think about a water that’s not the water in the well. He brings her all that way around to the place where she is conscious and interested in what He’s got to say to her.

*****

“What He says is extremely important because He’s going to make an allusion to some things in the Old Testament. Whether she picks up on it or not in the moment, it’s still what He’s doing. He’s not just using an illustration out of nowhere, is the point. He’s going to use the Scripture.

“He knows if He sends the Word out it won’t return void. God’s Word does its work.

“That expression ‘living water’ is not a new expression in Israel. Jeremiah 2:12-13, for one example, says, [12] Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.
[13] For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

“Notice how the Lord describes Himself to Israel as 'the fountain of living waters.’ That’s a description of what Israel has done as they’ve gone into apostasy; they’ve left the Lord, the source of life-giving water and gone into Baal worship, the broken cisterns—all the things that have polluted Samaria.

“If you go down to Jeremiah 17:13, it says, ‘O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.’

“When He says in John 4:10 that He has a gift to give her and it’s a well springing up into everlasting life, and it’s going to be LIVING water, He’s talking about the restoration of Israel into her kingdom--the Messiah coming and producing everlasting life, kingdom life, for the nation.

“How’s that going to be accomplished? John 7:37-39 says, In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
[38] He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
[39] (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

“It’s the same thing He was telling the woman at the well, but now He’s in Jerusalem talking to the Jews. This term ‘living water’ is a figure of speech, a metaphor from the Lord, and it’s talking specifically about the giving of the Holy Spirit.

*****

“The coming of the Holy Spirit is associated with the redemption of Israel, the regathering of Israel, the redeeming of Israel, the inauguration of that new covenant in Israel.

“Talking about the kingdom, Isaiah 12 says, ‘Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the LORD JEHOVAH is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation. [3] Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

“Jacob’s well was designed to be the well of salvation. So as Christ sits there at Jacob’s well, talking to a woman who’s made that well into just what Jerusalem had made the temple into (just an outward external exercise with no real spiritual truth) Jesus is talking about bringing the wells of salvation; the living water; the real issue, one that’s going to bring everlasting life.

“It’s going to be the gift of God. It’s interesting, the gift of God in the Bible is never described as faith. Ephesians 2:8 says, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’

“The gift of God is always salvation; the issue of eternal life, the issue of doing for you what you can’t do for yourself. If you do for yourself, you’ll thirst again, but when He gives you the strength, you never thirst. It quenches the thirst spiritually.

*****

“The night before Jesus dies, He tells His apostles in John 14:16, ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.’

“What that’s describing is the kind of relationship He’s going to have with the Believing Remnant under the provisions of the new covenant. He begins to educate them into the relationship their going to have now when the Spirit of God is placed IN them, regenerates them and then indwells them and becomes the animating force of life for them. So much so that Ezekiel 36 says, ‘I put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my judgments.’

“That is, He will supernaturally empower you to accomplish this. ‘I’ll write my laws into your heart.’ By the way, people often take that and say that’s what is happening with us. But the difference, in II Corinthians 3, Paul talks about God doing some heart writing in us by His Spirit. But He doesn’t write His law in our hearts. He writes Christ in our hearts. He says we’re epistles, not of the law, but we’re the epistles of Christ. What He writes in our hearts is grace, not the law.

“But what He’s talking to the apostles here is about what’s going to be theirs in the new covenant and the ministry of the Spirit there.

“Well, that’s what He’s talking to this woman at the well about. Because the only hope for Israel was regeneration, the life of the Spirit being given to them and this living water that never allowed them to come up thirsty again; the Holy Spirit indwelling them and being that powerful, animating force that brings everlasting life.”

To be continued . . .

Paul: 'So am I!'

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he was dealing with a Greek culture that placed a tremendous emphasis on the human wisdom of its philosophers—Socrates, Plato, etc.

Their whole worldly approach led the Corinthian Believers to begin to question whether Paul really was sent from God.

“Their thinking was, ‘Surely only a polished orator would be sent from God,’ and Paul was deliberately rude in speech because the issue was the gospel message, not his person,” explains Alex Kurz, associate pastor at Chicago’s Shorewood Bible Church (shorewoodbiblechurch.org).

“What’s going on at Corinth is there were a bunch of religious people (from the nation Israel) who possessed credentials and reputation, and went in among the Corinthians, casting doubt on Paul’s legitimacy. In turn, by using the law system, they established a religious institution and the Corinthians fell for it.

“Paul’s response was, ‘I’d rather die than be a part of this duping.’ The Corinthians were doubting whether Paul was even an apostle, and he wasn’t going to sit there and allow the religious system to hold captive the saints at Corinth . . .

“Paul didn’t want to be viewed as one of the money-grubbing, money-hungry paid professionals out there operating. That’s why he says, ‘I’m not going to take a penny from you people. I’m going to sacrifice a liberty to collect money for the purpose of opposing the religious system that’s taking root at Corinth.’

“In II Corinthians 11: 22-23, Paul argues, ‘Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.’

“What is it that Paul says is his boast and brag? Paul, when he rehearses his past and lists his resume, had more religious credibility than anybody else in Israel.

“As we know from what he writes in Philippians 3:5 alone, Paul was ‘circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee.’

“Eighth-day circumcision (means) he was raised by a family of dedicated and faithful law-abiding Jews. The tribe of Benjamin was the most respected tribe in Israel. His father was a Pharisee. Paul was of the conservative party; he was a conservative within the ranks of the Jewish system.

“He trained at the feet of Gamaliel, one of the most prominent Pharisees and teachers of the law in Israel. We know from verse 6 Paul had bragged about his prominence within the religious system and the rank of prestige he held . . .

“Paul was not going to mimic this religious system anymore and that’s why he says, ‘I’d rather die if you think I’m going back to that system again! I’d rather die than place a system of bondage there at Corinth!’

“He wasn’t going to promote a denominational system; he did everything he could to stay away from the institutionalization of a church ministry.

“The Corinthians had a problem with that and Paul says, ‘You don’t understand why I do what I do; I stand apart from religion.’ Paul writes to the Corinthians, ‘Touch not the unclean thing,’ and the unclean thing was the religious system. The Corinthians misunderstood all that.”