What to wear? Clap on, clap off?

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jewish History and Culture, there are a total of 613 laws in the Old Testament meant to control the details of a devout Jew’s day-to-day life right down to their choice of underwear.

Of course, God replaced the Mosaic Law program of the Old Testament and Four Gospels with our current “dispensation of grace,” laid out by the Apostle Paul for the obedience of Jews and Gentiles alike, but since most Jews are unaware of this, they try in vain to keep the law, which is just how Satan likes it.

“If we were operating under the Jews’ law system tonight, a lot of you would have to take your clothes off,” says Jordan. “That’s a pretty frightening thought for most of us. You see, you’re not allowed under the law to wear a garment that has two different kinds of material in it. Dacron and rayon—you couldn’t wear that.

“If you have a synthetic blouse or shirt and cotton pants, one of them has to go. Now, you do have some liberty—you can choose the color. Hot dog! In fact, you have the liberty to choose the material, just don’t mix any two.”

*****

Jordan recalled attending a Bible conference once in southern Florida held in the same hotel where a group of Hasidic Jews were meeting for their Friday night Sabbath observance.

“They all had their suits and hats on, you know, and as they began their meeting—the head guy’s got the Torah on his shoulders and he’s doing his prayers. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the rituals they do, but they do a lot of bobbing and that kind of weaving and stuff. They’re all walking around praying.

“They started at 6, and at about 9:30, when we were finished, there was a young man who came over to a man from our group standing around in the lobby and asked him if he’d be willing to come down to his room. What this young Jewish guy had done was left his motel room forgetting to keep the door unlocked.

“Now, he can’t work on the Sabbath. It’s considered work to take his key and put it in the door and unlock it. Had he left the door unlocked, it would have been okay to push it open. That wasn’t work supposedly. But unlocking the door was work.

“I thought about that. It seems to me to be more of an expenditure of energy to push the door open than to turn a key. How would you figure out which is which?!

“Well, the way he knew which was which is he went over and his Rabbi made a decree and told him which was which, and when the two men went into the room, the Jewish fellow asked, ‘Before you go, would you please turn on the light switch for me?’ That was work.

“And so our guy asked him, ‘What are you going to do to turn the light off when you want to go to bed?’ He answered, ‘Well, I’ll have to sleep with the light on tonight.’

“You think, ‘Isn’t that overdoing it just a little bit?!’ But here’s a guy in fear of his soul who’s intent on following the rules and regulations exactly.

“When I look at that, I think, ‘How do you figure out the rules and regulations?!’

“How do you figure out, ‘Can I turn the light on or not?!’ I mean, I would have stood there at the door and said, ‘I’m shot! I can’t get in because I didn’t put a book behind and leave it open before I left.’

“I would have figured in my mind it’s just as much work to open the door as it is to turn the key to unlock it.

“What the young guy did is he opened the door and took the clasp so when the door shut it didn’t latch and then he could open the door and go in.

“Now, I’m not talking about the foolishness of the regulation—any regulation can be foolish. The question in my mind would be, ‘If I was him, how would I decide what I should have done? What is a law? What is permissible and what isn’t permissible?’

“And that’s where ‘the tradition of the elders’ developed. Because when you have that kind of system of legalism you can easily get to be overbearing with it and it can easily become the doctrines of men taught as the commandments of God. And that’s what Israel did under the Mosaic Law. That’s what ‘the tradition of the elders’ became.”

*****

“Some of you (Gentile Christians) come from legalistic religious backgrounds. You got your own rules and lists of things.

“I’ve got a list of maybe 80 I’ve heard through the years: Can’t wear wire-rimmed glasses. Can’t wear bell-bottom pants. Oh, and heavens to murgatory, a woman better not wear pants!

“And you can’t go to the movies. Well, you couldn’t go to the movies until television came out. You know, that’s all just like the opening of the door for that young Jewish man. I understand why they let him open the door. What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t unlock the lock. Because, practically speaking, they didn’t want him sleeping in the hall all night.

“I mean, some things just have to give way to practicality. Something can be good and fine as a thing to do, but when you then take it and make a rule and regulation out of it, what you do is you confuse how to do it.”

Easy as 1, 2, 3

Biblically, No.1 is associated with unity; it’s the number of God. No. 2 represents division and is the testimony of one divided. No. 3 brings one and two back together and gives completeness. No. 4 is the number of the earth. No. 5 is the number of death and No. 6 is the number of man.

Using the Book of Revelation, Jordan gives a great example of how God ingeniously displays His number meanings in His Word.

From Revelation 20, we know that when Christ comes back at the Second Advent and sets up His kingdom, the first stage of the transition into the eternal kingdom will last for 1,000 years (the Millennium).

The term 1,000 years is used six times in Revelation 20 and the first reference is in connection with Satan being taken off the earth.

Jordan reasons, “If you get rid of Satan on the earth, you got rid of the conflict, didn’t you? And you brought harmony. Now they’re can be unity in the earth because Satan the deceiver is gone.”

The second reference has Satan cast into the bottomless pit for 1,000 years. He’s divided from the earth for a thousand years, shut up with a seal set on him ‘that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.’

Then, as John reports in Rev. 20: 4-6: “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
[5] But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
[6] Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.”

*****

Jordan explains, “When they live, that’s the first resurrection, so the third reference to 1,000 years is in regard to the first resurrection. The fourth reference in verse 5 is to the rest of the dead who don’t live. They’re lost people. Where are they? They’re in hell. Where is hell? It’s in the heart of the earth. Not just the grave but in hell.

In verse 6, the fifth appearance of 1,000 years occurs with a reference to the second death. The last reference to 1,000 years, starting in verse 7, reads: “And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.”

Jordan says, “Six is the number of man, and Satan’s let out and you know what he finds? He finds a ready audience among mankind to serve him still.

“Well, when I read through a passage like that and I see these numbers, I say, ‘You know, there’s not ANY way under God’s heaven that a man wrote that! It just doesn’t make any sense.’ That’s why I tell you, the more you study your Bible from a believing point of view—just give it the benefit of the doubt—the more you’ll find that it will confirm itself to be God’s Word.”

*****

Jordan continues, “If you want to learn something about really believing, come back to Genesis 1. Your Bible will prove itself.  No. 1, the number of God and the number of unity, is the foundation for all other numbers because every other number is a multiple of one.

“No. 1 is a fundamental, foundational number, which makes sense that it would be God’s number. It first occurs in the text of Scripture in Gen. 1:9: ‘And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.’

“The waters He scattered out and now they’re gathered to one place. The idea with one is a gathering together in one place. In Deut. 6:4—the great confession of Israel—Moses writes, ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.’ ”

*****

“Now, you go to Genesis 2 and see No. 2 is a number of division. It’s interesting that it’s in Genesis 2 that Adam is divided. Genesis 1 says, ‘He created man and in the image of God created he.’

“Well, when did Adam become a ‘them’? In Genesis 2, God put Adam asleep, opened up his side, took out a rib and out of that rib He formed a separate person, Eve. Now there’s two.

“I’ve often thought about what it would have been like when Adam woke up from that sleep. I’ve never been anesthetized but once in my life and that’s when they did the radiation implants, and when I woke up from that I looked down at my feet and there stood a nurse with a Geiger counter. I said, ‘What are you doing?!’

“Well, when Adam woke up there stood Eve. I don’t know what you think he might have said—‘Whoa, where have you been all my life?!’

“And verse 24 describes what God did: ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ We like to say, ‘Baby, I’m stuck on you.’ Do you see that word one there? It’s about uniting together.

“If you really want to see it in action, come over to Genesis 11, because every uniting is not a good uniting.

“Gen. 11 says ‘the whole earth was of one language.’ Verse 6 says the ‘people are one and have one language.’ I read that chapter and I think, ‘Wow, that is so true! Man can accomplish and achieve anything he sets his mind on doing unless God intervenes, as He did here.’

“They had one world with one language, and in verse 4 they tried to create a one-world religion. It was globalism at its best.”

'But if we walk in the light . . .'

Even by my old-fashioned, non-tech standards, I’ve been way too “unplugged” since arriving in Chicago a week ago.

Right now, I am using free Wi-Fi at the Palatine train station, which is a 10-minute walk from my new basement abode. No internet or TV whatsoever yet at home (my converter box with rabbit ears couldn’t pull in a thing).

My mom is loaning me her TracFone, which means I have to carefully consider every minute I spend on it and only use when absolutely necessary.

Then there’s the matter of not having a car. I forgot my bicycle pump in my Mom’s garage, so there’s no filling my ten-speed’s deflated tires. I’ve actually been walking home from Shorewood services.

Fortunately, I return to Ohio next week to pick up my Honda and life should be much better then. I will get Comcast to come out with one of their package bundles upon my re-entry. As far as getting a cell phone, I’ll probably hold off for as long as possible--I’m not one for texting and selfies and all. Yep, I’m a landline lubber!

*****

Last night at church, Jordan talked about how our Bible-believing forefathers used the light they had, no matter how small it was, to go forward with the truth. He reminded us how fortunate we are today to have the light be so bright thanks to the tremendous advances in scriptural understanding brought about by the faithful study of our predecessors.

On the subject of light, it is always worthwhile to remember Lucifer was given a spectacularly dazzling attractiveness that reflected the light display of God Himself. He had the original “coat of many colors.”

As God describes him in Ezekiel 28:14, “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”

“Fire is light, and if you take these jewels and hold them up to the sparkling of a fire, it’s going to make them glow and sparkle,” explains Jordan. “Stones of fire represent justice and judgment in the Scripture, but just for the physical appearance, they would be causing the stones to glimmer, to glisten, and each one of them has a different color.

“And what he’s doing, just like Adam was given this garment of light, but the light Adam had wasn’t just this blazing white light coming off of him—‘Hold it back, I can’t see him!’

“In Ezekiel 1, when you see the appearance of the glory of God, it’s described as a rainbow. And you know what a rainbow is? The word is ‘refracted.’ Not reflected, but refracted. It’s bent light so that the colors of the light spectrum are seen.

“Literally, the throne of God in the ‘third heaven,’ when you see it, the light that comes around it is like a rainbow. It’s this dazzling array of light. God Himself lives in the ‘coat of many colors,’ as it were, and He gave it to His representatives in the earth—those special people who were loved and represented Him—and Lucifer had that! In other words, Lucifer in his person was bearing God’s light! And those stones represented that.”

“Lucifer ‘wast upon the holy mountain of God,’ and that’s a reference to the ‘third heaven.’ That’s not the mountain on the earth; not Mount Zion in Jerusalem. That’s in the heavenly Jerusalem.

“When it says Lucifer ‘walkest up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,’ scripturally when anyone walks up and down in something, it means they have possession of it. Lucifer has the possession; the right. He’s living in and possesses the right to carry the light.

*****

“In Job 38 is a reference to this light back there using a term that kind of explains why, when you read about the death of the man of sin, it repeatedly talks about his arm being broken.

“In Job 38, when the Lord begins to answer Job about why he’s suffering, He says, ‘You need to understand some things about creation; why creation was set up, why things were done this way . . . ’

“God asks, ‘Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place; [13] That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? [14] It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment. [15] And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken.’

“Notice it’s from the wicked the light is taken away? Well, that’s what happened to Lucifer! He lost the light, and when you don’t have light, what do you have? Darkness.

“When you watch the guys with the Olympic torches, where have they got the light? What’d Jesus tell Israel? He said, ‘You’re a light; you don’t put it under a bushel. Put it on a candlestick.’

“Paul says, ‘We shine as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.’ Now, how are we light? We’re the source of God’s Word and the entrance of it brings light.

“Lucifer’s original job was to hold up the light, folks, and he held up that high arm, and he held it up high and walked around in the midst of the stones of fire, and he said, ‘Here’s the light!’ His job was to exalt God and be the one who led creation in that exaltation.

*****

“When God puts a label on Lucifer’s fall in Ezekiel 28:17, He says, 'Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.'

“When He uses the word ‘brightness’ there, He’s not talking about, ‘Oh, that’s a bright kid!’ He’s talking about the dazzling display of his physical appearance. He says, ‘I will cast thee to the ground.’ He talks about ‘the multitude of thy merchandise’ and ‘the iniquity of thy traffick.’

“Satan’s got something to sell and those are commercial terms. If you run a business, you try to move the merchandise out from Point A to Point B. You sell the stuff. He’s got this big package of a plan. Satan calls it ‘beautiful wisdom.’ God called it iniquity.

“Now that plan is what you read about in Isaiah 14. Those five points. His plan was he ought to be the rightful ruler of the universe. When Paul talks about Satan taking people ‘captive at his will,’ his will is the lie that he ought to be the rightful ruler of the universe. That’s the essence of it.

*****

“In Romans 1, if you want to see how he took the creative genius capacity God gave him and corrupted it, you’ll see the pattern he taught man: ‘Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.’

“When they decided to let their mind run in empty, vain, worthless ways—human viewpoint—their heart was darkened. They bought into the lie program, professing themselves to be wise.

“All of that thinking process Lucifer originated. And that was the iniquity. This crooked, froward way of thinking that his sin of pride led him into. And God says in Ezekiel 28:18, ‘I will bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.’

“Now, that’s at the Second Advent. That’s when Jesus Christ ‘destroys him with the brightness of His coming.’ So until then, there’s a long period in between.”

(new article tomorrow)

Wisdom says, 'We need to talk!'

Among the Book of Proverbs’ fascinating aspects is how both wisdom and folly are personified as women. When wisdom speaks, for instance, it’s in three different formats.

Jordan explains, “First she speaks in the city; in the streets to the leaders of the nation. Then she withdraws herself and talks in private. She builds herself a house and goes into her own chamber and talks to just the people who are willing to come into her house. And then she sends her emissaries out into the city to invite other people into the house.

“There’s going to come a time in Israel when Wisdom will cry in the streets and do what she does in the latter part of Chapter 1 (beginning in verse 20), which is to talk to the religious leaders of the nation and say, ‘Come and repent because the wrath of God’s coming, and if you don’t get right and hearken to me, the wrath of Almighty God is going to destroy you.’

“When they don’t hearken, Wisdom cries again (in Chapter 8). It’s from her house that she cries and invites people, ‘Psst! C’mon over here, I want to talk to you!’ and they go in the house.

*****

“Of course, all of that is exactly what happens in the earthly ministry of Christ. He starts out publicly in the streets calling the nation to repentance. Then, in the middle part of His ministry, about Matthew 11 and 12, He withdraws, and just at the point in Matthew 12 when the Pharisees and Sadducees—the religious leaders—begin to develop a plot to kill Him, He withdraws Himself from them.

“In Matthew 16, Peter says, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus says, ‘You’re right; don’t tell anybody.’ Isn’t that strange? He goes up on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James and John and is transfigured from them, and they see His kingdom glory and majesty and, as they’re coming down from the mountain, He says, ‘Now you guys have seen it, but don’t tell anybody.’

“Wait a minute! Before, they’d been going around saying, ‘Hey, He’s here! He’s here! Trust him!’ Now He’s saying, ‘Psst! Come over here guys. Let’s regroup.’

“When He does go outside to talk to people, He says, ‘From now on I’m only going to talk in parables so you guys can’t understand it. People in my house over here, they can understand it.’

“And He says ‘the kingdom’s going to be taken from you,’ meaning it’s going to be taken from the religious leaders of Israel and given to a nation that brings forth the fruit thereof. 

 

"He says, ‘Fear not, little flock, it’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,’ and He literally builds within the nation Israel a new nation; within the house of Israel, a new house. A house where wisdom’s going live.

“And then, as in Proverbs 1, He sends His spirit down on them and then He sends His emissaries out of that house in the early Acts period to cry once again and to entreat. And in Proverbs 9, they go out and say, ‘Hey, there’s dinner at home. Come and dine. All is ready.’

 

"You have parables in Matthew about the feast and the dinner that’s there, and you have them going out on the highways and in the hinterlands.

*****

“David personifies wisdom as a person, and when it speaks in Israel it’s going to follow this pattern so that when you get over to Matthew, and that generation that Proverbs 30 says is going to show up—there is a generation that does these things—when they show up, John the Baptist identifies them and then you see wisdom cry in the streets, then go into the house, then send out the apostles and the ‘little flock.’

“It’s that prophetic sense that Proverbs 30:1 and 31:1 are talking about; in the day when Wisdom speaks in their midst that this book will come into its own.”

*****

David gives four purposes the proverbs were collected together to accomplish. The first purpose, which is to know wisdom and instruction, is amplified in Chapter 1: 7-9. The second purpose, to perceive the words of understanding, is amplified in Chapter 1:10 to the end of chapter. The third purpose, to receive guidance in judgment and equity, can be found in Chapter 2. The fourth purpose is “to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.”

“Beginning in Chapter 3, all the way down to the end of Chapter 9, or at least to the end of Chapter 7 (chapters 8 and 9 is a monologue where Wisdom speaks again), you have the focus on that fourth purpose,” says Jordan. “David was the most concerned . . . You know when you give your kids instruction, you got some things you want them to know about. You tell them to do this, this and this, and, ‘This one here, man, we need to talk about!’

“The most demanding one of these things—the one that David wanted Solomon to know the most about—is the one that God through David and Solomon wanted the ‘believing remnant’ in the last days to know the most about. Have subtlety. Have the ability to know and have knowledge and discretion.

“And that’s the reason that all through Chapters 3-7 . . . that’s where that stuff about that ‘strange woman’ comes up. That strange woman, folks, in Revelation 17, is that religious system.

“That apostate religious system that starts back in Genesis and is introduced to the nation Israel through the tribe of Dan and is called Baal worship goes all down through the Bible and becomes the religion of the Antichrist. Part of the seduction is that thing in Revelation 2:14 and 20 where that woman Jezebel seduces the servants of God to commit fornication in the context of religion.

“These proverbs are designed to equip these people to be aware of the problems and these (four purposes) are going to give the ability not to be seduced. You and I today face that same religious system. It doesn’t make any difference what God’s doing, Satan has his religious system out there and it adapts; it doesn’t change what it’s doing, it just adapts its tactics.

“What the Proverbs were going to do for Israel, and what they will do for the believers in Israel, is give them the capacity to stay out of the trap and not step in the snare of the Adversary. That’s what Paul’s epistles do for us. (II Timothy 2:24)

 

(Editor’s note: I finally make the trek to Chicago tomorrow morning. It’s been quite an unexpected delay due to the ongoing bad weather. Will post a new article in a few days)

So easy to get; apparently so hard to believe

A noun generally gets its meaning from its verb form so the word "dispensation," repeatedly used by Paul, means “to dispense, to give out.” Another word for the same idea is “administration,” used by Paul in I Corinthians 12: “And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord."

“A dispensation is not a time period; it’s what’s given for man’s obedience during a particular time,” explains Jordan. “The issue is what God gave for man to know and to obey and to follow. Here’s this truth given to Paul and that issue of, ‘Have you heard it or not?’ is the key.

I Corinthians 11:1 is a verse of scripture that I’m convinced most preachers don’t know is in their bible. Paul writes, ‘Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.’ There’s not a hard word in that verse. That’s not hard to understand; it’s hard to believe.

“Paul said, ‘Follow me.’ Only three people in the Bible said, ‘Follow me.’ Moses was one because God made him the law-giver to Israel. Jesus told the people, ‘What Moses commanded you, go do that.’

“Jesus Christ is Jehovah God the Son who stood on Mt. Sinai and gave Moses the law. Did you know that? Jesus Christ is the eternal God. He’s the one who gave Moses the commandment; He gave him a position of authority in Israel and said, ‘You got to do what Moses tells you. Why? Because I’m telling him.’

“Jesus comes as God in human flesh but He’s also ‘a minister of the circumcision to confirm the promises.’ So He says, ‘Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.’ Now, that idea of being a fisher of men comes out of Jeremiah and it’s talking about rescuing the Believing Remnant of Israel in the tribulation, so He’s gathering them together.

“Then you come to Paul and he says, ‘Be ye followers of me as I also am of Jesus Christ.’ If you’re going to follow Jesus Christ today, you have to follow Him the way He wants to be followed. And He’s not being followed today as He was with Moses. The way you follow Him today is not as you did in His earthly ministry.

“The way you follow Him today is the heavenly ministry that He gave the Apostle Paul. It’s this new information that, previous to Paul in other ages, was not made known.

*****

“It’s a fascinating thing, if you start reading the book of Romans, you know what the first thing you read is? Paul. If you read I Corinthians, the first word is ‘Paul.’ It’s the same with II Corinthians and Ephesians. There are 13 books where the first word you read is the same word—‘Paul.’ You’d think people would get the idea that dude’s important.

“Paul writes in Romans 15:8, ‘Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers.’

"By the way, If you’ve got a different bible than I’ve got, your bible doesn’t say that. I’ve come to the conclusion that the New King James Version--any time you got to take somebody else’s name and put it on your bible to make it sell, you know there’s a problem.

“Paul says in Galatians 5, ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.’ What the NKJV does is it takes the right text, almost always, and then uses the modern translation techniques to translate that text. That’s why it’s not a King James Bible. Because there are two issues really—one is the text and the other is the translation. That’s why a NKJV won’t tell you about the faith OF Christ. They retranslate those verses.

“Now, why do they do that? There is no logical reason that a first or second-year Greek student would translate that phrase from the King James, ‘the faith of Christ,’ as ‘faith IN Christ,’ because you learn rules about how to translate to tell you a genitive has a certain way to be translated.

“There are modern sophisticated gymnastics that say you can do it differently. I know about them. I read about them. But that’s my point. They’ve adopted the modern techniques of the translator. What did they do? They took that verse away from you.

“They take this verse in Romans 15 away from you. They say Jesus Christ IS a minister of the circumcision. Is He or WAS He? Is He? No. Izzy can’t get in; he’s down at the shop with Louie and Iggy. He WAS, but that’s a translation thing.

*****

“I’ve actually come to the conclusion that the NKJV is the most dangerous translation out there because you get so close and yet so far that you pull away things that you need in order to be able to stand on that truth.

“Someone told me the other day how they were talking about biblical issues to their family and the response was, ‘Well, your problem is you use a King James Bible. Your doctrine comes out of it, not out of our modern version.’

“I had a Baptist preacher sit across the table from me once and say, ‘If I believe the KJB is the Word of God I have to do just like you do!’ (Acts 2:38) I said, ‘What’s wrong with that?!’

“The new bibles says Jesus Christ ‘has become’ the minister of the circumcision. He hasn’t become; He was. He isn’t now; He WAS a minister of the circumcision. He WAS Israel’s minister. That’s why Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all of His ministry, focused on the nation Israel. That’s why Jesus Christ would say, ‘I’m not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ That’s why He told His apostles in the great commission, ‘Don’t go to the Gentiles!’ That’s why He did that!

“It wasn’t because He didn’t love everybody but because He knew the program back there was that through redeemed Israel, and the hope God gave Israel, the nations of the earth would come to God. Christ knew what the program was and He was a minister of that covenant program.

*****

“A lady said to my wife recently, ‘Well, I can believe all that stuff about Jesus dying for my sins, but I can’t believe all that other stuff in the Bible.’ When asked, ‘What stuff?’ she said, ‘All that stuff like, whatever you ask you receive. I tried it and it didn’t work.’

“See, that’s what lost people are thinking about. The answer to her was, ‘Have you ever thought that He might not have been talking to you?’ I watched her eyes snap open: ‘No, I never thought about that.’

“If you got a letter in your mailbox tomorrow addressed to me from Publisher’s Clearing House saying you won $10 million, would that excite you? It wouldn’t excite you nearly as much as if it had your name on it, would it? People get that; they understand that.”

Islam and Chicago

Muhammad’s intention when he wrote the Koran was to have people think the men of the Bible are the men of Islam and that the God of the Bible is behind Islam.

Several years ago in Chicago, an Islamic organization called “GainPeace” paid for a huge advertising campaign in which wide-format printing was used to plaster city buses with the names JESUS, NOAH, MOSES and ABRAHAM in huge black letters.

Below the windows were enormous yellow letters spelling ISLAM. There was a 1-800 number along with the slogan, “Got Questions? Get Answers.” The list of names came as part of the sentence, “The way of life of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad.”

*****

With 90 mosques in Chicago, only New York City (192) and southern California (120) have more such Islamic posts in the United States.

“There was a new mosque starting in Chicago better than once a month and it isn't all immigrants,” says Jordan. “They’re out there actively. Down on the South Side a guy once gave me a Islam recruiting manual—you know, just like we have that evangelism training (manual) where we try to train you to be a soul-winner and to reach people with the gospel, they have one on how to convert Christians to Islam.

“It’s an aggressive manual to win people over and the first tactic they use is to tell (potential converts) that, ‘Christian scholars agree their bible has mistakes in it.’ That’s the recruiter’s first approach! They then tell them they have a book, the Koran, that has NO mistakes in it. That’s what they say and that’s what they teach.

“You can take Muslim and Islamic scholars all the way back and you won’t find any of them professing there are mistakes in their ‘bible,’ but you can take professors from Moody, from University of Chicago Divinity School, from North Park, from Northwest College, from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, from Wheaton College, from Judson College, and get their top bible people to say, ‘Oh no, no, no, we don’t have a bible that doesn’t have mistakes in it.’

“So, you know, I think, ‘Wow, they’re doing the Mormons task for them! If the people at the head of evangelical fundamentalism want to agree with the Mormons and the Muslims about the Bible that’s their problem.’ We make an issue of the Bible being perfect—the King James Bible you have in your possession being what God said His Word is and that it’s perfect and true and right.”

*****

While Islam says it accepts the Jewish Torah and the Four Gospels as “Allah’s revelation to the pre-Islamic people,” the accounts on famous men and events from the Bible differ wildly from the ones found in the Koran. The Koran itself claims it is a continuation of the Bible and will not contradict it (Sura 2:136).

In his 1992 book The Islamic Invasion, religion expert Robert Morey reasons, “The Muslims argue that the Quran must be perfect because God would preserve His Word infallibly. Yet if God failed to do this for the Bible, as they claim, why should He do this for the Quran?”

*****

Morey writes, “The very first problem in the Quran concerns the number of days it took God to create the world. When you add up all the days mentioned in Sura 41:9, 10, 12 the Quran says that it took God eight days to create the world (4 days + 2 days + 2 days = 8 days).

“But it only took six days according to the Bible (Genesis 1:31). Thus, the Quran begins it contradictions of the Bible in the very first chapter of the Bible.

“A Muslim friend objected to this, stating that the Hebrew text of the Bible was no doubt corrupted at this point and that it originally said that the creation took eight days.

“I pointed out that there was no evidence in the Hebrew manuscripts of any corruption. Also, the Bible elsewhere says that the world was created in six days (Exodus 20:11).

“Then I pointed out that the Quran in Suras 7:51 and 10:3 agreed with the biblical account that the creation of the world took only six days.

“If six days is wrong, then the Quran in Suras 7 and 10 is wrong. But if eight days is wrong, then Sura 41 is wrong. Using classic Muslim reasoning, he responded that then the Quran did not say eight days.

“I added up the days mentioned in Sura 41 as 4 + 2 + 2 = 8. He then added it up and came up with 4 + 2 + 2 = 6 ‘because 4 is divisible by 2 and hence 4 is actually a 2’!

“When I pointed out that the Arabic said 4 and not 2, it did not faze him. He argued that 4 = 2, otherwise he would be trapped into having to admit the Quran was in error.

“Thus he made the utterly ridiculous statement that 4 = 2 rather than simply accepting the fact that Muhammad made an error at this point.”

*****

Morey summarizes, “On the one hand, if the Muslim rejects the Bible, he must also reject the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as God’s Word.

“On the other hand, if he accepts the Bible, he still must reject the Quran because it contradicts the Bible. Either way, the Quran loses.

“So what does the Muslim do? He takes a blind leap of faith and says, ‘The text of the Bible at this place must be corrupted. It did not originally teach that Jesus was crucified. I do not have to prove it. I know it is so because otherwise I am trapped and will have to give up the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as the basis of its own authority.’

“The unreasonableness of the Muslim’s argument grates against the scientific mind.”  

Kicking theological camps in the eyes

While it’s simply incongruous for a saved Believer to be demon-possessed, as some suggest, it is true that Believers can become oppressed by satanic influences and obsessed with them.

“I was talking on the radio just this morning about the continuous obsession with the Antichrist and the prophecy preachers who speculate all this stuff about how this is the end of the world and we should be looking for the Antichrist, and people just get obsessed with the conspiracy things involved in that and so forth,” said Jordan in a recent study. “So when you meet Believers who have been involved in satanic attacks and caught in the snare, the passage Paul uses to explain to you and me how we’re to deal with them is II Timothy 2:24-26:

[24] And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
[25] In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
[26] And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

*****

“There’s a big resurgence of Universalism today among what’s called the ‘emergent church,’ and it’s the next evolution of the evangelical church. It’s just all these people who’ve rejected God’s Word. They couldn’t find a Bible with a flashlight in five years and if they did find it, they wouldn’t know how to study it, so they’re just out there like a golf ball in the tall weeds; they’re just lost.

“That’s just the way these preachers are. They don’t have a Bible, they don’t know how to ‘rightly divide’ a Bible, so they wind up in confusion, declaring, ‘Love has to win, and if love has to win, then everybody has to be saved.’

“And so there can be no hell: ‘Nobody can die and go to hell because that makes God a torturer and He’s worse than an Abu Ghraib kind of thing; He’s worse than a water-boarder because He’s a torturer.’

“You get all this goofball reasoning about God and the justice of God, and they just focus on certain things, and the things that bother them they leave out and that’s how you have everybody getting saved.

“There are a number of incarnations of that idea. One of the things that doctrine comes from is the idea that when Jesus Christ died, He paid for everybody’s sins and everybody’s sins are forgiven.

“There’s a bunch of folks going around in the Grace Movement right now that have picked up some ideas that are not new and didn’t originate from anything dispensationally oriented.

“Now, they believe in hell. But they believe you go to hell even though your sins are forgiven! You just say, ‘WHAT?!’

“They say that because Paul says God was in Christ ‘reconciling the world,’ therefore all people’s sins are forgiven, and so that when people die and go to hell, their sins are forgiven and they don’t go to hell because of their sins because their sins are already forgiven. WHAT?!

“What they do is they don’t read that passage for what it says; they take some ideas and impute to it. II Corinthians 5:18-19 says, [18] And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
[19] To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

“ ‘Reconciling the world’ is defined for you in Romans 11:15: ‘For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?’

*****

“Paul writes in I Timothy 4:10, ‘For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.’

“Now, a verse like that kicks two different theological camps in the eyes and just annihilates them. It’s like a guy said, ‘Those people are so narrow-minded that a gnat could sit on their nose and kick them in both eyes at the same time.’

“Paul says He’s the Savior of all men. There goes Calvinism, because it says He’s only the Savior of ‘the elect.’ Then the verse says ‘specially of those that believe.’ There goes Universalism because if he just said Christ’s the Savior of all men, the Universalists would be happy because now everybody’s going to be saved. But then he says ‘specially.’

“There’s two different senses in which He’s the Savior, otherwise he wouldn’t have said ‘specially.’ There’s the sense in which He’s the Savior of all men, but then there’s another sense in which it’s only those who believe that are saved.

“There are about 50 different explanations for that verse but those are the two things to notice. Frankly, the easiest way to understand that verse is just to believe what it says.

*****

“There’s a fascinating passage in Romans 3: 21-22 that for me has always been a great deal of help in these particular areas. Paul writes, [21] But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
[22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.

“As a cross reference, it is the easiest, simplest way to understand I Timothy 4:10. It’s available to everyone but it’s UPON (meaning, personally applicable) all them that believe. See the difference? He’s the Savior of all men (meaning, it’s available to everybody) but He’s only going to give righteousness to people who believe.

“That ‘unto’ and ‘upon’ will save you from a lot of different kind of screwball ideas. God’s righteousness is available to everyone because of the Lord Jesus Christ. The faith of Jesus Christ’s work at Calvary has provided righteousness that is available to everyone.

“In Calvinistic theology they call it the ‘well-meant gospel offer.’ You say, ‘WHAT is that?!’ The Calvinist has this conundrum. He doesn’t believe that Jesus died for everybody; He only died for ‘the elect.’ But then you have messages that say the gospel is to be preached to everyone.

“So you preach Christ died for your sins, but if you don’t believe that, well, aren’t you lying? How can you ask someone to accept by faith what God hasn’t offered to them?

“So the way they reason around it is they say, ‘Well, you MEAN it!’

“Do you know there are Calvinist denominations that have split over whether or not you should have a well-meant gospel offer? They argue, fight and bite and devour one another over it.

“If you get yourself in the position where you say Christ only died for ‘the elect,’ only a small group of people who He’s pre-chosen to die for, and His redemption and atonement is limited to only that group, then you don't have a way to make a legitimate offer of salvation to everybody since Christ didn’t die for them.

“You see, you don’t have a ‘well-meant gospel.’ You’re just lying to people.

(another article tomorrow)

Seduction so subtle, so insidious

Every January through the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s, Jordan made a New Year’s habit of re-reading Bible scholar Cornelius Stam’s classic book “The Controversy,” now called, “Holding Fast the Faithful Word.”

 “If you haven’t read that book you need to,” said Jordan in his study last Sunday night. “In that book, Mr. Stam addresses and answers every objection of the distinctive ministry of Paul that will ever be raised. He fought those battles in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s against the kingpins of fundamentalism and he answered them clearly from the Scripture.

“I would sit down every year and reread that book and the reason I did is I learned back in the late ’60s that in a year’s time my thinking could kind of drift a little bit with me not ever aware of it. I would use that book to bring me back, because if you’re off a half a degree to start with, you go far enough and you’ll be way off.

“The first or second year after I got saved I was learning and studying and I remember reading Stam’s book and thinking, ‘Wow, I had let some things enter into my understanding that weren’t really good doctrine,’ and there was some corrective teaching in that book about Paul’s apostleship that helped me correct myself. I said, ‘You know what, I need that beacon of that correct teaching.’

“Back then, (in the ’60s and ’70s) I was reading the Bible 4-5 times a year all the way through and yet I realized I needed to be careful and I needed a very clear plumb line; a cornerstone to measure by.

“The teaching in that book is a defense of the distinctive ministry of Paul. Every question anybody will ever ask you or throw at you to contradict Paul’s distinctive ministry and message is addressed and dealt with in that book.”

*****

Among countless gems in Stam’s expose is his overall observation, “It is not mental acumen that brings men to an understanding of the mystery, but a sincere desire for the truth. Home many of God’s humblest saints rejoice in ‘the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,’ while the intellectual wonder what it is all about! Surely it is true that: ‘God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.’ "

Stam succinctly sums up, “So deep is the antipathy of some religious leaders toward the Pauline message and those who proclaim it that they will simply lie low each time their falsehoods are exposed and await an opportunity to strike again. This is Satan’s strategy for it is easier to believe a lie one has heard a thousand times than to believe a truth he has never heard before . . .”

As for the “godly” men who were thoroughly exposed to Pauline truth but ultimately chose to deny it, Stam writes, “The sad fact is the Church, as such, has ceased going forward in the truth . . . Those who do not go forward in the truth go inexorably backward, so that many who once felt they had reached the summit of dispensational truth have now fallen back into Amillennialism and Pentecostalism, and others, who still hold generally to Scofield’s position are beginning to ask whether, after all, we might not have to go through the prophesied tribulation period or at least a part of it.”

*****

“Folks, the path of faith is wearying to the flesh,” said Jordan, reminding that he has for the past four-plus decades spent time on Saturday evenings to sit and read the Pastoral Epistles--I Timothy through Philemon—in preparation for his Sunday ministry. “Your flesh doesn’t like to be left out and that’s what faith does. You have to be constantly on guard because the seduction is so subtle and so insidious that it gets all of us.

“That’s why Paul warns in II Timothy 4:16, ‘Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.’

“Not just the doctrine but yourself. Why? You’re being careful to bring these things into your life because you can get to assuming they’re there when they’re not and you get kind of diverted into other things. It can happen to you, too!

“That’s why he says in I Corinthians 9:27, ‘But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’

“In other words, he disciplines himself. He’s careful to maintain good works. Why? Because that’s going to make him more pleasing to God? No. It’s because it makes him a better soldier. It makes sure he’s not ‘entangled with the things of this world.’ It makes sure he’s doing what’s expedient and not being brought under the power of something deceptively.

“It’s a faithful saying that you can give yourself to that; these things are good and profitable unto men.

“By the way, when Paul says ‘suffer,’ that word doesn’t necessarily mean that you experience pain. The word simply means 'to allow.' Jesus said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ You only get to chapter II Timothy 3:12 before Paul says, ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’

“Now, in II Timothy 2:9 he’s talking about himself suffering persecution, so you know that’s what the context is. If I allow the life of Christ, and that godly edification now to live in me, then there is a reigning that I’ll be a part of; there’s a promise of the life to come in that future out there that I’ll be a part of. To the measure that I don’t allow Christ to do it then I lose out. So the issue there is the Judgment Seat of Christ and the life that is to come.”

Releasing the power inherent in truth

A fascinating op-ed column in the New York Times, “Your Brain Lies to You,” described how the phenomenon known as “source amnesia” leads people to forget whether or not a statement is true.

“Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true,” informs the article. “With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a non-credible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength.”

Obviously you can see the biblical implications. That’s why you hear all kinds of outrageously untrue statements about what the Bible really says. People listen to other people’s lies and don’t remember what they once knew as fact from God’s Word.

*****
 

In the Bible, truth is more than just being right all the time; it’s the ultimate basis of reality. What makes what’s real? God.

“You know that coffee table is solid, but at the atomic and sub-atomic level it isn’t,” explains Jordan. “Well, what’s reality really made of? In Scripture, the ultimate source of what’s real—not illusionary, but what’s real—is who God is.

“There's the Indiana Jones movie where, at the end, everything resolves itself? They figure out the mystery they’re looking for in the crystal and Indy asks, ‘Well, did they go out into space?’ The other guy says, ‘Yes, the space between things.’

“You know what he’s talking about is not outer space. You take an atom

and it’s got all these neutrons, protons and electrons that circle. Well, what’s between all that?

*****

 

The thing you notice more and more about yourself as you study and try to apply God’s Word is how much you lie to yourself.

The more the lie is subconsciously reinforced in the brain the harder it becomes not to buy into it as truth on a physical-emotional level where it actually debilitates you in a very real way.

Paul writes in I Thess. 2: 13, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”

Jordan asks, “How do you get where the truth effectually works inside of you, and produces its work in you so when your feet hit the ground you’re off doing what God’s Word says you should be doing? How to you get from where it’s stuff you just know in your head to stuff that lives in your life?”

He answers, “There’s one word and it’s not religion. It’s not rules or regulations; performance systems. Look at what the word is—believe.

“You know what the long and the short of it is, folks? When you read a verse of Scripture and it says that this action and attitude ought to be the action and attitude you take as a Believer, because you’re a Believer—because you’re complete in Christ and you know who you are—it should be, ‘This is the way I will live my life on a daily basis; this is how God would live and act in me.’

“When you don’t do that, you know why you don’t do it? Because you don’t believe the verse! That’s all there is to it! There’s not any other excuse. You’ve got misplaced dependencies; your confidence is not in God’s Word; it’s not in who God’s made you in Christ. It’s in you or someone else and what you want and not what God wants.

“You want the verses to work in your life? Believe. That’s all you got to do. The only response grace will accept is faith and when you believe the verses, you know what they’ll do? They’ll transform your life into what they say. The reality of what they say WILL work in your life.

*****

“Understand that life doesn’t begin in your emotions. I bet you don’t believe that but at least you ought to know it. Your emotions are the part of your makeup that God gave you to be motivators of your will. The way you’re made by God to function is in response to decisions that your will makes. Life on a daily basis, that’s the way life is to be lived.

“Too often we live under the tyranny of emotional revolt because our emotions, as dumb and as uneducated as they are . . . do you realize your emotions are just dumb as posts?!

“Your emotions think anything your mind is thinking is true. Anything your mind thinks, you project on the screen of your thought processes and your emotions think is true.

“That’s why you cry when you see a sad movie. It’s only a movie. You know it’s not real, but you project it into the visualization of your mind and your emotions respond as though it were true.

“Your emotions are designed to respond. e-MOTION. That’s what the word is. Most of that word is the word motion. And God has built you so that there’s a part of your inner man that is designed to put into motion the things that your heart and your mind have chosen to do.

“But the order is fact first. Then you have to faith in the facts. And once you have faith in the facts, it will produce some fruit. And the fruit will then produce the feeling.

“You have to have it in that order, because until your faith rests in the reality of the facts, those facts can never go to work in your life. They’ll just be rolling around in your head. When your faith rests in them, your faith in those facts releases the power of that truth and it works effectually in you that believe.”