“. . . Today there’s a great sense people have of being alienated, separated, being ‘out here by myself’ in the world. One of the reasons people join gangs, cults, movements . . .
"I remember years ago reading an article about Al Capone and Joe Kennedy. Kennedy and Capone were contemporaries, and had Kennedy not been a millionaire, he would have been considered a bootlegger. To this day, every bottle of Irish-Scotch whiskey that comes into America his family still gets a piece of.
“During the Prohibition, Al was over here in the speakeasies and he’s got guys importing it and making it in car radiators and stuff. Well, he’s a gangster, but him and Kennedy both had the same motivation; they just started at different social stratas.
“One had no money or political contact but he had street muscle. The other guy’s got political muscle and financial muscle. So one’s this big respected guy and the other, he's a ‘let’s-hang-him-and-get-rid-of-him’ kind of a guy. But the motivation behind both men was the same: Power, money.
*****
“One of things that motivates people is a desire to belong. To be a part of something special. Ephesians 1:4 says, ‘According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.’
“I said many times that when you learn some things about 'right division' and the grace of God it will change some things in your life. It will probably change where you go to church.
"That’s a hard pill; people don’t like to hear that. But there’s a religious system out there, folks, that the Bible equates with ‘harlotry’ and ‘adultery.’ Being a part of it is considered being spiritually unfaithful to God, just like it would be if you stepped out on your marriage partner. That’s a serious thing.
“If the Adversary can confuse the physical things of your life—the circumstances and struggles of your life—with life itself, to divert you away and to cause you to walk by sight, he’s winning a victory.
"That’s why Paul says, ‘Don’t give place to the devil.’ In your life, walk in wisdom, walk in light, walk as children of the light. Understand what the battle is and understand you’re a part of it.”
*****
John writes in Revelation 16:13, “And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.”
This is what’s called the ‘unholy trinity’—Satan (the dragon), the Antichrist (the beast) and the false prophet.
The next verse John reports, “For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.”
Jordan says, “Don’t ever think just because something appears to be a supernatural demonstration or miraculous event that it had to by nature be God. There are some demonic devil spirits, spirits of devils, working miracles. You never want to take what appears to be a supernatural event and immediately think because it’s supernatural in appearance that it’s God doing it.
“The only way you’re going to know if it’s God doing it is if you can find verses in the Bible that say God did it. That’s how you authenticate God doing it. Otherwise you won’t know if it’s these guys doing it or not.
*****
“Now, I understand that you go into the average church today, or the average Christian bookstore, or turn on the average Christian TV or radio show, or talk to the average Christian today, the standard for authenticity in the Christ life is your EXPERIENCE.
"There’s a bumper sticker: ‘My God is not dead; I talked to Him this morning’. I used to see that and say, ‘Man, that’s terrible! Every Muslim you know does that! Every Hindu you know talked to 15-20 of his gods this morning!' Your experience is only as good as somebody else’s experience. There’s no authority in that!
“We have a song in our song book, ‘He lives, I know He lives.’ Why? ‘Because He lives in my heart.’ That’s not good enough for some, though. The reason you know Jesus Christ is alive today is there is demonstrable evidence you could prove in a court of law.
*****
“We live in the dispensation of grace where the prophetic program is not being carried on, but that doesn’t mean the way God set up creation isn’t carrying on.
“The first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis, before God created the nation of Israel, God laid out in that 2,000-year period of time the methodology and the patterns by which the course of this world would be executed and carried on.
"In fact, when you start in Genesis 1: 1-2, you see it immediately: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and the And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.’
“When I read that I say, ‘Wait a minute! God created the heaven and the earth and now there’s darkness!’ The Bible says that ‘God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.’ Doesn’t that immediately tell you there’s something out of whack there?!
"Verse 3-4 goes on, ‘And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.’
“There’s a cycle. There’s a contrast between darkness and light. There’s a cycle that makes up a day, and it starts out in the dark and it ends in the light. There’s a cycle going on.
“You get over to Genesis 8 after the Flood and God puts Noah on the earth and gives Noah to understand that the way the world is going to function is there are going to be cycles; summer and winter, seed time and harvest, and so forth.
*****
“And so as you watch the nations of the earth develop, you’re going to see cyclical patterns developing in the nations.
"In Genesis 8-10, God lays down some principles whereby the earth is populated by people and it’s more than just the physical darkness and light making a day, but there’s a cyclical nature in the life of nations. It only makes sense frankly.
"The pendulum swings back and forth that way. If that’s true of you in life, in the generation in which you live in, you can see how it would easily be true of nations. They would be affected by the overall shift of the way life works. Well, those things are laid out in Genesis.
“That’s why Solomon says there’s ‘a time for peace and for war.’ ‘A time to sow and a time to reap.’ Those kinds of things. There are cycles; ‘there’s nothing new under the sun.’ It’s a repetition of things.
“There are three ways to look at life; I call them dots, lines and circles. Some people look at life on the dot. There are whole cultures that do this. They always live in the present.
"If your life is always about 'the now,' that’s not bad in some ways, but in some ways it’s not good because if I take my watch, in 'the now’ it belongs to me, but if I lay it down, then who does it belong to?
“In 'the now,’ now nobody owns it. How do you establish ownership if you only live that way? Cultures that live in ‘the now’ are mainly nomadic. No possession of something unless you’re right there.”
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