It's ALIVE!

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org) explains, “That word 'quick' means alive but it doesn’t mean just alive. It means ALIVE like, ‘Productive ALIVE!’ That’s why it’s translated ‘quick.’ The idea of it being quickness; it’s alive. Really the word means to ‘function in all the parts.’ Efficiently. You’re functioning, you’re in a state of activity, but it’s the idea of being able to respond without delay.

"Can I tell you that God’s Word doesn’t take forever to work in your life. You’ve got a problem and you bring the Word of God into that problem, you know what God’s Word says about that problem? It won’t take 6 weeks, 6 months, 2 years to fix the problem. If it takes that long it’s because you aren’t believing it.

“God’s Word will work quickly; it will function quickly! It’s alive! And it doesn’t hesitate to do its work. It doesn’t hesitate to energize you. It doesn’t hesitate to change your attitude about things. Or to change your actions. You know your actions come from the way you think.

“The Word of God works internally in you because it’s life. And let me say it again, it will work QUICKLY. It will give life without hesitation. It’s powerful. It’s a ‘discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart.’ That’s a quality of God.

“It’s like the Book is. When you talk to that Book, you’re talking to God. Now the reason for that is is because it’s the Word of God. When you read that Book, it reads you. It’s a weird book in that sense.

“Because it’s a Book that literally reaches into your heart and evaluates what’s going on inside of you and He says it’s powerful. There’s a dynamic, living quality and ability to God’s Word.

*****
“Psalm 33 says, [1] Rejoice in the LORD, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the upright.

[2] Praise the LORD with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.
[3] Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.
[4] For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth.
[5] He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.
[6] By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

“I love that ‘play skilfully.’ You know, a lot of folks play with loud noise but He says ‘play skillfully.’ That means be on pitch. Here’s what you’re to sing and praise and be excited about: ‘For the word of the Lord is right.’

“The first criteria of your Bible means to be right. God’s Word is associated with the breath of His mouth with His speaking. And all of the things you see out here were made when God SPOKE some words. You see that?

“Hebrews 11:3 says, ‘Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.’

“There’s Psalm 33:6! You weren’t there, you see. You have to take it by faith. By faith we understand. By the way, He doesn’t even say we know. He says we understand. You understand some things.

*****

"They had this debate the other week between Ham and Nye. You can look at the facts; the bare biology, geology, anthropology. That kind of stuff, you can look at the facts, but by faith you get understanding.
“You find out what’s behind all of this. There’s a wisdom, a knowledge, an understanding by God by which He created those things that you can only know by faith in what He tells you.

“ 'So the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.’ So the physical reality of the universe was made that it was not made out of things that appear! Well, if it’s not made out of something that appears—if it doesn’t appear, what is it?! if it’s not visible, it’s invisible. Wow, that’s smart!

“God used some resources within Himself to create a physical universe. The physical universe was a manifestation of a spiritual reality that resided in God.

“Have you wondered why in the beginning, God created two realms--visible and invisible? Colossians 1:16 says, ‘For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.’

*****

“Have you ever wondered why He says in Genesis 1:1, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ Why'd He do it that way? Why didn’t He just say, ‘In the beginning God created the universe,’ because that’s what He did. Isn’t the earth part of the heaven?

“Why would Paul say ‘visible and invisible’? He’s communicating something to you about what you’re reading here. When you understand what He was doing, what you understand is that the physical were made by things that are not seen. He took something out of the spiritual reality in Himself and created the visible.

“So the physical is going to really be a manifestation of a spiritual life. So, in your Christian life, when we talk about the outward being an expression of the inward, what are we really talking about? Exactly that! That’s how God works in His creation.

*****

“II Timothy 3:16 says, ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.’

“You see that word ‘script’? He’s talking about all the stuff written down. Scripted. It’s given by inspiration of God. You see that word inspiration? God literally took His Spirit and put it into some words and somebody wrote them down. He breathed out some words. He said some things.

“And all Scripture, all the stuff that’s written down here, is given by God, putting His Spirit in some words that somebody then wrote down.

“Inspiration has to do with God putting His Spirit into words that are then written down. What’s written down is given to you by God putting His Spirit into some words. That’s what inspiration is. It’s God giving some words that are then written down.

*****

“Job 32:8 says, ‘But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.’

“I read that just so you can see again that issue about inspiration has to do with there’s a spirit in man and the inspiration gives understanding. There’s a connection between the spirit and inspiration.

“Listen, there’s a spirit in man. Genesis 2:7 says, ‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’

“How do you make man? You form man out of the dust of the earth and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.

“God inbreathed a spirit, the breath of God, and that breath of God has to do with what God’s doing when He writes His Word. Jesus said, ‘Man should not live by breath alone but by every word that proceeds out of the MOUTH of God.’

*****

“II Peter 1:20-21 says, Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
[21] For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

“Notice we are talking here about the Scripture. So, here’s how the Bible comes into existence. God speaks. He breathes out some words. Those words are then put into written form in a book. They’re written down in the Book of God. So what’s written down? The words that came out of the mouth of God.

“It starts out with a spiritual reality. This form that you hold in your hands, you’re talking about how God reveals Himself.

*****

“You ever heard anybody talk about how you can’t have a divine translation? You know how dumb that is?! What do you think it took for God Almighty (God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost)?!

“They’re talking among themselves before they ever thought about creating you. And they’re just talking among themselves. What language do you think they talked in?

“How would you take deity thinking and translate it into a finite language that a human could understand? There’s the real translation problem. Translating it from Greek to English, or from Greek to Swahili, that’s a cinch compared to taking deity words and putting it into human words.

“If God could do that, you don’t worry about translating between your languages. That ain’t no big deal! He could take His thinking and put it into human language and do it in such a way as to say, ‘That’s my Word.’

“I got over worrying about translating years ago when I realized that. God reveals Himself. God speaks His revelation to us. Then He has it inscribed in a book. Then He preserves that book through history. What’s He preserving? The spiritual reality that He spoke preserves it and it now resides in written form!”

Listenin' to what The Man said

LeBron James was asked after the Cavs victory tonight what he considers his best accomplishment in six trips to the NBA Finals. He called the question a “stumper,” and went on to credit, among other things, the “man above” who’s helped him. Hmm, could that be a reference to the “man of sin”?

II Peter 2:9 says, “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.”

“If the angel’s power and their excellence as the top of the creation out there, if that didn’t make them immune to judgment when they sinned . . . ,” explains Jordan. “If the fact that you have the masses of the world out here in rebellion against God; if the numerical masses in rebellion to God doesn’t stop them from getting the judgment of God . . . If Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities of the plain, the great achievements of man, monuments to the ingenuity of man and his creativity, if they can’t in their wickedness . . . If their genius and creativity doesn’t stop the judgment of God, if the whole world being in rebellion doesn’t stop the judgment of God, and if the excellence and the power of the highest of creation doesn’t, well, don’t worry, the judgment’s going to come.

“Satan took a third of the angelic creation with him; the hierarchy of the angelic creation went with Satan and he trafficked his merchandise. Like drug trafficking, he trafficked his drug of false doctrine and the Lie Program and the heavenly host, the angelic creation, took him up on it, and you learn in Revelation that numerically it’s a third of the angelic host that went with him.

“In response to that rebellion God created a judgment that was so severe and so devastating that it stopped the rebellion so it didn’t spread through all of the angelic host. There were some angels that made a choice not to go and some angels who made a choice to go.

“That rebellion was stopped by the creation of hell. Matthew 25:41 says, 41] Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. This is Jesus at the Second Advent talking to the sheep and goat nations and He says this to the goat nations on the left.

“That’s why hell was created. It wasn’t created for man; it was created for Satan and the rebellion of the angels. Man got to be a part of it because he joined that program and he walked the path that leads to that end.

"No man was ever created to go to hell and hell was never created for any man, but you can choose to go there if you want to. The judgment of hell stopped the satanic rebellion in its tracks and they understand that that judgment and torment is their end.”

FYI on 'BFGs'

 In what is being called a “25-year labor of love to bring this book to the big screen,” BFG, a new Walt Disney movie directed by Steven Spielberg, tells the “sweet and sometimes terrifying story of a girl who's taken from her orphanage by a big friendly giant — the titular BFG — who distributes dreams to children and battles the other, evil giants that would rather just eat the kiddos,” according to a glowing film review of this cannabilism-loving animation release.

As I wrote about the other week, giant humans date back to the beginning 

of civilization when angels procreated with women.

“If you’ve ever wondered who built the Great Pyramids, or any of the other pyramids for that matter, or who it is that put the navigational and astrological markings down on Easter Island, etc., Genesis 6:4 says as these angels co-habitated with the daughters of men they had sons born to them that were giants and they were called ‘men of renown’—mighty men, men with enhanced intellectual capacities and so forth and they had tremendous abilities,” explains Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org).

“The one giant, Og the king of Bashan, over in Deuteronomy, had a bedstead 12 feet long. You figure he must of have been 9 to 11 feet tall. He would have made a good NBA star but they get fed long-grain rice to get them like that. These guys were just born that way and there’s a bunch of them. It wasn’t just a few.

“We measure things by standards. In the Bible, when it talks about something being a span, a span is from the end of your fingers to the end of your elbow. That’s considered a span. In the average man or woman, that’s about 18 inches. But if you were 9 feet tall that would be longer than that. It would be more like 24 or 36 inches.

“Since they were the leaders, they would set those standards, so you have to take all that into consideration back there.

*****

“II Peter is referring to Genesis 6 and it’s in connection with the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah. If when Christ comes back it’s going to be as it was in the days of Noe, and the days of Lot, it’s going to be as it was when these angels sinned. There’s going to be some sinning angels on the scene again and what all that means, I’m not sure, but it probably has something to do with the 10 kings that work and function with the Antichrist over there.

“Certainly the Antichrist himself, in the middle of the 70^th week when he’s killed and has a deadly wound that’s healed, he comes back on the scene as ‘the man of sin,’ the personification of man’s rebellion, the ultimate form of the lie, but, in the middle of that week, he becomes ‘the son of perdition.’

“He no longer is a man; he dies and when a man dies, his soul goes into hell. 

He’s resurrected, but from that point on . . . In Revelation 11 he’s called ‘the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.’

“He’s no longer a human; he’s a humanoid. The life force that is using his flesh in his body, and talking and reasoning through him and animating him, is not the soul that was there originally. That soul’s died and gone to hell. It’s a demonic spirit; a devil, and that’s why he’s called the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit.

“In Revelation 9 you learn there’s a king over the bottomless pit and that about that same time the angel goes and opens up the bottomless pit and the great hordes of degenerated demon monstrosities that come out and so the Antichrist becomes the incarnation of the satanic spirit. Not Satan but his cohort.

“As you know, Jesus said Judas Iscariot, the only other man in the Bible ever called ‘the son of perdition,’ was a devil. He was a man but he was also a devil. He had a personal demonic spirit that possessed him and occupied him and controlled him.

“There’s going to be that same kind of demonic activity that was there when Christ came the first time in operation when He comes again.

“You remember in Mark 5 with ‘the maniac of Gadara’ who is cutting himself and being wild and Christ comes by and casts the demons out of him. He says, ‘Who are you?’ and they said, ‘We’re a legion for we are many.’ They begged, ‘Please, don’t cast us out of the land.’

“They don’t say not to cast them out of the man. You see, those demons knew that their function was to corrupt the land of Palestine. They were to hold it as the bastion of the satanic policy of evil against the program of God through the nation Israel. And they had had it since way back in the Book of Judges. That thing goes way back there.

“If you go back to ‘the sons of Belial,’ who’d gone in and taken over the land and possessed it and corrupted it, Israel was told to go in and dispossess those inhabitants of the land.”

(new article tomorrow) 

Sodom-Egypt redux for Jerusalem

II Peter 2 promises, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly . . ."

Jordan explains, “If He didn’t spare them, don’t worry, He isn’t going to spare you. That’s the idea. When he talks about the angels that sinned and the old world in Noah’s day, and Sodom and Gomorrah, those three events are going to be like what takes place in the tribulation.

For example, Revelations 11 says, [1] And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein.
[2] But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

“In the middle of the seventieth week—three-and-a-half years into it and three-and-a-half years to go—‘And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.’

“You got the two witnesses who come; Moses and Elijah come and they begin to testify. Verse 7 says, ‘And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.’

“That’s the Antichrist. Verse 8: ‘And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.’

“Where was Jesus crucified? Jerusalem, in that day, is going to be spiritually Sodom and Egypt. The same systems that ran Egypt and Sodom and Gomorrah are going to run Jerusalem under the reign of the Antichrist.

“That’s why when you go over later, you find that those heads of the Antichrist go all the way back to Egypt. It’s the same system that runs them.

"The same is true of the old world in Noah’s day. Luke 17:26 says, ‘And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.’

“In other words, what was true when God spared not the old world—you go back and see what was going on back there and that’s the way the world’s going to be over in the tribulation.”

*****

CNN’s prime-time special the other night about "Why They Hate Us," meaning Muslims, revealed that the Koran has been misinterpreted regarding the popularly held belief it says jihadists will receive “72 virgins” when they die. Host 
Fareed Zakaria says the Koran’s word for “virgins” actually means “raisins,” and therefore jihadists are blowing themselves up for “72 raisins.”

Just like Muslim men expect 72 virgins to be waiting for them in heaven, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe God has selected 144,000 of them alone to spend eternity in heaven and all the rest of us are relegated to an "earthly hope” of living on a paradise earth.

The question of who are the 144,000 people mentioned in Revelation 7 and 14 is a common one, and if you type it into Google, a top entry incorrectly tries to explain away the number as simply being figurative. It reads:

“The ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ have almost no concept of the distinction between the literal and the figurative language in the Bible. And so, they literalize the number 144,000 in these two contexts, and ridiculously argue that only 144,000 people will gain heaven.

"A Watchtower publication states: ‘. . . the final number of the heavenly church will be 144,000, according to God’s decree’ (Let God Be True, p. 113). The balance of saved humanity, they contend, will live on God’s glorified earth. It should be noted that the term ‘thousand’ is used 19 times in the book of Revelation, but not once is it employed literally in this document.”

*****

Ahh, yes, the standard old convenient trick among supposed Bible “scholars” to pass off on the most inscrutable, other-worldly text of the entire Bible, the Book of Revelation, as a metaphor any idiot should identify as such.

In a Q&A at a Bible conference, a Bible student asked Jordan about the 144,000 and he gave her an easily comprehended literal answer that makes child’s play out of the centuries of misunderstanding about the number. 

Jordan even acknowledged, “You know, there’s lots of things in the Book of Revelation that are different from what we’ve generally been told about it. You take (even the dispensational Bible scholars from the late 1800s-early 1900s), Clarence Larkin and C.I. Scofield, and they start with NO understanding, basically, but went a long way, and we stand on their shoulders and go on.

"If you don’t know more than your forefathers it’s because you haven’t sat on their shoulders and studied. You go out to a Lutheran church and they’re teaching today what Luther taught 500 years ago. Well, geez, don’t you think maybe they would have made a little progress?”

*****

In a nutshell, the 144,000 represents the number of redeemed Believers in Israel at the time of the Second Coming who are made special “mentors” to kick off the inauguration of the New Covenant’s Kingdom program. It has nothing to do with heaven, period!

As I John 2:27 says of these Spirit-taught gurus, “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”

Jordan explains, “There’s going to be a class of them—the 144,000—who compare to the 12 Apostles in Acts and have a supernatural intervention that will give them an anointing where they know the things that they then can go out and teach.

“I John is written for some people in the prophetic program prior to the beginning of the 70^th week. We know from verse 2:18 that the Antichrist hasn’t come yet. Well, it’s his manifestation that begins the 70^th week.

“Now, those (144,000) people, verse 20 says, ‘But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.’ They have been given a foretaste of what the nation is going to get at the end. What that anointing is is Hebrews 8. The arriving of the law in their hearts is the new covenant.

“Hebrews 8:10 says, ‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people . . . for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.’

*****

“That 144,000 is going to be some people who have . . . you know,  when God wanted to start the dispensation of grace there was nobody to start it with so He intervened and saved Paul.

“When He needs to go back and re-inaugurate the kingdom program, He’ll intervene and save the 144,000. The 144,000 are called the servants of God. Revelation 1:1-2 says the book is written to the servants of God. I John is written to some people who are in that category.

“If you look at Hebrew 6:4, you see they got a foretaste of what was coming. They didn’t get it all, but they got a sample of it. Well, that’s what’s going to happen with these people. They’re going to get a ‘first fruits.’

"In fact, in James they’re called ‘the first fruits’—which will come in its fullness at the Second Coming of Christ, the Day of Atonement, when the whole nation is redeemed and born.

“But in a sense the 144,000 is the whole nation too because that will be all the Believers. That will be the redeemed of Israel at that moment. They will be able to teach, and when II Peter says ‘scoffers will say where’s the promise of his coming?’ they’ll say, ‘Well, II Peter 3 explains it!’

“So they’ll have books in Hebrews to Revelation that explain to them why there’s been 2,000 years of delay. The stuff in Romans through Philemon is why. Then there’s the book to the Hebrews: ‘God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.’

“There is a potential in all that . . . it isn’t clear in the Scripture really, but it’s certainly possible that even the 12 Apostles themselves might be resurrected to lead that 144,000! In other words, there is a mechanism in place to put that back into effect.”

(new article tomorrow)

Sufferin' succotash

For Believers, the knowledge of what we have as our inheritance is the motivator to endure the pressures of this present time. As Paul writes, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

“If you understand your sonship position in Christ, and the fact that you’ve been made an heir of God--but not just that, a joint-heir with Christ—you know everything that belongs to Him belongs to you,” says Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). “That’s what’s called ‘co-per stirpes’ in legal jargon. It’s to have equal shares. Everything that Jesus Christ inherited from God the Father, we inherit. Whee, doggy! Occupy your mind with that! Be stabilized by that.

“Paul is saying, ‘Your understanding NOW of your sonship position isn’t just all this pie-in-the-sky-bye- and-bye, that life is yours right now and it affects your walk right now.

“Do you know if you go out and serve the Lord what’s going to happen? ‘Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ You begin to get rebuffs, Satan comes against you, the religious system comes against you, the world system, your friends, your relatives, your neighbors.

“Everybody comes against you and tries to make you feel ashamed and dirty for serving the Lord; for not being under the law system, not being under the legalism.

“He says, ‘Hey, that’s no big deal.’ In the passage here, you begin to suffer pain, you get sick, your old body wears out. What do you begin to do? Are you going to begin to cry and moan and squall? That’s what the average Believer does.

“Listen, God Almighty expects you and me to live in light of who we are! And Paul says when you begin to realize just who you are, he said, ‘For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.’

“That’s a mental-attitude dynamic. I have a mental attitude. He said, ‘Hey, man, I understand some things about who God’s made me in Christ!’

“Paul says, ‘Here’s the way I look at it. When you keep that eternal glory out there in front of yourself, and that privilege of sonship position and joint-heirship with Christ, here’s what it does. It lets you look at this over here and you say, ‘This light affliction is but for a moment. And it works a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ He said, ‘This thing down here it isn’t even worth talking about! Let’s talk about that up there! We don’t want to talk about this and that in the same breath!’

“You listen to me, God Almighty wants tough sons. You write that down, would you please. God Almighty expects us to be tough and He’s fixed it so we can be!

“Hey, folks, it doesn’t mean that when you stump your toe and you go crying to the Lord, it doesn’t mean He’s mad at you. It doesn’t mean He won’t listen. But God has equipped us to be grown-up Believers. Recognize who it is God’s made you, and who you are, and live consistent with that.

“Endure hardness. He didn’t say it’s all going to be lace pants and sunshine. He said, in order to get the job done that I put you here for in that Body of Christ, be tough! Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

“You know what a soldier does? When the ol’ enemy comes along and takes a pot shot at him does he go squalling back to the battalion leader? Why somebody would kick him in the seat of the pants or lock him up on a Section 8. What does he do? He shoots back! You expect a soldier to be able to endure hardness.

“Talk’s cheap, gentlemen. Talk’s cheap. Easy to say that and ain’t so easy to do it and live it and walk in it unless you’re strong in the grace that’s in Christ Jesus.

“How do you do it? Well, here’s an example. Hebrews 12: ‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.’

“You know something, fellows, in your ministry, you don’t have to fear poverty, you don’t have to fear war, you don’t’ have to fear the government, you don’t have to fear the congregation, you don’t have to fear relatives and in-laws. You don’t have to fear but one thing and that’s sin.

“The only thing you need to fear is sin. I hope that will sink into your head. ‘The sin which doth so easily beset us.’ That’s the one that comes along so innocently looking like it might be so easy.

“You can’t run with patience with that sin out there. You see, it messes you up. What you’re doing is you’re messing yourself up.

“If you want to endure the sufferings you do what Christ did. He kept some information in His mind at all times that allowed Him, and helped Him, and motivated Him and empowered Him to endure.

“Romans 8:19: ‘For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.’

“The idea there is it’s like a kid with his head stuck out the window looking for his daddy to come home. He’s eagerly anticipating. In other words, creation out here is waiting for what? Man, it’s waiting for the time the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and we’re put in the heavenly positions up there . . . He comes back to the earth, sets up His kingdom on the earth and then the whole shooting match out here is brought under the headship of Jesus Christ and is liberated.

“The globe out here, the whole universe, is waiting for the time the Lord Jesus Christ comes back and take up His inheritance which, as you recall from Hebrews 1, has to do with universal dominion over the heavens and the earth.”

*****

Watching an introduction session to Grace School of the Bible, Jordan said, “The issue in the ministry is to present every person you minister to as perfect. It’s to bring them to the place of being thoroughly and completely equipped to function as a member of the Body of Christ.

“The Bible’s got a lot to say about growing and becoming established in the faith. Eph. 4:11 says, ‘And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.’

“How else is the Body of Christ going to be built up and edified? It’s through the work of the ministry. How’s it going to be carried on? By perfected saints. It’s the only way.

“The Word saturates you. It produces growth. Ministry comes as the result of spiritual growth. You know what happens when you grow? You begin to move.

“I remember down in Alabama we’d sit out on a hot August evening on an 80-acre field, out front of the farm house we lived in, and my wife and I would just relax out there. It’d be hot and we’d be fanning and trying to get cool in the evening.

“About every third year, Mr. Adams on that farm, he planted corn and I always hated it when he did. You ever heard corn grow? You’d sit out there in the August night heat and hear it pop. It sounded like popcorn going off. It was those stalks expanding. You were literally hearing it grow as it stretched.

“When you grow there’s movement. As you grow spiritually, momentum and movement follows and it increases. The way to get people to go do the work of the ministry is to get them to grow up because that movement and activity and work will be a natural byproduct.

“Romans 15: 14 is my heart’s desire, to be able to say this about myself and about those people to whom and with whom I minister, and if I had a verse I wanted to say about you coming out of the School it would be Romans 15:14.

“We’ve made a commitment to follow Paul. If I want the work of the ministry to be done, I’ve got to produce some perfected saints who the doctrine then goes and motivates to do the work of the ministry.

*****

“Back in the early ’70s I sat down in a little farmhouse out in the Autauga County, Ala. (it wasn’t even a city) out in the middle of nowhere, 17 miles from the nearest town. I’d been through high school and college and been through Bible school, and then I went up in those woods in that territory and started a church and got involved with a local ministry.

“I lived in a house trailer on the farm with my wife. All three of my kids were born there. We had enough money to go to town three times a week. Two of them were on Sunday. One of them was on Monday to buy $10 worth of groceries for the week and any of the rest of the time I wanted to go in I had to hitchhike. I went back and forth many times just that way.

“But I had a lot of time to study. And after about six months of that out there in those woods I realized I didn’t know what in the world I was doing! I said, ‘Lord, I’ve been to school, I’ve learned everything they taught me in school. I read all the time. I’m just taking stuff in and I don’t have any idea what I’m doing! I can tell you what every theologian said that’s been published, and I know what all the Neo-orthodox’s say and Neo-evangelicals; I know what they all say, but I don’t know what to do!’

“And I said, ‘Paul said perfected saints do the work of the ministry. I desperately want to know how to be a perfected saint.’

“That’s when I began to find the design in Paul’s epistles for it. I spent seven years of my life working this stuff through.”

(new article tomorrow)

Three grand essentials

Jesus Christ is the one talking in Isaiah 48:16: “Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.”

“The Lord Jesus Christ is a unique person; He’s the only human who ever existed before He was born into humanity,” says Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). 

“When you were conceived, you didn’t exist before then. Jesus did. He became flesh. He was the one where it’s said, ‘All things were created by Him.’

“It didn’t say He created all other things. It says He created ALL things. The Father didn’t create Him and then Jesus Christ creates everything else. If everything created He created, that excludes Himself. He couldn’t have created Himself.

“The eternal godhead—the Father, Son and Spirit—they each one have someone to love. They love each other. In the trinity, you don’t have God loving Himself. You have God in three persons—each person loving completely, totally, selflessly the other members of the godhead.

“The way the godhead lives is each member lives for the other members of the godhead. Nobody lives for himself; they all live for one another. That’s what love is. It’s much more than an emotion; it’s an action. Love is to value and esteem someone or something that causes you to take action on their behalf.

“You know what pleases God the Father? That in His Son, Jesus would have all preeminence. Colossians 1:19 says, ‘For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.’

“The thing that thrills His heart is for everything to center in His Son. He loves and treasures God the Son so much. He doesn’t live for Himself; He lives for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“I John 5:7 is the greatest, clearest simplest statement on the triune nature of the godhead in the Bible and it’s left out of practically all the bible’s except the KJB. It says, [7] For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

“You go to a church and they’ll have a doctrinal statement on the trinity, listing a bunch of verses to prove it, but this verse won’t be there. Go check it out.

*****

“When you confess Jesus as Lord, who gets the glory out of that? Philippians 2:11 says, ‘And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’

“So when Jesus Christ is exalted, who does He point to? He points to the Father. So He doesn’t live for His own exaltation; He lives for the exaltation of the Father, and the Father lives, not for His glory, but for the exaltation of the Son.

“Jesus tells us in John 16 that, ‘When the Holy Spirit comes, He won’t speak of His own but He’ll speak of  mine because He’ll glorify Me.’ Every member of the godhead lives spontaneously for the benefit of the other members of the godhead.

“Now, that’s divine life. That’s deity life. That is eternal life. Eternal life has to do with living God’s life and it being your life. The way God’s life lives is that at every point, it lives for the benefit of the other.  That, by the way, is why there had to be three members of the godhead.

“That’s why three is the optimum number stamped all over creation because it reflects the godhead. It’s why three’s enough and five wouldn’t help any more.

“You get a 100 people in a room and we all share the same humanity. Our essence of humanity is all the same, but we’re a hundred different people. Well, in the godhead, the three people in the godhead all share the same essence of deity. But they are three distinct people.

“But the life they live, they each live for the other. Now, if there were only one of them, He couldn’t live for anybody else. If there were only two of them, well, they could never know for sure that they were sharing love, because there needs to be a third object that you can choose from that can be valued by you. But once you’ve got the third one, you don’t need four, five, six, seven and eight.

“By example, statistics say families in America have ‘2.1 children.' But when you have that third child, it changes your life as much as five more do. When you’ve got two kids, a four-passenger car works. The booth at McDonald’s works.

“When you have that third child, now there’s five of you. That four-passenger car won’t work until they’re about five years old.

“In the godhead, three allowed each one of them to live for the other equally and to demonstrate, ‘I’m living for you and I’m sharing with you and making that life work.’

“Eternal life isn’t just living forever; eternal life is the quality of the life that you live forever. You live that divine lifestyle; that divine attitude; that divine thinking process and this spontaneous living for one another.”

*****

Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid (columbusbiblechurch.org), who is a lawyer by trade, spoke on this same subject once at a summer family Bible conference. He started by asking, “Is there any time in the gospels where Jesus Christ says, ‘Well, the majority text says this and the best reading is this’?

“What He does is He just quotes the Word of God with the firm conviction that it’s true. He doesn’t appeal to logic, or reason, or anything else. He takes it as a given that it’s available and it’s truthful.

“Well, what God said in Exodus 3, when Moses asked for a description of His name, was, ‘I am that I am.’ There’s no appeal to logic or reason. There’s also no appeal to any creative being. He doesn’t say, ‘You can believe it because so-and-so says that He says, I am that I am, and that’s sufficient.’

“If you think about that, what’s the Old Testament standard of proof? Is one witness enough? Deuteronomy 19:15. What Deuteronomy does is it establishes under the law a principle that two witnesses are required. Notice II Corinthians 13:1.

“Is the two or three witness’s requirement something that only happened in the Old Testament or is it a standard of proof that God operates according to throughout time? It’s throughout time. It applies during the dispensation of grace.

“Numbers 35:30. That simply says that if all you have is one witness you can’t testify. It’s inadequate. It’s incompetent as a matter of proof.

“John 5:31. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Can Jesus Christ lie? No because we saw it’s impossible for God to lie. What he’s saying is even the testimony of a single member of the godhead is insufficient, according to the standard of the scripture.

“Verse 32. Obviously three witnesses is preferable and it’s better than two. What’s interesting to think about is what is the strongest geometric shape? A triangle. When you mount a camera or microphone, what do you mount it on?

“John 1:1. That tells you clear as can be that God has existed in more than one person. Luke 22:42. Some people will say God is one God and He doesn’t really exist in three persons; He just has three different ‘modes,’ or three different manners of operation, but in that verse isn’t it absolutely clear that there’s a conversation between two different people going on? They’re apparently different persons with different wills and they can have an actual conversation between them.

“Matt. 3:16. God has to exist in three persons or what do you do with that passage? Plainly there’s something going on there that involves three different people all doing something different at the very same time.

“The very fact that God has a Son is a refutation and a disproof of the notion that monotheism in one person is the correct view.

*****

 “God can’t be incomplete and He can’t be dependent on His creation. Does God need something from man or a created being? You know why that matters? If God existed in only one person there would be no one for Him to love in the absence of His creation.

“If there’s only one person in the godhead, there is no one else for God to love. Is there anyone else for God to glorify or to have fellowship with? If God existed in only one person than He would be dependent on some created being in order to have a relationship.

“John 3:35. John 14:31. John 17:24. What happened in eternity past is the three persons of the godhead got together and decided what they were going to accomplish throughout time. They decided they were going to use time to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

“John 17:1. The reason the three persons of the godhead exist is to glorify one another. There’s something very shallow about glorifying yourself but there’s nothing shallow at all about glorifying another person.

“Exodus 3:13. There’s a fundamental order to the universe making three the strongest shape. I John 5:7. Look at verse 8. The idea there is there are three that testify. So there are three that bear record in heaven—the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one.

“Let me read to you all of verse 7 in the NIV: ‘For there are three that testify:’

“Listen, people tell you that what the modern versions do is change the ‘thees’ and the ‘thous,’ but that’s not all. When you leave them out in verse 7, then it goes to verse 8 and you think all that’s being talked about in the passage is the water, the blood and the Spirit.

“What verse 7 is really about is it’s saying the three members of the godhead in heaven bear record, testifying to the exact same thing. That ensures that God the Father has satisfied the two or three witness’s standard of proof.”

(new article tomorrow)

God vs. 'That Ole Devil Called Love'

The Bible tells us the Antichrist will use music to rally the masses and you got to figure an ideal playlist would surely include The Beatles’ “All You Need is Love.”

This Hippie Anthem everybody to this day seems to know by heart, at least partially, was first performed on The Beatles’ 

"Our World" project in 1967, recognized as the first worldwide TV special and broadcast in 24 countries.

“The concept of the song was born out of a request to bring a song that was going to be understood by people of all nations,” explains the website Songfacts. “The writing began in late May of 1967, with John and Paul working on separate songs. It was decided that John's ‘All You Need Is Love’ was the better choice because of its easy to understand message of love and peace. The song was easy to play, the words easy to remember and it encompassed the feeling of the world's youth during that period.

“ ‘All You Need Is Love’ was a popular saying in the '60s anti-war movement. The song was released in the middle of the Summer of Love (1967). It was a big part of the vibe.

“John Lennon wrote this as a continuation of the idea he was trying to express in his 1965 song "The Word." John was fascinated by how slogans effect the masses and was trying to capture the same essence as songs like ‘We Shall Overcome.’ He once stated, ‘I like slogans. I like advertising. I love the telly.’ In a 1971 interview about his song ‘Power To The People,’ he was asked if that song was propaganda. He said, ‘Sure. So was ‘All You Need Is Love.' I'm a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change."

*****

The website goes on to inform that George Harrison referenced the song in his lyrics to the 1981 song "All Those Years Ago" with the line, "But you point the way to the truth when you say 'All you need is love.'" The song was a tribute to John Lennon following his murder in 1980.

Once, when Lennon’s son Sean was asked to name his favorite lyric of his dad’s music, he answered: "My list of favorite things changes from day to day. I like when my dad said: 

'There's nothing you can know that isn't known/ Nothing you can see that isn't shown/ Nowhere you can go that isn't where you're meant to be.' It seems to be a good representation of the sort of enlightenment that came out of the '60s."

*****

While New Agers borrow Eastern religions’ belief that "all is One" and that love is just a different form of the One essence in the universe that everyone and everything, including God, is a part of, the Bible makes it clear that “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” (I John 4:16)

In his Sunday morning radio show yesterday on Chicago’s WYLL 1160, Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org) relayed how he had recently heard a popular preacher-personality incorrectly tell his audience, “God is love, so where love is, God is.”

Jordan said, “Listen, the verse doesn’t say love is God; it says, ‘God is love.’ Just because somebody loves somebody doesn’t make them God and doesn’t mean God is there. God is only where His people are.”

*****

In defining God’s love as it is in truth, Jordan continued, “God’s love will never let you down; it’s not going to disappoint you. You can’t go so far away where you can’t find God’s love. God’s love will never let you go; it’s not going to abandon you. You can’t sin far enough, you can’t fight hard enough. God’s love will hold you.

“God’s love won’t let you go, but it also won’t let you off. Sometime people say, ‘Well, you know, love covers a multitude of sins, so let’s just sweep it under the rug.’ God doesn’t do that. The Bible says, ‘Open rebuke is better than secret love,’ and God’s love will honestly, squarely, justly, lovingly deal with your failure. In other words, it will deal with the problems.

“Now, the uniqueness of the God of the Bible is that ‘God is love’ and that’s not true of ANY other religion on the face of the earth. If you look at other religions, almost all of their gods are angry. If you ask a Muslim about their god, they’ll tell you he’s merciful, but they’ll never tell you he’s a loving god.

“Only the God of the Bible can identify Himself as a God who is a God of love, and the reason for that has to do with the godhead in the Bible being described as a trinity, meaning one god in three persons. That means there’s one essence and being of humanity and yet different individuals who possess humanity.

“Jesus Christ is the manifest person of the godhead; He’s the spokesman for the godhead. He’s the member of the godhead through whom God speaks and reveals Himself.

"If you’re ever going to know the God of heaven, the God of the Bible, the Creator of the universe, you’re going to know Him through His revelation of Himself in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

*****

As Jordan explained, it’s crucial to understand that God would not truly be a God of love if there were only one person in the godhead, "because then who’s He going to love?!

"There would only be Himself to love. That would not be a God of love you could trust, because the only person He has to love is Himself.

“You say, ‘Well, He has a creation to love.’ No, no. You’re saying He’s dependant on having a creation in order to love, so love wouldn’t be a part of His essence, it would be something He learned to do after He created man or creation—angels, man, you.

"The God of the Bible says, ‘I don’t need anybody; I am who I am. I AM love.’ "

Being there when He brings down The House

In giving the condition of the earth after the day of God’s wrath, Jeremiah 4 quotes Genesis 1:2 about how it was ‘without form, and void.’ The earth, where the elements have melted and been dissolved, will be reformed by God into a NEW heaven and NEW earth.

“God’s original purpose was to live here on this planet, and while it’s been postponed because of the attempts of the Adversary to usurp it, He’s going to fulfill it one day in the future,” says Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org).

“Israel understood that God created the earth to be a place where He was going to bring down His house, His city, His palace, out of the third heaven and place it on the earth. Psalm 104 talks about Him laying the beams of His chambers.

“Abraham knew that God’s purpose in forming that seed of the woman, that became the seed of Abraham that became the seed of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, the nation Israel--that His purpose was to create a nation of people who would facilitate—they would have this city come down.

“You see it in Revelation 21-22; New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and He sits right there on that spot He originally planned for it to be.

“They understood all that back then, and when they read about a kingdom of heaven, they didn’t think about dying and going to heaven. Nobody prior to the epistles of Paul thought about dying and going to heaven.

*****

“On the first day of creation, God says, ‘Let there be light.’ The deep was dark, so He put light in it so the angels could see what He was doing. Then He divides the water. He puts a firmament, an open place, in the midst of the water. In that firmament He’s going to put stars and planets and the moon and so forth, and the earth is in that open place. That’s the second heaven.

“Then He comes down to the earth and makes another firmament. Genesis 1:20 says, ‘And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.’

“You’ve got this space out there that we call ‘outer space,’ but He calls ‘the firmament’ back in verses 6-8. Then in verse 9 He comes to down to the earth and begins to make the dry land to appear.

“You go over to the psalms and it talks about how He formed the low places and high places. In verse 20 He puts in some birds that can fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. In other words, there’s a part of that firmament that’s open and accessible to the creatures He’s creating.

“If there’s a part of it that’s open, what does that imply? There must be a part that is closed. If you get more than 300 miles straight up from the earth, you know what happens to you? Well, long before you got there, you couldn’t breathe. You begin to feel a little funny and your cells begin to explode because you lost the necessary atmospheric pressure. There’s a part of this firmament that’s open to you, that’s accessible and made for you to live in, but then there’s a part that isn’t.

“They understood that the part of the firmament open to them was right there on the earth and the fowls flew up there in it, ‘But we don’t go out yonder,’ and they never thought about it.

“In fact, Psalm 115 says the earth is man’s and the heavens up there have been closed to man. He doesn’t belong there. They never thought about dying and going to heaven.

“You go to Hebrews 3 and you understand that what God’s talking about here isn’t like Romans 5 or 8, or Ephesians 1. It’s not like salvation for you. It’s not like Philippians 1:6: ‘Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.’

“It’s not like we who are the members of the Body of Christ and ‘members in particular.’ It’s, ‘Boy, if we keep going, we’re going to get in that kingdom over there and partake of that heavenly hope.’

“Why? Because that’s what their hope was; it was being there when that city comes down! That’s what the Promise is all about; it’s God being Emmanuel dwelling with us and ‘we’re marching toward Zion,’ as the song says.

*****

“Hebrews 6: 1-4 is probably one of THE most thorny passages on the doctrine of eternal security for anybody who either believes or doesn’t believe in it. Verse 4 says, ‘For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost.’

“About everything you’ll ever read about those verses, written by people who believe in eternal security, will tell you those people who did all that stuff listed (in Hebrews 6) weren’t really saved.

“They say, ‘Well, they took but they didn’t really eat.’ How do you partake if you don’t really eat? But when you read those things, what are you really reading about? Aren’t you reading about what happened in the early part of the Book of Acts?

“They were enlightened, the Holy Spirit came, they tasted of the heavenly gift, they got a foretaste of the new covenant blessings God had for Israel. They got a foretaste of the Word of God and what God was going to do for them.

“They got a foretaste of the powers of the world to come, the healing, the casting out of demons, the miraculous signs and wonders. They got a foretaste of all of that! And if Israel, who had all of that witness in their midst, turned away from it, he says it’s impossible to ‘renew them again unto repentance.’

“He’s talking about when the nation has this little believing remnant, and if you don’t come and partake in this, the only thing left for you is the fire of the tribulation and the wrath of God and that’s why He says in verses 7-8, ‘For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:
[8] But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.’ ”

*****

“When Job talks about how the ‘pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof,’ a pillar is a structure that holds a multi-level building. That’s why in Amos 8:6 he talks about God building His stories in the heavens. The Sears Tower has over 100 stories, we say.

“The heavens are like a building and God uses this building terminology to describe the layers of authority and realms of activity he’s placed out there and they’re built on pillars.

“Now, when Paul talks about how Jesus Christ will ‘reconcile all things unto himself, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven,' he’s not talking about stars and nebula (the physical creation). He tells you he’s talking about thrones and dominions. Well, those are positions of government. Where are they located? In heaven and in earth.

“Isn’t it interesting  that in Genesis 1, Moses didn’t say, ‘God created the universe.' He says, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ He didn’t just create the physical universe; He created a government to run that physical universe. Now, if you’ve got a government, what do you need? You need some creatures to be in the government.

“What He does is He populates the heaven and the earth with positions of government; then creatures to be in them. Now, the original creatures in those positions were angels, and races of angels—statuses of angels.

“And God’s original intention was that all the positions of government in heaven, and all the positions in the earth, would focus on Jesus Christ and promote His will and His glory. Because why were they created? They were ‘created by him, and for him.’ (Col. 1:16)

“Now, we know something happened. There’s a fellow that He created called Lucifer. What Lucifer does is he says, ‘You know, God’s got this plan. It’s called ‘truth’ and it’s a wise plan, but I got a better plan,’ and Satan develops what Daniel 10 calls a ‘policy.’ It’s called ‘the lie’ by God.

“If you want to usurp a position of governmental authority, what do you do? You get the folks in it to follow you and not the other guy, right? So Lucifer did that. And you have the fallen angels.

“In response, God says, ‘I’ll tell you what, I got a plan. I’m not going to tell anybody about it, but I got a way to fix this. Because I got a plan where I’m going to come and do for man what he couldn’t do for himself,  and I’m going to do it by way of a cross—something nobody ever thought about doing.’

“God said, ‘I’m going to become the creature and I’m going to pay for their sins, and I’m going to redeem them, and I’m going to reconcile them through the blood of that Cross.’ You’d have never thought of doing that as long as you live and Satan never would have either!

“Ezekiel 28 says of Lucifer, ‘He was so wise there was no secret you could keep from him.’ God says, ‘Well, I’ll just show you how dumb he is; I’ll keep a secret he won’t figure out.’

“ ‘He won’t figure out that somebody could love the unlovely so much that they would give their total self for him. Because Satan’s whole wisdom was built on taking and ‘making me No. 1.’

“That’s the reason ‘I’ is the middle letter of the word sin, pride and Lucifer. It’s the deification of the creature. Romans 1:25 says that’s the basis of the lie program. ‘I’ is also the middle of that word ‘lie,’ okay?

“So again, God says, ‘I’ll come and do for man what he can’t do for himself.’ And He does that. He had put man on the earth and said, ‘Adam, go win the earth back; subdue it,’ but how good does Adam do? He doesn’t even last a week. He joins the enemy.

“God says, ‘Okay, I’ll do for man what he can’t do for himself. I’ll be the seed of the woman; the seed of the woman become the seed of Abraham, becomes the seed of David, becomes the seed of Christ.’ He goes to Calvary and He dies and He pays for the sin of the world. Nobody even knew that but God did!

“As we know, Christ then ascends up into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father up there and tells everyone, ‘The wrath’s coming.’ He says, ‘I’m going to do all this,’ and Satan says, ‘You can’t; I got you covered. I’ve got you defeated. You can’t. They’re in sin; they’re my possession.’ Jesus Christ says, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, I’m going to do it.’ Isaiah 49. The devil says, ‘No you can’t.’

“And then God reveals the secret about how, ‘Yes, I can because I got a plan. Satan, you did something (by crucifying Christ on the Cross) that’s going to let me do it and you didn’t even know you were doing it! Why?  Because you’re not as smart as I am.’ It ain’t arrogance if you can do it. There’s an old saying: ‘It ain’t brag if you can do it.’ God did it!

*****

Jordan concludes, “Now, in the dispensation of the fullness of time what’s His purpose? This is how He got there. His purpose is that He’d gather all things in heaven and in earth under one head—Jesus Christ. The essence of Bible Christianity is that God has one grand purpose--to glorify himself in Jesus Christ and to do it in two spheres—the heaven and the earth.

“Two agencies to accomplish one purpose: Israel in the earth and members of the Body of Christ in the heavens. And that’s why it says He’s ‘blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.’

“You need to understand the reason He’s forming the Body of Christ is to accomplish that eternal purpose of making Jesus Christ the head of all things. Without the Body, He could be the head of the earth but not the heavens.

“As Ephesians 1:11 says, ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.’

“This is called ‘the counsel of his will.’ Understand that what that means is you have become, by virtue of being in Jesus Christ, a part of that plan. God has this great cosmic plan for His Son. To be the head of all things and He made you a part of it.

“You’re a part of something big, folks. Don’t stoop along the way to be something else. That’s the mystery of His will. He’s given it to you to know because He’s made you a part of it and that’s who you really are, and that’s why He made you who you really are.”