Hillary's BFFs

How fitting that Hillary Clinton, following her prime-time DNC nominee speech, would go on to spend the wee hours of this morning partying it up with Lady Gaga.

“With no press or photographers - except her own - allowed at the event, Clinton is likely to have let her hair down as she enjoyed Gaga's performance, as well as early performances by Lenny Kravitz and DJ Jazzy Jeff,” reports today's London Daily Mail. “A total of 7,500 delegates and special guests attended the late-night affair, which Philly.com reported was on a media blackout at the request of Gaga.”

Lady Gaga, a self-proclaimed witch who once declared herself “Queen of the Universe” under oath during a litigation trial, is famous for lyrics such as those in her hit song Judas:

“Whoa whoa I'm in love with Juda-as, Juda-as

In the most Biblical sense, I am beyond repentance
Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind
But in the cultural sense
I just speak in future tense
Judas kiss me if offenced,
Or wear an ear condom next time

I wanna love you, but something's pulling me away from you
Jesus is my virtue and Judas is the demon I cling to I cling to.”

*****

Of course, headlining the DNC’s singing talent last evening in Philly was Katy Perry, famous for her 2015 Super Bowl ode to Satan with her hit "Dark Horse,” in which she sings: “It’s in the palm of your hand now, baby

It’s a yes or a no, no maybe
So just be sure
Before you give it all to me
All to me
Give it all to me . . . (Juicy J)
She’s a beast
I call her Karma
She’ll eat your heart out
Like Jeffrey Dahmer.”

*****

None of this should come as any surprise to anyone familiar with the deep familial ties the Clintons and Obamas have with A-lister Illuminati elites.

Just this past spring, for example, Beyonce and Jay Z (the royal couple of the Aleister Crowley/Baphomet worshipping crowd ) joined the First Family at the White House for President Obama’s last Easter Egg Roll. This coveted invitation to hang out on the White House lawn with all the kiddies came only weeks before the release of Beyonce’s blockbuster album “Lemonade,” in which she sings, “I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with the pages of the Holy Book.”

******

Ben Carson gets credit for bringing out into the public arena Hillary’s connections, as much as the mainstream media ignored it, during his speech last week at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Carson informed the Cleveland crowd, "Now, one of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors was Saul Alinsky. And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone she greatly admired and let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky . . .

"He wrote a (1971) book called Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. It acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom. Now think about that. ….So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer? Think about that."

In an article examining Carson’s claims, the website Politifact confirms that Alinsky, the Chicago-based community organizer who also deeply influenced Obama, “did indeed include an opening blurb on Lucifer, attributed to Alinsky himself.”

The epigraph reads, "Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

*****

Here’s an excerpt from an interview Alinsky once did with Playboy magazine:

ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not "Is there life after death?" but "Is there life after birth?" I don't know whether there's anything after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.

PLAYBOY: Why them?

ALINSKY: They're my kind of people.

*****

“The kingdom of darkness extends all the way out through creation,” said Richard Jordan in a Sunday morning sermon this month examining the satanic worship of the pagans/Gentiles during the time period the Israelites were brought out of Egypt.

“When Moses writes Genesis, he’s writing to these Israelis who’ve come out of Egypt and are in the wilderness. He writes the book to explain to them who they are, where they came from and how they got in the mess they’re in.

“Remember, they’re going to go in the land of Canaan, dispossessing all the Gentiles in the land, throwing them out and getting rid of all their stuff before establishing God’s kingdom.

“Well, who are these Gentiles? Where did all that stuff they were doing come from? They were doing abominable things. Read Leviticus 18 and 20 and you’ll say, ‘Man, what kind of culture was that?!’

“That’s the culture they evolved into. That’s what darkness produces in society. In Leviticus 18 is all the sexual perversion. Moses said, ‘You see all that stuff? Stay away from it!’ Why would he tell them that? Well, why do you think the largest purveyor of information on the internet today is pornography?

“That stuff began to permeate Israel. In Deuteronomy, they’ve spent 40 years facing some of this stuff and it’s already begun to seep in and be embraced by the Israelis.

“Moses warns them in Deuteronomy 4:19-20, ‘And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.
[20] But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day.’

*****

“Why are the sun, moon and stars there? You go back to Genesis 1 and you understand why. They’re to divide the light from the darkness. They’re to rule. They’re for signs. How they know that? Moses told them. He said, ‘When God created things, here’s what He did and here’s WHY He did it.’

“Do you see what the Gentiles were up to? They look at that stuff in the heavens and worship and serve them. Now we call that idolatry. That’s what the pagans were doing.

“They weren’t just worshipping the physical sun, moon and stars, they were worshipping the powers associated with them. The rulership, the message, the sign language, the teaching.

“But what did Job say about the heavens? Is that a good place to get your message? Is that a good thing to worship? Is that a good thing to serve?

“By the way, when he says worship, there’s a worship in connection with the powers—the sun, moon, heavens. When you worship something, you’re worshipping the invisible powers that these bodies were just the signs and symbols of.

“That’s why in religion, God said, ‘Thou shalt have no graven images.’ The image to represent that power . . . because worshiping the image, you’re really worshipping where the image came from. The image is just an expression of a thinking process. There’s spiritual force behind the making of that image and then they serve them. It always has a religio-political acts of service connected with this worship

*****

“Jesus Christ says in John 3:18-19, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
[19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’

“There’s deeds that light produces and there’s deeds that darkness produces that are worshipped and served. John 3:21 says, ‘But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.’

“The love of darkness and the love of the works of darkness, that lifestyle produced by their inner appetites, their inner worship (the word ‘worship’ means to value) . . . what is it that you value inside in your thinking process?

“There’s a value system taught by darkness and those values produce works; deeds that feed your appetites. It’s all designed to 'sear your conscience.'

“Even lost people have a conscience, as Romans 2 says. God wrote His law in their conscience and that’s why anyone anywhere, when they start out know, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

“Anyone anywhere knows, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Anyone anywhere knows, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ That’s why they say all the religions of the world have the same value system. No, they don’t because they abandon what God says. . .”

(new article tomorrow)

Dems plagiarize 'UNITY!' from God

Over and over at the Democratic National Convention, speakers plead for “UNITY!” and that’s precisely their goal as so-called “progressives”: Global Unity, taken right out of all their New Age bibles, handbooks, manifestos, etc.

While “the children of this world” become more and more hyper-focused on recreating a Tower of Babel life for this earth, the Body of Christ is steadily gaining in ranks for its part in a new kind of humanity that will one day carry on the government of the heavens and  reign over the universe with Jesus Christ as Commander-in-Chief.

As the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:13, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “Jesus Christ becomes the ‘first born from the dead’ so He might be the head of the Body, having preeminence not just in the earth, but in the heavenly places. So God’s got this one great plan to glorify Himself in two realms—the heaven and the earth.

“When God says He’s going to gather them together in one, everything’s going to think like the head thinks. You know how you ‘get together.’ You all speak the same thing, think the same thing. The Body of Christ is the great example. As Paul says, 'Many members, yet but one body.' We have all this diversity, but we work together as one body.

“God’s purpose is to take His creation and turn it into a living manifestation of how He thinks, how He operates, how He responds, and He’s going to put it all under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, the Lord’s going to be the brains of the outfit of course because He’s the head.

“He’ll be located in Planet Earth as the command center, but all through the universe, for Him to think it will be for you to do it. For Him to will it will be for you to accomplish it. And He’ll have this whole universe gathered together as one functioning unit.

“Sometime people say, ‘Well, aren’t we going to be on the earth when Jesus comes, because the Bible says ‘so shall we ever be with the Lord?' Have you ever thought about how dumb that is?

“How close to Him physically do you have to be to be with Him? How many members of the Body of Christ are there in 2,000 years? Let’s take a ridiculously low number and say there’s a million. Have you ever seen a million people?

“I was at the top of the Sears Tower when they were having a rally in Grant Park, after one of the Chicago Bulls championship wins, and we looked down and saw 2 million people. Those 2 million people were trying to look at Michael Jordan and you know, even with binoculars, he would be so tiny.

“You say, ‘We were with them,’ but when I think about being with somebody, I think about being able to reach out and shake their hand. You can be with somebody and not see them because you’re in a place like Grant Park.

“I’m in Chicago, my wife’s got family down in Alabama; are we with them? Well, we’re in the United States with them. You see, proximity isn’t the issue. When he says, ‘We’ll be with the Lord,’ it’s not talking about nearness, because it will be impossible for everybody to be near Him.

“Have you ever heard Jesus say, ‘If you’re not for me you’re against me?’ If you’re not with me you’re against me. What does that mean? If I’m with somebody, I’m in agreement with them. I’m thinking like they’re thinking. I’m with you; I’ve got you. That’s the way that word is used.

“When it says ‘so shall we ever be with the Lord,’ you’re never going to have any problem agreeing with the Lord, disagreeing with the Lord. You’re always going to be ONE with Him. That’s exciting.”

A love that just keeps growing on and on

“How do you know who God the Father is? How are you going to have God revealed to you? It’s going to be by God the Son.

“By the way, when he says ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’ (John 1:18)

“That means every time God appeared in the Old Testament, what we call ‘theophane,’ who was it? It wasn’t the Father, it was the Son because nobody’s ever seen the Father, but there are times in the Old Testament when people did see God. Moses, for example. But who was he seeing? He was seeing God the Son. Why? Because God the Son is the revealer. He’s the Word. He’s the one who communicates to us from the godhead.

“Someone has said the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who brings God out from behind the curtain. That’s what that word ‘exegete' means. It means you take it out from obscurity and put them on stage and put the light on them. And that’s what the Lord Jesus Christ does.

“There’s not any religion on the face of the earth that does or ever has had anybody like the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s not a philosophy, or a religion, or a system of economics, or politics, or academia, that has anything like Him. No religion.

“One of the fascinating things about these things is people talk about, ‘How do you know something is true?’ There are a lot of evidences that are not just direct evidences but just common-sense evidences that come along.

“I was reading a book where the guy made the point, ‘Where’s anybody that ever sang, ‘Oh, how I love Buddha, O how I love Buddha’?’ Nobody sings, “Allah paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; Allah washed it white as snow.’

“You know there are thousands of songs written about one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Love songs. You know, that’s the kind of songs people write. I mean, hillbilly songs, rock songs, contemporary songs—people write love songs. They write about what they love, they value, they esteem, what captures their heart.

“John 20 says, ‘Many other signs did Jesus.’ Last thing in John he says, ‘If all the books could be written about the things that Jesus Christ did, the world couldn’t hold them.’ So the songwriter says, ‘Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.’

“How in the world do you explain the fact that no religion in the world has anybody writing love songs about their religion, how much it’s done for them, and along her comes the Lord Jesus Christ?! . . . Psalm 69 says ‘He’s going to be the song of drunkards.’ Even drunks write songs about Him!

“You get out into world . . . You remember the lyrics, ‘Chicago, Chicago, the only town Billy Sunday could not shut down.’ You know that line? Why? They’re bragging about the fact Billy Sunday went all over America preaching the gospel and getting people saved . . .

“You know, in northwest Alabama there’s a little town called Reform. The Billy Sunday of the South was a man named Sam Jones. He went all over the southern part of the U.S. doing what Billy Sunday did in the Midwest and Northeast. He went into that town, and they were a mecca of gambling and the liquor trade and Jones went into that little town and preached the gospel for about three months and people got saved left and right, and the newspaper accounts of it are that by the time he got through with that revival meeting, if you wanted to cuss, you did it under your breath. All the liquor establishments were closed down. All the bars were closed down. All the gambling houses were closed down and the city council voted to change the name of the town to Reform!

“What is that? That’s the power of a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 20:28 says, ‘Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.’

“Who was it on the Cross shedding His blood? The Lord Jesus Christ. But whose blood was that? Who really was that on the Cross? It was God. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. And it was God’s blood that flowed through Emmanuel’s veins ‘and sinners plunged beneath the flood lose all their guilty stain.’

“You just keep on and on . . . you know just about everything you can think of you can think of a gospel song or hymn that takes that experience in life and relates it to a love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the one who brings God into every aspect and facet and experience of our life.

“By the way, He does it because of the Cross. I John 4:7 is a fascinating verse of Scripture: ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.’

“If you’re going to love people, you’re going to have to know God. And if you don’t know God, you’re not going to know how to love people.
(new article tomorrow)

Sealed for Thy courts above

If ever there was a passage of Scripture that succinctly reveals how eternal salvation is brought into a person's life, Ephesians 1:13-14 is it:

[13] In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,
[14] Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

“The Holy Spirit comes in to seal you, seals the deal, we would say, when you believed, and you believed when you heard the Word of truth,” explained Jordan on his evening radio show this past Tuesday.

“God takes over and seals you with His Spirit. Notice it’s not by His Spirit; it’s WITH His Spirit. The moment you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, relying exclusively on Him to be the Savior He died and rose again for you to be, God goes into action and seals you.

“Now, when He seals you WITH His Spirit, the personal residency of the Spirit of God in your life is the seal; it’s the guarantee. He says ‘that seal which is the earnest of our inheritance.’ It’s the down payment; it’s the first installment of the eternal glory that you’ll have forever.

“A seal in the Bible is a sign of a done deal. The thing is accomplished. It’s a sign of ownership. II Timothy 2:19 says, [19] Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

“You see, the seal tells you that He knows you. You’re His so you have the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession. It also says you should depart from iniquity. Now that’s our part. We should live in the identity God gives us.

“So Ephesians 4:30 says, [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

“Your security isn’t in what you do; it’s in who Jesus Christ is. Your security is the fact you’re sealed WITH the resident agency of the Holy Spirit. That’s a secure seal.

“You remember when they threw Daniel in the lion’s den and they sealed the opening? The secured it. Revelation 20 says when they put Satan in the bottomless pit, they put a seal on it. The seal is an issue of security, but that security doesn’t produce carelessness; it produces appreciation. Because of who we are we should live in line with and in cooperation with what the Spirit of God’s doing in our life. That’s the sum total of what the Christian life is all about."

Tattoos, piercings, nakedness and maniac of Gadara

The 'maniac of Gadara' had abandoned his home and gone to dwell among the places that made him feel comfortable; the tombs. Luke 8:27 says that when Jesus Christ “went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.”

“He doesn’t have on any clothes; I like that one,” said Richard Jordan in his Sunday morning sermon examining darkness vs. light. “The only creature God made that He didn’t give their own clothing to was man. The reason He did that is because He made man in His image. He gave Adam and Eve HIS clothing; clothing of light. And when they sinned, that light left and they were naked. The demonism, the doctrines of devils, had completely taken away any ability this man had to live comfortably with God’s provision.

“Just so you understand why he does what he does—he didn’t just make up all this stuff out of nowhere. God says in Isaiah 65, [2] I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
[3] A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick;
[4] Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
[5] Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.

“You know what that is? That’s Baal worship. What’s this guy doing? He’s the picture of Israel captured by the Baal worship. Every time they tried to subdue him with bonds and put bands on him--put the law on him, put the rules on him--what does he do? He throws them off! Because you in your ability, in the strength of the law, the strength of your performance, you can’t stop this stuff. All the things they would do humanly speaking to rescue him from the captivity didn’t work.

*****

“Mark 5:5 says of the maniac, ‘And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.’ Write down by that verse II Kings 15:4: ‘Save that the high places were not removed: the people sacrificed and burnt incense still on the high places.’

“That’s what Baal worship worships. In Genesis 11, they’re going to build a tower. They go up and worship on the high mountains and the high places. Why? They’re worshipping ‘the host of heaven.’ 

“That’s why God told Israel, ‘Don’t have the groves; don’t worship on the high places.’ Go around town today and see all the churches with steeples on them. That’s just another form of the Tower of Babel.

“The man was in the mountains because that’s where the Baal worshippers were worshipping. Jeremiah 13:16 says, ‘Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness.’

“There’s truth and then there’s the darkness worshipping the captivity that produces death. So the guy’s up there on the dark mountain worshipping and he’s in the tomb, crying and cutting himself with stones.

“He’s crying. Boo-hoo. Self-pity, manipulate everything in life to your own ends. Religion can make you guilty and full of shame. It can’t relieve it, so he’s crying; that depressed expression of the spirit of bondage, seeking satisfaction, seeking to justify himself by whining about it.

*****

“ ‘Cutting himself’—boy, we could spend a whole study on that. Bloodletting is the marks and tattoos of Baal worship.

“All through your Bible you find Baal worship is associated with marking your body, painting on your body and cutting it. Listen to me, tattoos--you ought to write down Leviticus 19:28 when God told Israel, 'Don’t be cutting on your body, don’t be printing things on your body!'

“You might think it’s just a nice little flower and it looks good and everybody else has got one and ‘I’ll put it on my ankle so everybody knows I’m cool.’ You’re blind to the reality of what it really is. Might not mean anything to you but it does mean something. And if your ignorance level has you not knowing what it means . . .

“I saw a guy recently in a restaurant who came in and had these big-old holes in his lobes; it looked like he had washers in his ears. I said to him, ‘Oh, I see you’re a worshipper of--and I just made up a name--Shalalwa.’ He said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘Well, you got her sign in your ear.’

“You know why people pierce their ears in the Bible? Men did it. It’s a sign of submission. Go back and read Exodus 21, Deuteronomy 15. It’s a sign of being a slave. You say, ‘Well, my wife’s got her ears pierced.’ I’m not talking about what you dumb Americans do who have no idea what’s going on. Listen, if you don’t understand from God’s Word what it is . . .

“You know why that stuff didn’t exist in our country until the last 15-20 years? Why the only place people got tattoos was down on Skid Row, or if you were drunk off in some Asian country in the Navy and got up the next day and didn’t even know you had it, or you’re in prison or something?

“That’s because there was a culture that had enough light to push that darkness out, and when you see that coming into vogue . . . I’m just saying there’s things in life that are manifestations of the darkness, and when you see it productive in a culture, you’re seeing the emblems of serving what you worship. That’s what this dude at Gadara’s doing. And the cutting himself—he’s seeking atonement.

“You go back to Elijah in Carmel in I Kings 18 and the prophets of Baal were cutting themselves; flagellation. You see that in religion today. People beating themselves. You see the Opus Dei with the apparatus they put on their leg to cut themselves and the masochism with that. The life of the flesh is where? In the blood.

“There’s an epidemic today of young people cutting themselves. What is that? That’s what this is. It’s trying to control your own redemption and atone for your own sin and make it up for yourself. It’s trying to inoculate yourself from your sin. It’s trying to have an artificial identity where you’re able to tolerate the pain and you can show your strength. It’s trying to gain on your own all the things that you could have in Christ as a free gift.

“That bloodletting, marking your body; this guy’s doing every bit of that.  He was a demonstration of the captivity that the nation; the horror of great darkness that the world resides in that now had taken over Israel. My point to you is that’s a description of the horror that comes into your life and into your culture when darkness takes over, and it engulfed Israel.

*****

“Mark 5:6: ‘But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him.’ I love that! What?! That’s ecumenicalism. They’ll put Jesus in the crowd with everybody else; just leave everybody else there. Syncretism. Israel did that. In II Kings 17, they worshipped Baal and served the Lord.

“This guy thinks he can do that. Verse 7: ‘And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.’

“He knows who Jesus is but it’s just, ‘What have I got to do with you?!’ He’s saying, ‘Hey dude, you’re in the wrong neighborhood! You don’t belong here!’ “He’s saying, ‘Leave me alone!’ This dude’s not looking for deliverance. He’s saying, ‘You showed up—I don’t want what you’re offering!’

“Verse 8: ‘For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.’ So Jesus throws the demon out. Now notice what happens verse 15: ‘And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.’

“You know what you look like when you don’t have the horror of great darkness controlling you? Sitting; you’ve got peace, inner tranquility and order in life. The inability to think rationally is gone, replaced by truth.

“Notice it says in verse 17, ‘And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.’ They didn’t like to have Jesus Christ around.

“The man (formerly the maniac of Gadara), on the other hand, wants to go with Jesus. In verse 18, it says, ‘And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.’

“You know what happens when you get into the light? You want to be in the light. You can do a lot of things with that verse. When you’re in the light you don’t have to be talked into coming to Bible study, or being in the Book, or having an appetite for God’s Word and to want to pray and talk to God about the details of your life, getting involved in the ministry.

“Verse 19: ‘Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.’

“I love that. Here’s a guy who’d made his home living among the tombs and Jesus says, ‘Go home to thy friends and tell them.’ He’s saying, ‘Go get with the program now, boy. Go home and tell and show what great things the Lord’s done.’ I read that and say, ‘Boy, that’s a great conclusion! Living in the horror of great darkness is not the necessary end of our life. It wasn’t the necessary end of Israel. They had the opportunity to choose life.’ ”

(new article tomorrow)

Zombie lifestyles in Bible

Everything people involve themselves with out in the world comes from a spiritual source, as noted in yesterday’s blog post. Today’s insatiable love affair with all things zombie--zombie graveyards, zombie invasions, zombie apocalypses, etc.—“follows a religious pattern based on Christian ideas of an end-times war and messiah,” according to Wikipedia. Of course, explanations can easily be found in the King James Bible.

Jeremiah 8, for one great example, reveals, [1] At that time, saith the LORD, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves:
[2] And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.
[3] And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the LORD of hosts.

“These people recognize there’s a spiritual being behind the symbols they’re worshipping, and they’re doing it in a graveyard, by the way,” explains Richard Jordan.

“Zephaniah 1 talks about ‘them that worship the host of heaven upon the housetops.’ In the passage there are two different branches, or denominations, of Baal worship: the Chemarims and Malcham. Baal worship has a lot of facets but the fundamental issue in it is that issue of worshipping ‘the host of heaven.’

"There’s a satanic policy of evil that fills up the universe with darkness, and no matter what manifestation, or what stage of the darkness you’re in, that’s the system.

“In Zechariah 13, a passage about the kingdom Jesus Christ sets up when He comes back, verse 2 says, ‘And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

“God says, ‘When I set up my kingdom, I’m going to throw out all that satanic stuff and fill my kingdom with light.’ Darkness and all of its source, all of its manifestations—all the forms of Baal worship and idolatry will be eliminated.

“You know, it’s interesting that just like the name Jehovah has a lot of compounds to it, Baal has a lot of compound names, too. There are actually more compound names of Baal in the Bible than there are for Jehovah. That’s how pervasive this stuff is. It’s everywhere.

*****

“When the Lord Jesus Christ returns, there are two great marks of His kingdom. No. 1, He’ll take away the physical bondage of sin and disease, the curse, and No.2, He’ll do what that verse in Zechariah 13 said: He’ll throw out all the darkness; throw out all the devils and unclean spirits out of the land.

“So when Jesus Christ came to earth He did two things: He healed the sick and cast out demons. In Luke 8: 1-2, for example, it says ‘he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were with him,
[2] And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils.’

“Christ didn’t just preach it; He SHOWED them. He gave them a foretaste of the powers of the world to come. One of the things He does, if you go down to verse 26, is He goes to the coast of the Gadarenes, north of the Sea of Galilee, and meets the maniac of Gadara, who has a whole bunch of devils’ names in him. You go down the passage and see Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ Why’d He ask him that? Zechariah 13 says He’s going to throw out all the names.

“Verse 27 says, [27] And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.

“This maniac guy, he doesn’t have on any clothes and doesn’t dwell in any house; he lives among the tombs. Remember, in Jeremiah 8 we saw how they got all the bones of the people out of the graves and stood there and worshipped.

“What this maniac of Gadara’s doing is practicing an outward, overt form of Baal worship. He’s a picture of the nation Israel captivated by that satanic religious system.

“As Mark 5 reports, [2] And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
[3] Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains.

“Now, that’s what a devil is; it’s an unclean spirit. You have THE devil and then you devils plural. They’re never called demons in the Bible; that’s a carelessness on our part. They’re called devils so you understand these are the guys carrying on the devil’s work. Did you notice that word ‘devil’ is d-EVIL?

“It says he ‘had his dwelling among the tombs.’ Do you remember how he said he didn’t have a house? Where’s he dwelling? Among the tombs. In Proverbs 21:16 is the commentary on that: [16] The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.

“When you rebel, you run away from life. God is life. Where do you run to? A place where there’s no life. All that’s left is death. Death rules by fear, by insecurity. Hebrew 2 says, ‘And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.’

“This man’s in bondage to the fear. You see, death motivates and rules by fear, by insecurity. You know, if you’re around dead people they make you feel alive. Dead people don’t threaten you, they don’t reject you, they don’t bawl you out, they don’t correct you, criticize you, condemn you. They can’t do much for you, but they don’t do a lot against you. So people find comfort, but when you live around dead people, you’re really living in an alternate reality and that’s what the darkness produces.

“This guy had a dysfunctional family life and we’ll see that after he gets right, he goes home. The first thing Jesus said was, ‘GO HOME!’ The man had a home but he couldn’t function there.

“When darkness fills a life, one of the first things that goes is home. What’s the second institution God created for the stability of mankind? First is volition, second’s marriage and third’s family.

"You see, what this darkness does is it reaches down to destroy the very basic foundation of life the way God designed it to work. People say, ‘We’ve got something better!’ but it doesn’t produce better; it produces death, and you wind up dwelling among the dead. No order, just confusion.”

(to be continued tomorrow)

Talking the same vocabulary

The so-called Apostle’s Creed says Jesus died, was buried, descended into hell and then rose again the third day.

“In Roman theology, Jesus Christ didn’t finish the work at the Cross; all of His suffering wasn’t over yet,” explains Jordan. “They say He descended into hell and had to continue suffering after the Cross. In fact, they teach that He’s suffering even today.

“That’s why you have the Mass continuously done. Their brag is that somewhere on the earth at every moment of every day (with the Mass) the suffering of Christ continues. Listen, all the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ was over when He said, ‘It’s finished.’

“Christ said to the thief on the Cross, ‘Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.’ Hell in time past had two compartments—torment and paradise, or Abraham’s bosom side—and Jesus Himself says He went to the Abraham’s bosom side, and if you know better than what He knew, you can deal with Him about that; I’ll just go by what He said. When King David writes in the psalms, ‘Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell,’ he was talking about the paradise side of hell.

*****

“God says in Deuteronomy 32:22, [22] For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

“Notice there are levels of descent in hell. In Ephesians, Paul talks about descending into ‘the lower parts of the earth.’ That means there’s more than one strata, one layer, one compartment. There are levels of the structure in the heart of the earth where the dead go in hell.

In Psalm 63:8, David pens to God, [7] Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.
[8] My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.
[9] But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth.
[10] They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.
[11] But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

“Notice it says they ‘fall by the sword.’ When they’re killed, what happens to them? They go into the lower parts of the earth. The idea there is they’re going to go to the grave.

*****

“If you read through that psalm, you’ll discover there are a number of allusions. When David ‘talks,’ he does what we do a lot of the time; he will make allusions to the Scripture. It’s sort of like it’s in his vocabulary.

“We do that. We talk Bible all the time. A lot of times you don’t even know you’re talking Bible. You say, ‘I missed getting run over by the skin of my teeth.’ Did you know you were quoting the Book of Job when you said that?

“Jesus said, ‘That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.’ Some guy says, ‘I don’t believe the Bible,’ and I think, ‘Why do you quote it so often then?’ ‘Well, I didn’t know I was quoting it.’ Well, that’s just because you’re dumb. Ignorance is bliss for folks who are ignorant.

“When David talks about going into the lower parts of the earth, that’s an allusion back to Numbers 16 when the sons of Korah were fighting with Moses about who was the big dog in Israel and God tells Moses what’s going to happen to them.

“Starting in verse 31, it says, [31] And it came to pass, as he had made an end of speaking all these words, that the ground clave asunder that was under them:
[32] And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.
[33] They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them: and they perished from among the congregation.
[34] And all Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also.

*****

“Every action, everything you see out in the world, comes from a spiritual source. The Bible says ‘out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’ Jesus said it’s out of the heart that come the things that defile a man, and then He lists all kind of perverted activity, but they come from within.

“Even with creation—in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth and how did He create it? Genesis 1:3 says, [3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

“You see, the physical creation is the physical manifestation of the spiritual life and worth that God spoke. Jesus said, ‘The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.’ By the way, that’s why there are two realms--heaven and earth. That’s why there’s the natural and the spiritual. That’s why there’s Israel and the Body of Christ. It takes the two things to make the whole.

“Genesis 1:2 says, ‘[2] 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.

“It had no shape. If something has a shape, it has a purpose. The earth didn’t have any functionality. And it was void, meaning it was vain; it was empty. It was total chaos and darkness; the absence of anything God has to say; the judgment of God for sin—‘darkness upon the face of the deep.’

“By the way, you know the sun isn’t created until the fourth day. Sometime people argue, ‘Well, see there, how could you have light when you don’t have the sun?!’ Well, you know, a three-year-old knows that all light doesn’t come from the sun. We got lights all over the room here.

“We have all kind of different lights. What God’s doing on the first day is making sure you understand there’s a distinction between light and darkness and that distinction is so important that that’s all you read about in this text on the first day.

*****

“All Moses is doing in that first part of Genesis 1 is trying to show them God says, ‘Look, first thing you need to know about creation is there’s light and there’s darkness. There’s my presence, my purpose, my wisdom, knowledge and understanding in my creation, and there’s the judgment that comes about when I’m not there. And when I’m not there, and my wisdom, knowledge and understanding is not in my creation, you’ve got DARKNESS!’

“What we’re talking about is, if that physical darkness comes about because of the judgment of God, well then there’s a spiritual thing that’s BEHIND all of that. So light and darkness . . .

“We’re not talking about the false duality of paganism. They have this thing called ‘dualism’ where you have to have equal and opposite forces in order to produce this esoteric balance of the universe. You have to have the yin and the yang and all that stuff. That’s not what this is.

“You don’t have two opposite forces; you have the presence of God and His knowledge, and you have the absence of God and the result of that. It’s really God’s judgment on rebellion and Satan seeks to rule the world without God.

*****

“Satan has no power to create. You, as a human, don’t have the power to create anything. You just use what’s there. You utilize what God already created. You act on it, you rearrange it, you distort it, you pervert it, but you don’t create it.

“Satan seeks to be his own god and steal stuff—that’s called rebellion! In that darkness, the extent of that rebellion is more than just man because it began before man—it began with Satan.

“Satan told Eve that God didn’t want her to eat of the tree ‘lest you be as the gods.’ The reason that word ‘gods’ is plural is because it’s equally available to Adam and Eve.

“When people are always talking about egalitarianism, or how everything’s equal, that comes out of Genesis 3:5: [5] For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

“Satan’s saying, ‘You can be as, you can have the character of God. You can have it, Adam can have it,’ and we have all these little gods out here that all think they’re God and they worship and serve the creature—themselves—more than the Creator. Eve could look out and see all those gods, the fallen angels, creatures in the angelic realm.

“Why would you want to stop and be like them when they were already made in the image and likeness of God?! You see, they ALREADY had the image of God because that’s how they were made. They didn’t need to become something. That’s the difference between law and grace. It goes all the way back to the very beginning.

“Job 15 says, [11] Are the consolations of God small with thee? is there any secret thing with thee?

[12] Why doth thine heart carry thee away? and what do thy eyes wink at,
[13] That thou turnest thy spirit against God, and lettest such words go out of thy mouth?
[14] What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?

[15] Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.
[16] How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water.”

“Mankind is not clean but, look, the heavens aren’t clean either! There are creatures in the heaven that are fallen and are as filthy and vile as you and I are. The kingdom of darkness extends all the way out through the creation.”

(to be continued tomorrow …)

What God wants from us:

I like to listen to talk radio in the background while I’m driving or doing housework. Last month I was mopping a floor when conservative talk's Dennis Prager announced he was going to dedicate the next hour of his show to a single Bible verse that he thought succinctly summed up and gave the clearest picture of "what God wants from us."

Of course, I could hardly wait to hear what it was. It was Micah 6:8, taken from the NIV translation: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Prager, who describes himself as “a practicing Jew,” said his assessment was “virtues based” and that he doesn’t care if a person’s religious or not; he was looking at one's actions toward him and others. Prager argued that “if your religion does not make you a better person then it is worthless.” There was no mention made of his lack of belief in God’s Son. The Christian argument is, as Richard Jordan expresses it, "If your religion doesn't tell you where you're going to go when you die and spend eternity it ain't worth a dead horse."

*****

In reference to Micah 6:8, Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org) reasons, “Pride is to have too big a view of your own importance and too little a view of God. The verse says, ‘And to walk humbly with thy God.’ Humility is the opposite attitude of pride. Humility is not saying, ‘I’m nothing, I’m worthless, I’m a worm.’ Humility is not being chopped liver, folks. That sense of, ‘I’m nothing, I’m a worm,’ that’s really—listen to me—that’s really self-pity and that’s just another form of pride. You hear that?

“Paul writes in Romans 12:3, ‘For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.’

“When he says over there in Acts 20, ‘Serving the Lord with all humility of mind,’ that’s Paul’s expression of what he writes in Ephesians 4 about walking in ‘lowliness and meekness.’ It’s understanding there’s a great God. He’s big; I’m not the issue. It’s understanding who I am in Him.

“I Corinthians 4:7 is a verse of Scripture that always strikes me when I think of humility: ‘For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?’

“If you’ve got some God-given natural abilities or talent to do this or that or the next thing, where’d you get that? Well, you got it because of who God made you.

“When you read the part, ‘Now if thou didst receive it, why does thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?’ do you understand what that’s saying? That doesn’t take a fifth-year student in Greek to exegete that.

“ ‘God made me and I belong to Him, and every good thing I have is a gift from the Almighty, so I just need to do the best with what God gave me and I’m not going to act like He didn’t give it to me and I did it myself.’

“That verse says, ‘You know, you shouldn’t get all puffed up about something you’re good at it because who is it that made you good at it? That’s humility of mind, and I’m not just talking about believing, I’m talking about life in general.

*****

“When you realize who God is and who you are in relationship to Him, you walk in that light. That’s what the verse says God required. That’s the good He’s seeking.

“Now, you know the problem with that, right? We fall short, don’t we? But those three words—justice, mercy and humility—describe the heart God wants because God wants the real you.

“Did you ever learn the poem, ‘What shall I give Him, poor as I am. If I were a shepherd, I’d give Him a lamb. If I were a wise man, I’d do my part. But what shall I give Him? I’ll give Him my heart.’ That’s what God desires.

“You say, ‘How do I give Him my heart?’ Paul says, ‘With a heart man believes unto righteousness.’ Do you live that way on a daily basis, or does living for the Lord just become, ‘Well, that’s what we do.’

"You ever tell your kids that? You know, the kids are growing up and they ask, ‘Uh, why we got to go to church?’ and you answer, ‘That’s what we do—that’s who we are.’

“I know with me, three or four times a day, I have to stop and look myself in the eye of my heart and ask, ‘Ricky, what are you doing and why are you doing it?’ And if isn’t coming out of my heart, see, I need to make an adjustment. I might not need to change what I’m doing . . .

“Was it good for Israel to give the best they had? Yes. Was it good for them to give in great exuberance and quantity? Yes. Then why wasn’t that enough? Because it didn’t come out of a heart of faith. It didn’t come out of a heart that reflected His life—His justice, His mercy, His attitude.”

Harp-playing can wait, but not this

One of the most common verses Christians quote in giving out the gospel is Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

“Hard to believe but that verse bothers some people because they say, ‘Well, I don’t get eternal life until the end?!’

"That’s because you think of eternal life as dying and going to heaven and living with God in heaven forever. There’s not a verse in the Bible that defines eternal life that way.

“Jesus Christ defines eternal life in John 17:2-3: ‘As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.

[3] And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’

“Eternal life isn’t just dying and going to heaven and dancing it up around New Jerusalem, or kicking up gold dust, or playing a harp, or 'catching rainbow trout in the stream of life.' Eternal life is to know the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal life is to have a personal, intimate, fruit-bearing knowledge of the Father. In the end, the gold of it is that you know the Father in a personal, intimate, everlasting way.

“It’s coming to KNOW the Father, understanding what the Father’s plan is, what the Father’s will is, why did He create the universe, what is the purpose behind it, what is His goal, why did He put man in the earth, why did He form the Body of Christ.

“You don’t just understand it, you say, ‘Woo-hoo, I got it! I got the picture! I LIKE it! I think I’ll just join in and do this! I’ll let the zeal of the Lord of host, the thing that thrills Him, thrill me!

“It’s your faith resting in the truth of God’s Word, and when your faith rests in God’s grace, who God has made you in Christ, it will bring forth fruit unto God, righteousness unto holiness.

“Holiness is talking about your character. Talking about who you are. You’re someone who is set apart for the purpose for which God created you. You’re able now by the grace of God to bear fruit unto holiness. You’re able to bear activity and growth that represents who God created you in Jesus Christ.

“The word ‘holy’ and the word ‘sanctification’ means to be set apart for the purpose for which it’s created. His character begins to express itself through you and the end is eternal life.

“Look at Jeremiah 9. I try to drill this home to our folks in Chicago all the time. The passage reads, ‘Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:
[24] But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.’

“Glory in the fact that you understand the Lord and that you have an intimate personal knowledge of Him. You understand what He’s about, what He thinks, how He reacts, what He’s planning, and you understand to the point it brings forth fruit in your life. If you’re going to rejoice in something, rejoice in that!

“That thing about ‘exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight’—the key to knowing the Lord, and to knowing God, is to understand what He delights in! What is it that thrills His heart? What He’s doing in His Son! If you ask the Father, ‘What is it that thrills you?’ He’ll say, ‘There He is at my right hand.’

Psalm 40:7-8 is quoted in Hebrews 10 as being a reference to Jesus Christ, but I want you to see how it says it in Psalms: ‘Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,
[8] I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.’

“When the Lord Jesus Christ came, He says to the Father, ‘I delight in what you delight in. I delight in your will! I know what you delight in, Father, and you know what, that thrills my heart too and I’m ALL IN for what you delight in!’

“Paul says, ‘Let that mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus.’ He gives you the privilege of thoroughly, completely understanding what the Father’s thinking is, what He delights in, what thrills His heart, and He says, ‘Come on and delight in that too.’ You come delight in it. Get as thrilled about it as He is. In the Bible, that’s called ‘God likeness, godliness.’ Godliness isn’t just doing what God does; it’s DELIGHTING in it, buying into it. It’s being all into it like He is.”