God's design for universe: Two words, one place

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the King of Sweden was not sure he believed the Bible was the Word of God so he reached out to German religious reformer Count von Zinzendorf, leader of the Moravian movement.

The king sent a note saying, “I want you to present the evidence that the Bible’s the Word of God and I’ve laid aside 10 hours for you to come and convince me of the reliability and trustworthiness of it.”

Von Zinzendorf replied, “I don’t need 10 hours; I only need 10 minutes. Because I only need time to say two words: the Jews.” Today, we only need one word: Israel.

The God who created the heaven and earth identifies Himself 203 times as the God of Israel in the Bible. He also calls Himself ‘the God of Jacob.’ The name Israel occurs in Scripture almost 3,000 times. Israel is a major theme in the Bible and one could never understand the Bible without understanding God’s plan, purpose and reason for Israel.

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“I remember years ago listening to a radio program of J.C. O’Hair’s where, in making the point that you can’t understand the Bible without understanding the nation Israel, he said there are five chapters in the Bible that recount Israel’s history," says Jordan. "I thought, ‘Wow, that’s interesting; there’s actually more than double that!’

“In Acts 7, you have a whole recounting. There’s Acts 13, Psalm 78, Psalm 105, Psalm 106, Romans 11. There’s whole chapters in Scripture given to the history and accounting of God’s purpose in that one nation and there’s not another nation on the face of the earth God did that with.

“There’s one nation in the earth where God says, ‘I choose them and they are mine.’ He says, ‘To get rid of Israel you’ve got to get rid of the universe; the very ordinances I made with heaven and earth.’

“In Jeremiah 31, right after He gives them the new covenant in verses 31-34, God says in verse 35: ‘Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name:’

“To get rid of Israel you got to get rid of the universe, because God’s purpose in creating the heavens and the earth finds its embodiment in the creation of this nation in the earth.”

Paul picks their brains like fish bones

When Simon was compelled to carry Jesus Christ's cross, he was just passing by, a pilgrim from 800 miles away that had traveled to Jerusalem to worship in the Passover.

“Imagine the only person in the crowd to help Jesus is some stranger from an outlying area that they had to conscript,” says Jordan. “There was NO ONE to volunteer to help Jesus in all of Jerusalem, among all of His followers!

“The dude’s name is Simon. Do you know another Simon? That’s sort of a subtle rebuke. Where was the other Simon who just earlier that evening had said, ‘Though everyone forsake you, I won’t’? He wasn’t there.

“Now Simon the Cyrenian follows Christ to Calvary and went all the way, seeing them nail the Lord Jesus to the Cross and stand Him upright.

“You remember how a Centurion stood by the Cross, and after watching what was going on, said, ‘Surely this is the Son of God.’ It was at the Cross that Simon had what I would call a ‘Barabbas experience.’

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“Mark 15:21 says, ‘And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.’

“Mark’s readers know who Simon is. He’s the father of Alexander and Rufus. That little addition wouldn’t have made any sense if nobody knew who Alexander and Rufus were. You see that?

“Mark is writing to the ‘little flock’ in Israel, and they understand who this character is. Something lasting happened to Simon when he followed Jesus to that Cross.

“Simon is from Cyrene and Acts 6:9 says, ‘Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.’ Notice they’re there; these guys were a part of the ‘little flock’!

“Acts 11 says, [19] Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to none but unto the Jews only.
[20] And some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, which, when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus.

“You see how the message got back home with Simon’s return and that it took root and bore fruit in that ‘little flock’?

“Acts 13:1 says, ‘Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.’

“Look at that! The message didn’t just take root; it took root with such fervency that there were people in Cyrene who stayed up with the program and on into the ADVANCE in the program.

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“Obviously Rufus and his family were some of those who were known to Paul, appreciated by Paul.

“Listen, I believe that the Apostle Paul wanted to know every detail of the life and person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He and Luke, one of the biographers of the Savior, were the best of friends. At the very end of his life, Luke’s with him.

“You know Paul would have picked their brains like you pick fish bones! It’s Paul in Acts 20:35 that tells you something not recorded anywhere else in Scripture. He writes, ‘And to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

“How did Paul know that? He was inquisitive about the life of His Savior and about the PERSON of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“It’s Paul who says ‘though we have known Christ after the flesh.’ When did Paul ever know Jesus after the flesh?! Paul had an interest.

"Rufus and his mom and family would have been people Paul wanted to know. And Rufus and his mother were obviously open to the advance in the program that came.”

'SEE me with you and you're never alone'

In John 5:19, Jesus Christ answers the Jews ready to kill Him, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”

Out of His great love for His Father He made a choice to relinquish everything and live in a fellowship so intimate He’d say, “What I SEE the Father do.”

“You say, ‘How did He SEE it?!’ ” explains Jordan. “Hebrews 11:1 answers that: ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

“He lived in the reality of confidence in His Father to the place that He SAW it! It’s not unheard of. Hebrews 11 says of Moses, ‘By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.’ How do you see something you can’t see? Faith!

“Jesus Christ as man could have done anything He wanted to do and never contradicted the will of His Father because the two were one in essence and being. But Christ says, ‘For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.’

“In John 8:29, He says, “And he that sent me is WITH ME: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. Underline that word alone. You see the Father was always there?"

With a heritage like this . . . !

In the 1950s, Life Magazine ran a photo taken from off the platform of the Wilson El station in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago and looking toward the lake. In the background was the large billboard-style sign that still sits atop the old North Shore Church building at the corner of Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road: Christ Died For Our Sins.

The landmark sign, one you can actually glimpse driving southbound on Lake Shore Drive in the wintertime when the trees are bare, remains a gospel witness to thousands of Chicagoans every day.

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Recalls Jordan, “On J.C. O’Hair’s 25^th anniversary of ministry in 1948, Louis Talbot, the president of Biola University (a private evangelical Christian school near Los Angeles) came to North Shore and spoke and testified about traveling by train across the nation, listening on the radio and hearing O’Hair’s voice preach the gospel of grace and what a privilege it was for him to be part of such a tremendous heritage.

“Do you know the first missionaries to go to the foreign fields preaching the Word of God rightly divided went out of North Shore Church? In fact, in the early days, almost all of the missionaries period who were on the field came out of North Shore Church. The assembly had 800 in attendance at the time and those saints were hyper-focused on sending people to the mission field.

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When Jordan arrived on the scene in the late ’70s, the Northside neighborhood had become one of the most dangerous in the entire city.

“We had people come into the church and mug our folks inside the church building it was such a tough neighborhood!” recalls Jordan. “We literally had neighborhood folks drive in the evenings; only the commuters would come to church because people wouldn’t walk a block and a half they were so afraid of being mugged on the street. The commuters would ride up to the front door before getting out of the car. We had a parking lot with a big storm fence around it and an armed guard over in the bank parking lot would watch your car while you were in the church.

“I’m from Alabama and the first Sunday we went to church, we drove up, got out of the car, went in and came back out to find somebody had swiped the CB radio out of the console. Welcome to Chicago!

“They were nice about it; instead of yanking the harness and all out, they unscrewed it and laid out the bolts and all. They didn’t mess with my car; they just took my radio.

“I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know how to deal with these people and all this stuff.’ I went downtown to Moody Bible Institute and they had a course called ‘Urban Evangelism,’ and I thought, ‘I’m going to find out how you deal with city people.’

“I was in that class three weeks and I thought, ‘This guy doesn’t know either.’ I went from there up to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Deerfield, IL) and sat down with the head of the missions department, the head of urban evangelism, but he didn’t know how to do it either. He also didn’t know how to reach Catholics. I said, ‘What exactly are you guys doing?’ Well, needless to say, I didn’t go back to see him.

“I kept on trying to think the thing through and one day it dawned on me: ‘You know, I’ve tricked myself into thinking I don’t know what the ministry is but I DO know what the work of the ministry is!

“It’s to take the Word of God and get it into another guy and teach him the Bible and then let it go teach somebody else. I realized, ‘I knew how to do that in Alabama! It’s just different fish. If you fish for bream, you don’t fish for bream like you fish for catfish. And you don’t fish for catfish like you fish for bass. What you do is go find somebody who knows how to fish for bass and you go fish like he fishes.

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“There was a member of North Shore I hadn’t thought about who had a ministry to the inner city. He went into the projects and took out inner-city kids and brought them together. Ed had a group of about 40-50 of them that he called the ‘Scripture Kids.’

“They had to memorize 300 verses of Scripture to get into the group. The average kid in the group knew 1,500 verses. Ed would stand them up and start calling verses and they’d just start reciting them. They’d stand on a platform and for an hour and a half quote verses not knowing what Ed was going to quote; he didn’t even know what he was going to ask them to quote!

“You know how Ed got started? He told me he’d go down into the projects and say, ‘Son, I’ve got a class I’d like you to go to. We’d like you to come. Would you go?’ Nobody ever did that before!

“Here’s a white man walking around Cabrini Greens and a gang member comes up to him asking him what he was doing and Ed said, ‘I’m telling kids about the Bible.’ Ed told me he found out that if he took that black leather Bible and put it right up under a gang member’s face, he’d get them to listen.

“You know what Ed did for a living? He managed apartment buildings. He was no big genius. Ed just knew what the work of the ministry was: Get people saved whatever it takes.” 

Open field for the living still standing

When I first moved to Chicago in 1990 at age 25, I was naive enough to think I’d have an easy time finding a old-fashioned Bible-believing Protestant church in my new Lakeview neighborhood off Lake Shore Drive.

I could not have been more wrong. Every single one I tried, it was so obvious they'd gone off into all kind of apostasy and heresy.

Today, in 2017, it’s hard to find a Christian church in Chicagoland that hasn’t been apostatized to one degree or another. Some show clear signs of infiltration of Satanic leadership and worship practices.

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In I Timothy 3, Paul writes to Timothy about ministry matters related to the assembly at Ephesus “which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “He calls them ‘the church of the living God’ because they had all kind of dead god temples all over Ephesus at that time, just like we’ve got plenty right down the street today.

“That title is to say, ‘We’re the place where the real God that LIVES lives and we’re the pillar and ground of the truth.’

“We have a testimony here at Shorewood Bible Church (Rolling Meadows, IL) that we ask people to make every week, not because anyone’s got to come here to go to heaven. The reason we’re here is to make a testimony that the truth is still available and it’s here. 

“Our testimony we’re to make is that there’s something God’s doing and we could meet anywhere we want to meet; the issue is that LIFE of Christ and being the ‘pillar and the ground of the truth.’ That’s what we’re about: ‘Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.’

“What a wonderful thing to have God living in you, manifesting Himself; God manifest in the flesh. That’s what the church is all about!

"The vehicle to carry that out is the local assembly so I ask myself, ‘If I’m here and winter’s here, and my path through winter is going to be determined by my choices, then I need to find out what I need to do in the wintertime and start doing it.’ See how Berean that is?

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"If the primary vehicle for the work of the ministry is the local assembly, then what do we need to do? What did Paul do?

"Acts 14:21-22 says, [21] And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,
[22] Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

[23] And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.

“Now, you understand that it was only in verse 19 that they stone Paul and throw him out of town, and it’s then in verse 20 that he rises up and comes into the city.

“You know what he does? When Paul looks at the world out there that doesn’t know anything about the grace of God, he goes into a city and tries to get people saved.

"When he gets them saved, he begins to teach them, edify them and build them up in the faith because he knows there’s tribulation out there. There’s trouble. I mean, Paul just got out from under a pile of rocks!

“He knows that if they go out and start living for Christ and Christ’s living in them, that world out there is going to think the same thing of Christ living in them as they did when Christ lived in his own flesh in the earth. They’re going to hate Him without a cause and there’s going to be opposition and they’re going to need some sustenance to get through it.

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“So these people who Paul’s won, and is confirming and establishing in the faith, he sets together in local assemblies of Believers, ordaining godly leaders to lead these people, so that when he leaves he commends them to the Lord.

“Paul says, ‘That which I just set up there, THAT’S how God’s going to take care of you.’ Paul doesn’t just say, ‘Oh, Lord, bless thee and keep thee, make His face to shine upon thee and give thee peace, Amen.’

“That’s not what commending them to the Lord means. I mean, what are you going to do, sprinkle whiffle dust on them? See, that’s that old religious hocus-pocus-eeny-meeny-miny-moe that says you’ve got something in your hand you can go throw people.

“It says he 'commended them to the Lord.' He set up the establishment in that local church of the very thing God was going to use to protect and carry them on. It was a thing that was going to be in that town that would see that lost people got saved, that saved people got edified and that the saints were strengthened and encouraged so that they could endure and carry on.

“Now you need to know what a local church is. Not the traditional viewpoint; not some religious system idea. It’s not a building, not an organization, not choirs and pews and windows. That’s all the form.

"Write down in your notes somewhere in your Bible: ‘Form follows function.’ That will save you from ALL of the confusion about this stuff. What is the function? Get some people saved."

(to be continued tomorrow)

When you think you're not needed, the city still calls

Between about 1890 and 1940 there were major centers of fundamental Bible-believing and Bible-preaching located in major metropolitan areas. Chicago at one time was the mecca of fundamental Christianity.

“One of the failures of fundamental evangelicalism in the last half of the last century was abandoning the cities of our country, and what happened was as the cities began to develop more problems, evangelicalism moved to the suburbs and left the inner cities without a real fundamental evangelical witness,” says Preacher Richard Jordan. “The reality is 53 percent of the U.S. population lives in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of our nation.

“Back in that era when there was such a tremendous recovery of Bible truth, and a recovery of the understanding of the Word of God and the Bible-believing section of the church was alive and vibrant all across America, understanding right division and dispensational things was on the front-burner.

“Men like J.C. O’Hair and C.R. Stam and people of that nature were pressing and every region of the country had major witnesses to these truths. There were hundreds and hundreds of ministries involved in that kind of thing and it was in the late ’40s when these things began to be resisted.

“In the late ’30s when O’Hair was expelled from the independent fundamental churches of America, and grace people were no longer welcome there because they didn’t practice water baptism and so forth, O’Hair gave a warning and he said if the fundamentalist church doesn’t progress on with the understanding of the distinctive ministry of the Apostle Paul (that is, they understand the difference between the prophetic program and the mystery program, between Israel and the Body of Christ, and understand that our ministry today is found in the ministry Christ gave us through the Apostle Paul), it’s going to be chastised, (O’Hair used the word scourged) ‘with the rod of Pentecostal fanaticism.’

“That warning came true starting in the early ’60s with the beginning of what is now known as the Charismatic Movement. It actually began in an Episcopalian church out East but it quickly spread through all of evangelicalism, and what the Charismatic Movement does is they put experience above sound doctrine.

“I Timothy 4:1-2 says, [1] Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
[2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

“The word seduction means to draw you away from what’s right with the promise of physical delight; physical ecstasy. You have an experience and leave sound thinking and follow the experience.

“Paul says we ‘walk by faith and not by sight.’ You think about your evangelical friends out there that you know. How many of them follow that principle? I just had a grace preacher tell me two weeks ago, ‘We don’t need to be talking about the doctrines of the unity of Spirit, we just need to keep the unity,’ meaning we all just need to get together and sing Kum Ba Yah. But the unity is based on the doctrine; there’s some truth. Paul said, ‘I would that you all speak the same thing.’ There’s some truth to understand.

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“No matter when you’re born, you live through each of the four seasons if you live a normal long life, and the time you make the most difference is in wintertime.

“Once in every life you go through the opportunity to live that once-in-a-lifetime privilege of making or breaking the heart of the future. Maybe you’re young, middle-aged or an elder when you go through it, but winter’s that once in a lifetime opportunity to heal or to destroy the soul of a people that goes through that next cycle. It’s a critical time, critical opportunity.

“The last time we turned from fall to winter, all it took was a financial collapse. The time before that it just took an election; the election of President Abraham Lincoln. The time before that it just took a little insignificant Boston Tea Party. Just throwing some tea off of a ship. Didn’t mean a lot at the time; nobody recognized it as much, but we remember that as the spark that ignited the revolution of our country and its independence. Every season turns that way on those events.

“The last winter, you know what that was? It was the era that gave birth to what we know as the Grace Movement. J.C. O’Hair became pastor of North Shore Church in 1924. He died in 1958 as pastor of the church. Almost 35 years of ministry. The heyday of the grace movement as we’ve come to understand it was there. The big names you hear—C.R. Stam, Charles Baker, J.C. O’Hair—that was their era. Baker and Stam were young men and Mr. O’Hair was an old man, but that was the era.

“Now, I’m no O’Hair and you’re no Stam or Baker, but we don’t need to be. All we need to be is who we are. All we need to be is where we are, taking advantage of who we are to the fullest to be for that season who it will need us to be.

“It has nothing to do with comparing yourself, or making yourself, or trying to be something you aren’t; it just has to do with being wise. The issue in decision-making, and the issue in the will of God; there’s no ‘Macedonian Call.’ God isn’t going to send down a lightning bolt from heaven and say, ‘I’ve anointed thee with this ministry.’

“Here’s some things I know generally, personally, individually. Paul tells Timothy, ‘Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.’

“That’s not in the sense of the philosophers who say, ‘Know thyself and to thyself be true.’ That’s nonsense. If you want to know yourself, get in the Book! But there is another sense in which you need to understand who you are; your proclivities, your tastes, your likes, your dislikes, your skills and your abilities.

“There’s never been anyone I’ve ever met that couldn’t be my leader in some area and I want them to be my leader in that area because I’m weak there and I need help and I can make them my leader.

“I work with people all the time and I don’t try to be somebody’s leader. They don’t want me to lead them, fine; I’m willing not to be led by me. But I want other people to lead me if I can find somebody who knows something about something I don’t know about. Lead and I’ll follow.

“If you do that and you practice that in your life, what you’ll find is if you’ll let other people lead in their areas of leadership where they ought to, and you train them to do that and teach them that you count on them to do it, then in your areas of leadership they’ll follow you and they’ll be with you. But it means you need to know where your strengths and weaknesses are and how you fit.

“The idea is to magnify the positive and accentuate it and build and construct and make better all the other. The only way you do that is with other members of the body. A body of Believers gets together and the whole is so much bigger than the sum of the parts when it functions together. That terrible word they use in marketing, synergy, is a truth.

“There are two words the New Agers hijack, and I think it’s a shame, and the one is synergy and the other is serendipity. Serendipity is a great word that means ‘the fortuitous convergence of events.’ That’s what happens in life often and what a wonderful thing it is when life works that way.

“Let me tell you about this competition where horses were pulling a horse pull. One horse pulled four tons and the other horse pulled 4½ tons and then they hooked them together. The two together didn’t pull 8 ½, they pulled 12. You say, ‘Where’d that extra three and a half come from?!’ It’s called synergy.

“The combination of the two is bigger than either of the parts by themselves. That’s where some of the power in the local assembly and the functioning. You work together and you have a unity of purpose and an identity together and your heart goes the same way.

“It doesn’t mean that there isn’t diversity; it’s that the diversity doesn’t become division because you aren’t the issue. My idea isn’t the issue. The work is the issue--the truth, what’s really valuable to the front. Great discipline that is, great discipline.

“You learn so much about yourself and the work of the ministry. I know that the key issue and objective in the work of the ministry is to get people saved and to get them into the Book, so they learn to grow and function together and go out and reproduce the cycle.

“What I just described to you is the work of a local church. The primary vehicle for the carrying out of the work of the ministry in the dispensation of grace is the local church because the local church is the local manifestation in a particular geographic location of the Body of Christ and of who we are in Christ.”

Victory is in casting down imaginations

We live in a body of flesh but our warfare doesn’t come from there; it comes from Christ.

Paul writes in II Corinthians 10:3-5:[3] For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
[4] (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
[5] Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

“When Paul says ‘to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man,’ how does that work?” asks Jordan. “Here’s our warfare: ‘Casting down imaginations.’

“We’re to cast down walking through that memory gallery of ours, looking at those old pictures of us doing this and that and imagining and remembering. We're to cast down coming up with our own ideas, our own thinking.

“When you cast something down, you throw the thing to the floor and break it. You don’t gently take it down and pack it away, putting it in the closet. You don’t make provisions for the future flesh.

“Anything that’s going to contradict what God’s word says, you get rid of it, ‘bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’

“For years I misunderstood that verse. I used to think what you needed to do was corral up all of your thinking and make your thinking obey what God says in His Word. Then it dawned on me one day that that was stupid because you couldn’t do that anyway!

“The verse says to bring every thought to the obedience OF Christ, not obedience TO Christ. It’s not about taking your thinking and saying, ‘I have to think the way God says think,’ because you know what? You won’t think that way!

“God’s grace doesn’t say, ‘Here, do this work and I’ll give you this reward.’ That’s law thinking. The reason grace doesn’t do that is grace knows you can’t do it! The law commands and you fail.

“When he says to bring every thought into the obedience OF Christ, whose obedience is the issue in the verse? Not yours; it’s His obedience. That’s where I got it backward.

*****

“What is the obedience of Christ? Write down Philippians 2:8: [8] And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

“Romans 5 says [19] For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

“Wives love to quote the verse, ‘Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them,’ and then they set up the standard where it’s, ‘Okay, if you do this, this and this, that means you’re loving me like Christ loved the church.’

“That’s not how He loved the church! He loved the church according to the will of His Father. You follow that? If you ever get that, it will blow your mind.

“Christ said, ‘No man takes my life from me; I lay it down.’ How in the world could Jesus Christ go to Calvary and be made sin and not be a sinner? Sin is a transgression of the law.

“The difference is He was made sin in obedience, not in rebellion. He loved you and me out of obedience to the will of His Father.

"In other words, He was walking by faith. When you bring your thoughts into captivity to what He has accomplished for you, not what you’re going to do but what He’s done . . .

“It’s not about, ‘I shouldn’t have these pictures in the gallery of my memory,’ but that He’s put one up there that shines so bright you forget the others. Our task is simply to focus on THAT ONE.

“As Paul writes in II Corinthians 3, [17] Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
[18] But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

“As I behold His glory, the Spirit of God takes that glory, that shines in the face of Jesus Christ, and puts it IN me and then out THROUGH me, and THAT’S what changes me; that’s what transforms me.

“That’s being strengthened with might; that transforming power of God in your inner man by His Spirit. That’s the process; that’s the path to victory day by day and it’s the path to having your life filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the praise and glory of God.

“That’s the key to what we call the Christian life; Christ in you the hope of glory. Can I tell you, if the Lord tarries another year, or if He tarries only another day, let that life be your life.” 

Bible's 13s on Friday the 13th

Seeing the TV coverage of the Las Vegas mass shooting, I was reminded of a road trip I made in 2009 to the West Coast and back where I stayed a night on the Vegas Strip in one of the grand casino hotels.

I didn’t gamble, I just swam in the pool and walked around, looking at all the endless stuff. My stay was on a Monday and early in the evening after first checking in I ventured outside to observe a very lively “happy hour” crowd from Trader Vic’s enthusiastically singing along to a live band’s rendition of AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”

If you look at polls of what people wanted played at their funeral, “Highway to Hell” is always high on the list along with songs like Frank Sinatra's "My Way" and Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust."

The lyrics to the AC/DC classic include, “Ain’t nothing I would rather do/Going down, party time/My friends are gonna be there too.”

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Just as it is in much of folklore, the No. 13 biblically is associated with bad things. An astounding 85% of all 13s in the Bible deal in the negative. Consistently, 13’s the number of rebellion.

The word “thirteen” first appears in Genesis 14:4: “Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.”

Genesis 10 reveals Nimrod, a type of the Antichrist, is the 13^th from Adam. He leads the rebellion against God at the Tower of Babel.

In Genesis 13:13 we see the rebellion of Lot when he pitched his tent toward Sodom and its excessive wickedness.

It’s in John 13:26 that the identity of Judas Iscariot, the one who would betray Jesus Christ, is revealed. Interestingly, 26 is two times 13.

Proverbs 13:13 reads, “Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed: but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded.”

*****

“In Isaiah 41:26, if you want to know where rebellion in Israel really began, it says it began with rebelling against God’s Words,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan. “There are 39 words in that verse. Two times 13 (for the verse number) plus 3 times 13 (for its number of words). A lot of times these things are hidden below the surface.”

In Romans 1:29, the 13^th characteristic of a “reprobate mind” is being “a hater of God.”

*****

While people like to think America was founded by good God-fearing Christians who loved the Word, it’s extremely fascinating to consider the predominance of 13s early on in our nation’s life.

As Jordan reveals, “There are 13 letters in the motto ‘E Pluribus Unum.’ There are 13 original colonies. There are 13 stars and 13 stripes in the original flag. The symbol on that flag was a serpent and the slogan across it, ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ which is 13 letters long. The confederate flag had a cross on it with 13 stars overlaying the cross.”

*****

In Numbers 14, there are 12 tribes of Israel but there are really 13 because of the tribe of Levi doesn’t have an inheritance.

“With Joseph’s two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, one took Levi’s place and the other took Joseph’s place, so that’s where you get 13 from,” explains Jordan. “But after this rebellion’s over, God says take a rod one from each tribe and lay them out there and then go get that 13^th tribe’s rod (Aaron’s rod) and lay it out. This is where you get ‘Aaron’s rod that budded.’ And verse 10 says that Aaron’s rod that budded is to be kept as a token against the rebels.

“In the Ark of Covenant were the table of Commandments, the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod that budded. There’s the broken law, covered over by the Mercy Seat, and then there’s Aaron’s rod that budded. It’s a picture of the resurrection of Christ—the new life in Christ—and it’s a testimony against the rebels in Israel; just like in the day of Pentecost there was a witness to the resurrection of Christ against the rebels who had rejected Him. But it’s the 13^th rod that’s a testimony against the rebels.”

*****

“Now you can do this over and over and over in the Bible. Like I said, it isn’t always on the surface. It can be tied up in the text where you have to look for it. In Isaiah 7:8, Ephraim is going into captivity for 65 years. Now, just for fun of it, divide 65 by 13. Five is the number of death. Because of their rebellion, they’re going to suffer death; they’re going to go off into captivity.”

In Ezekiel 4, Ezekiel is told to lay on his side for 390 years, symbolizing the destruction of Israel for her rebellion. That’s 30 times 13.

“For 13 months, he laid there,” says Jordan. “Why? Because of their rebellion they’re going into captivity. And that was the sign.”

*****

Another great example of a Bible 13 is in I Kings 7:1: “But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house.” As we know from the previous chapter, Solomon, who represents the ultimate example of a godly man gone bad, spent seven years building the Temple.

In II Chronicles 9, Solomon is showing off his house to the queen of Sheba, who has brought him gold and spices in return for his hospitality, and it says in verse 13 that “the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and threescore and six talents of gold.” This is where the number 666 is first revealed.

“Solomon, up until this point in his career, is a type of Christ, but it’s here in his career that he switches to being a type of the Antichrist and it happens right at this paragraph mark,” says Jordan. “By the way, his number 666 is found in Revelation 13:18. Eighteen is three sixes. I mean, these numbers get really weird as you go through them!”

*****

The only other time the number 666 appears is in Ezra 2:13: “The children of Adonikam, six hundred sixty and six.”

Jordan explains, “Now you say, ‘Well, who is that dude?’ Well, he’s just a guy on the list but his children are 666. But if you look his name up in a dictionary, Adonikam means ‘the lord of rebellion.’ And the lord of rebellion is associated with verse 13 but also with the number 666 because God’s Word is going to connect those numbers together.”

*****

In II Chronicles 9:17 it is learned that for Solomon’s house 13 years in the making he installs an ivory throne. “Do you know in the Bible where there’s a white throne?” says Jordan. “Now, there’s some typology in this stuff with Solomon back here that some of us brethren have been working on for years.

“There’s typology with regard to the structure and shape of the universe and the satanic rebellion to usurp the authority in the universe. Not just the earth, but the whole universe and working on the principle that the earth is the pattern (the template) that the rest of the universe is structured after. There’s some things here connected with Solomon and this throne of judgment that he built.

“This house he built is up in the northern parts of the land. That’s the reason I say when you get here Solomon has changed from being a type of Christ, the true son of David, to a rebel and a usurper.

Verse 18 goes on to describe the six steps to the throne that has a foothold of gold and a lion on each side of each step.

“You got six and six and six to get up to Solomon,” explains Jordan. “You see, what he’s doing is identifying himself with the wrong crowd. By the way, notice he overlays it with gold. In Daniel 2, Babylon is symbolized by that head of gold. We’re not talking about the deity of Christ here in Solomon’s mind—it’s the other guy.”

*****

In I Samuel 17, there are three great enemies of Israel associated with the number 666. The first one is Goliath.

The passage reads, “And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
[5] And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.
[6] And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.
[7] And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.”

Jordan says, “He’s six cubits high, he’s got a spear whose head is 600 shekels of iron and if you count them in verse 5 he’s got six pieces of armor. Goliath is associated with 666. He’s one the giants; one of that satanic seed.”

*****

For Daniel 3’s revelations about Nebuchadnezzar as a type of the Antichrist, the chapter begins, “Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof six cubits: he set it up in the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon.”

“You see, this is a counterfeit usurping of God’s position and threescore cubits and six is 66,” says Jordan. “By the way, the number 66 in Scripture is associated with idolatry. Sixty high and sixty wide and Nebby the king—notice there are six musical instruments that are going to sound out and those six musical instruments, when you hear them, you bow down to the image that’s 60 by 6.”

*****

In Revelation 13, 666 is the number of the beast. “It’s the trinity of man; it’s man trumped,” says Jordan. “It’s the ultimate achievement of man apart from God. And all these associations—they’re always bad like this.”

Revelation 17:9-13 reads, “And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
[10] And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.
[11] And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.
[12] And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.
[13] These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.”

Jordan explains, “Once again, this numerology stuff is more than just what’s laying on the surface of the scripture. You have seven heads, seven mountains and one woman, and there are seven kings, five are fallen, one is and one isn’t there yet. You see the numbers in the text we’re looking at? The numbers in the passage add up to 66.

“Now, 66 is close but it’s no cigar yet because we’re looking for 666. Look at Genesis 7 and then Revelation 17:14. ‘These shall make war with the lamb.’

"Notice all of these guys here are going to make war with the lamb? You know what the number for war is in the Bible? The first time it shows up in Genesis 7:11 it’s in the 600th year of Noah’s life.

“You know what God did on the 600^th year of Noah’s life? He declared war on the earth. And in your Bible, 600 is the number of war. And after He lists the 66 there, then the next thing He talks about is war, which there’s the rest of the 600 right there.”

*****

The number 23 is associated with God’s judgment on the Gentile rebellion. In  Revelation 17, John describes in a vision seeing “a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
[4] And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:
[5] And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

Jordan says, “There’s six items listed in her array. She’s got 17 with the seven heads and 10 horns and17 and 6 is 23.

“Now, look what happens to her. Rev. 18:8 says, ‘Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.’ That’s the number of judgment right there.'

“All these numbers get bound together for the purpose of confirming underlying in the text the things that are clearly taught; clearly laid out. It’s not the doctrine of the text, it’s just underlying things you look at that cause you to say, ‘Boy, you look at those things and you see confirmations!’ ”

(new article tomorrow)

Watch out for 'Let's unite!'

When Mike Pence visited Las Vegas following the mass shooting last week, he spoke at the “Unity Prayer Walk.” After the violent incident in Charlottesville, Va., last month, music stars such as Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams and Dave Matthews performed at the “Charlottesville Unity Concert.”

All the time anymore the word “unity,” common in New Age propaganda, comes up. Trump prayed for unity when he visited Las Vegas.

Unity, a word stolen from the Apostle Paul, has long been a one-word chant. Russian occultist Madame Helena Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society (1875) and considered the Grand Dame of the New Age, pushed the word at every turn.

“The Unity of religions” is listed as one of the three original aims of the Theosophical Society. The first is “Universal Brotherhood” and last is “The investigation of the mysteries of the universe behind the laws of science.”

The website “Theosophy Forward” explains, “As Theosophists, to implement this ‘heaven’ in this century, we need to put aside historical and organizational differences, and recognize our unity. Otherwise, we could get caught in the trap of one organization struggling for power over the others.

“This unity is not only in the inherent metaphysics of nature, but also in the We can best work together by recognizing the divine unity in all humans, and the achievement of brothers and sisters of other Dharma who have helped humanity.

“For this idea of fraternity to directly impact the world, as The Great Master’s Letter affirms, we must set an example, not only of unity, but also of altruism to the enlightened minds of every race, creed, and nation.

“In Five Messages to American Theosophists, H.P.B. exhorts us, ‘Union is our strength; and for every private difference must be sunk in United Work for our great cause.’ She also says, ‘Feel yourselves a vehicle of the whole humanity, and make it as part of yourselves and act accordingly.’ Recognizing ourselves to be one Great Vehicle, we can do no better than to follow her sublime advice.”

*****

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 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.

 “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.”

Dreaming dreams and the depths of Satan

When God sent Moses to deliver Israel, Moses asked, “How are they going to know that you sent me?” God answered, “I’ll give you two signs.” One was healing and the other was picking up serpents.

“When Jesus Christ comes in His earthly ministry and casts out serpents and devils and heals people, He’s demonstrating Himself to Israel that He’s 'the greater than Moses,' ” explains Jordan.

“Deuteronomy 13 says, [1] If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
[2] And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them.’

“You know what’s going to happen in the tribulation when the Antichrist shows up? The ‘false prophet’ is going to be able to make an inanimate object speak. He’s going to give life to the image of the beast. He’s going to be able to perform supernatural events.

“The issue is not whether it’s supernatural or not. In Matthew 7:22, Jesus said to some people, in that day of judgment, ‘Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?’

“He doesn’t say, ‘No, you didn’t; you’re a faker.’ He just said, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.’ They were workers of iniquity doing supernatural demonstrations.

“II Thessalonians 2, Paul talks about the coming of the Antichrist with 'lying wonders,' warning, ‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’

“Now, all of that stuff is coming through there to deceive and seduce Israel into believing a lie. Israel was subject to that because John 4 says they wouldn’t believe except they see a sign. They want a confirmation; they’re hard-headed.

*****

“So here comes a guy who says, ‘I’ve got a word from God and here’s the sign that proves it.’ What are they to do?

“Moses said, ‘If somebody comes along and shows you a sign, gives you a supposed word from God, and that word tells you to disobey the written word God's given you, don’t believe them.’

“Deuteronomy 13:3 says, ‘Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.’

“How would they know if they loved the Lord their God with all their heart and soul? They’d find out by whether they obeyed the written Word of God.

“They were doing that back at the time of Hosea and he says, ‘These guys are fools and they’re mad men. They’re out of their gourd!’

"Hosea 9:7 says, ‘The days of visitation are come, the days of recompence are come; Israel shall know it: the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad, for the multitude of thine iniquity, and the great hatred.’

“That’s what’s driven them mad. Now what would the hatred be toward? Verse 8 says, ‘The watchman of Ephraim was with my God: but the prophet is a snare of a fowler in all his ways, and hatred in the house of his God.’

*****

“There’s a religious hatred aimed toward God’s people, the nation Israel, God’s truth, the Word of God. It says, ‘They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah: therefore he will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins.’

“The prophets are snares; they’re out there trying to catch you. That’s all that stuff about the seductive program—in Mark 13 He talks about how even the elect would be seduced.

"They’re trying to seduce them out of the truth into the Lie program and it’s seducing spirits teaching doctrines of devils that produces the hatred of God’s Word and God’s plan IN God’s house.

“So you had the temple of Jerusalem, the temple of God, turned into the temple of Satan. Revelation 2 calls places associated with it ‘the synagogues of Satan.’ Baal worship never ceased in Israel; that’s the idea about them being deeply corrupted.

“That’s like in Revelation 2:24 when he talks about the depths of Satan: ‘But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.’ ”

*****

Daniel 1:17 says, “As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.”

“Daniel was a man of knowledge and skill, a man whom learned quickly and whose learning was varied,” explains Noah Hutchings in his book, Daniel the Prophet. “In other words, his interest and knowledge were not just confined to one field. He knew something about everything—sports, politics, theology, and various skills. And, last but not least, we read that God gave him wisdom . . .  

“In addition to a keen and perceptive mind, we read in verse 17 that Daniel had something else going for him. God gave him the ability to understand visions and dreams.

“In the Bible we find 24 people who dreamed dreams of sufficient spiritual or prophetic importance to be recorded in the Bible. These 24 people dreamed 34 separate dreams (22 in the Old Testament; 12 in the New Testament).

“Some of these people were godly people and others were ungodly. It is apparent from Scripture that God did reveal great prophetic truths to these people.

“Jacob dreamed about a ladder that would reach up to heaven; Joseph was a dreamer, and his brothers hated him because God so favored him; the great prophecy about the Gentile empires would rise up in the world was revealed to Nebuchadnezzar in a dream; an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to reveal that the child Mary would bring into the world would be a great and holy personality; Joseph was also warned in a dream about the plan of Herod to kill all the babies; and Pilate’s wife was warned in a dream that her husband should have nothing to do with the plot to kill Jesus.

“These are just a few of the notable dreams mentioned in the Bible. But just as God speaks to men in dreams, so does the Devil. We read in Ecclesiastes 5:7: ‘For in the multitude of dreams and many words there are also divers vanities: but fear thou God.’

“We read in Jeremiah 23:27 that the prophets of Israel were misled in dreams to believe that their god was Baal. Zechariah 10:2 also speaks of diviners, spirit mediums, conjuring up false dreams.

"There is indeed a mystical relationship between dreams and the spirit world, and Daniel had the spiritual perception to determine whether a dream was of God or the Devil, and to decipher its meaning.”

(new article tomorrow)

John's 'How-to' on spotting fakers

Do any casual Google search on I John 5:13, considered one of the great proof verses on eternal security, and you’ll find all kind of bad doctrine, often from preachers and theologians.

Here’s an example from a man who runs a national Bible-teaching organization:

“According to the Apostle John in 1 John 5:13 it is the birthright of every believer to know with certainty--not to guess or have some degree of confidence--that he or she is eternally secure. If one is not 100% certain of this, then he does not have assurance of salvation.

“ . . . Absolute assurance of one's salvation is a vital element in abiding in Christ. That is why John brings up the issue of assurance in an epistle dealing with fellowship . . .  The purpose of the epistle is thus to move the readers into deeper and deeper fellowship with God. Fellowship with God is contingent upon walking in the light, confessing one's sins, standing firm in sound doctrine despite the wooings of false teachers, etc.”

*****

The Book of I John was written for instruction to a future group of people alive during the tribulation that they might be assured of being in the “little flock” of Believers who stands against the Antichrist and apostate Israel.

“Christians use I John 5:13 sometime in witnessing situations to talk about how you can know for sure you have eternal life, but the doctrine in I John is not about soul-winning and assurance in this dispensation of grace,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan. “It’s about the conditional salvation the nation Israel will have and how they can know for sure whether or not they’re in the ‘true fellowship,’ and possess eternal life.

“Actually, in this passage the possession of eternal life is conditional. It’s conditional upon faith and works. It’s just like in James 2.

"Consistently through the kingdom program, this is the issue because again, these people are going to have to endure through the tribulation and, as Jesus says in Matthew 10, ‘he that endureth to the end shall be saved.’

“John has written a whole book now (I John) so these Believers can KNOW they have eternal life. He’s saying, ‘I’m writing to you people who believe that you may believe.’

"You say, ‘Well, I thought they already did believe?!’ If John’s writing to those who believe so they can believe, what is he talking about? 

"The message is you have to KEEP ON believing. That’s why in chapter 2 he says, ‘they went out from us because they weren’t of us.’ How do you know the people who are REALLY born again and are part of the regeneration?

“Jesus says in John 10, [27] My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

[28] And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
[29] My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
[30] I and my Father are one.

“You want to compare that passage with I John 1:3 where John writes, [3] That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

“That issue of being in their hand is like in Isaiah 40 where it talks about being in ‘the hollow of his hand.’

"It’s the issue of fellowship and camaraderie and, 'We’re in agreement with the Father and we’re in agreement with the Son. I and the Father are one.’ That is, we’re one in our purpose. We’re one in our intent. We’re agreed about this that we’re going to give some people eternal life.

*****

“Who does Jesus Christ say He gives eternal life to in John 10? His sheep. Who are His sheep? People who hear His voice and follow Him. One, you’ve got to hear (‘faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’) and believe, but you also have to do what? Follow. There’s an element of works and activity involved there in that ministry to the ‘little flock.’

“There are some tests laid down to identify that in I John, given so people at that time will know whether they’re really in the true fellowship or whether they’re just fakers.

“As John explains in I John 2:26, [26] These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you.

“There’s a whole list of things he puts down starting in verse 13: ‘I write unto you fathers.’ ‘I write unto you young men.’ ‘I write unto you little children.’

“He goes right down through there, listing the things, explaining, ‘I’m writing because of this and I’m writing because of that,’ and then sums up why in verse 26.

“He says in verse 18: [18] Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

“You see, there’s an issue of making some things clear, giving some tests, so they can be able to identify objectively who is apostate Israel and who is the Believing Remnant; who are the ‘little flock,’ the true fellowship, and who’s the faker; who are those who claim to be Jews, claim to be Israel, but aren’t.

*****

“I John 2:1 says, [1] My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:

“Now, this verse is missed completely by Christians today. He isn’t just writing this verse to a bunch of Believers so they can just be like, ‘Woo-hoo,’ and happy all the time. He’s talking about knowing whether you’re the true Israel of God!

“Twenty-one times in this Book of I John he says, ‘If we say.’ ‘If you say this, if you say that.’ There’s a series of tests to test the genuineness of what somebody is saying.

“Look at I John 1:6-8: [6] If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
[8] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

“There are liars out there but they’re professing to be the genuine article, see? They’re liars and you need to know how to tell them apart. There’s some people saying, ‘We have no sin.’

“Now, I know how we use that verse. We usually say you’re nuts if you say you don’t have any sin. Verse 10: [10] If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

“He says over there in I John 3:9, for example, [9] Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

“Whoa, could you identify somebody by that? Verse 3:10 says, [10] In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

*****

“There’s some people born of God and don’t sin and there’s some people in I John 1:8 professing to be that bunch but are liars.

“By the time we get there, you’ll see that here’s some people who have a special status in the ‘little flock’ with regard to the New Covenant where literally He puts His law into their hearts and causes them to keep His commandments. This is a book that’s specially focused on some people who are tested: ‘Are you in it or aren’t you in it?’

“What John is addressing in I John is there’s these counterfeiting wolves in sheep’s clothing kind of an attack that is part of the Antichrist. In fact, that title, the ANTI-Christ, means he’s going to come and present himself to be the true Christ and he’s going to have a deceptive counterfeiting program that works with him.

“If they aren’t spiritually alert and equipped with this doctrinal understanding on how to see through the one who is professing to be like the Most High God . . . 

"Satan is the great counterfeiter. He doesn’t simply come in and deny God’s truth; he counterfeits it and they’re literally going to see in the person of the Antichrist a counterfeit first coming of Christ, a counterfeit death, a counterfeit resurrection and counterfeit Second Advent and kingdom.”

(new article tomorrow)