Satan's bad looks = pass out from fright

The creatures that come out of the bottomless pit in Revelation 9 are in various stages of decomposition as part of their devolutionary development.

“The satyrs and dragons you read about in Isaiah 13 make uninformed people argue, ‘Ha-ha, your Bible can’t be real because we all know satyrs are mythological creatures,’ but this isn’t past history; this is future history, talking about supernatural creatures to come,” explains Jordan. “It’s sort of like the stuff you find in Revelation 9.

“You’re not in the land of Palestine in Isaiah 13; you’re in Babylon. And in Babylon, over there where the Euphrates River is, is where those four angels were.

“In Babylon there’s also going to be a place where all these demonic creatures, and all these fallen angels, are gathered together during the Millennium in these degenerated forms to which they have devolved and there’s going to be an actual zoo where people can go and look at them.

“After the people from the nations of the earth come to worship at Jerusalem they’ll travel down the Kings Highway and be able to look down at the souls in hell ‘where the worm dies not, the fire’s not quenched.’

“The scary thing is that when Satan’s let out of that bottomless pit at the end of the Millennium, you know what the people of the earth do? They don’t say, ‘You sucker, we see what happens to the creatures—humans and angels alike—who follow you, so get out of here!’

“You know what they do—they jump on the pony and say, ‘Let’s roll, Clyde! Let’s go at it again!’ That shows you how depraved human nature is!

*****

“Part of what Revelation 9 tells us about this degenerated condition of the fallen angels is ‘the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men.’

“We’re told they’ve got the faces of a man, the hair of a woman and the teeth of a lion. I mean, these are some messed up dudes! They look like they’re in a scorpion shape but a scorpion looks like a horse. It’s a composite beast.

“They’re a combination of a horse, a man, a woman, a lion and a scorpion all combined into one creature! Now, that is a deformed, degenerated looking kind of thing! That’s the same thing we were looking at back in Isaiah with the dragons and satyrs.

“These creatures are in the bottomless pit suffering the ultimate consequences of sin. Just as unsaved humans literally go back to the form of a worm—degenerating back into the lowest form of life—it’s as if these creatures in the spirit world are back in that same kind of devolving state.

“Notice these creatures take on the appearance of beasts. These are not lovely, sweet, wonderful kind of characters that you want your daughter to bring home to meet dad, or your sons to bring home to eat turkey dinner with your mother. These are not appealing kind of creatures.”

*****

In the Book of Job, the oldest written book in the Bible, God talks to Job about this same future detailed in the Book of Revelation. There are some fascinating details in Job 38-42 about how God, from the outset—I mean, this is first book written—lays out how He’s going to take care of this character in the end.

“Job 40:15-18: ‘Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.’

“You ever seen an ox with a tail that can move things like that? It says the tail’s going around like a cedar. That’s like if you took a telephone pole and had a tail—he just knocks everything down.

“You ever seen an ox tail; it’s a little-bitty twisted up thing. So this is a funny-looking ox. ‘Behemoth’ is an untranslated word. It says, ‘the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.’ The guy’s a supernatural creature!

*****

“The passage says, ‘He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares.’

“From Job 41, which says, ‘Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?’ you find out leviathan’s a seven-headed dragon. A behemoth is a beast made up of a lot of other beasts and that’s the Antichrist.

“If you turn to Revelation 13:1 you’ll see there’s a bear, a lion and a leopard. He looks like a leopard, but he’s got the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and this dragon gives him his power. So the Antichrist is presented as a composite of a leopard, a bear, and a lion.

“In Job 40 (with the behemoth) we’re talking about the Antichrist, and then when you get to 41 we’re talking about the dragon, leviathan, and that’s Satan.

“Now, if you go down to Job 41:9, as he describes Satan through here and asks Job questions about what Satan’s doing, he says, ‘Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?’

“That’s saying if Satan stood here tonight in front of us, and you could see into the spirit world and literally see him, it would scare you so bad you’d pass out from the fright.

*****

“Among the prophetic visions laid out in Daniel 7, Daniel has a dream in which he sees a leopard, a lion and a bear in one. Daniel looks out there into the future and he’s now looking at the ‘end time.’

“Daniel says, “After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
[8] I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.’

“That little horn turns out to be the Antichrist so these four beasts represent kingdoms in the earth. You’ve got three—the leopard, the lion and the bear—and then you’ve got one you can’t even describe it’s so bad-looking. And that’s the one the Antichrist comes from.”

*****

In Psalm 104, a psalm about the Millennium, Israel praises God for Jesus Christ coming back and delivering them into the kingdom. Verses 2-3 reads, [2] Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:
[3] Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:

Jordan explains, “If He’s laid beams of His chambers down here on the earth, what are the beams of your chambers? That’s the foundation. That’s what you lay a house on.

“Now, notice His house isn’t there yet, but He’s got the beams of the chambers there. You see that?! He’s got plans to live on this earth!”

  

“Psalm 132:13-14 will nail the board down for you: ‘For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.’

“In Job 38, God calls it ‘my decreed place; the place I’ve decreed I’m going to inhabit.’ He says, ‘This is my rest forever. Here will I dwell for I have desired it. I’ve got a plan. I’ve got a desire. I’ve got something I’m doing.’ And on that seventh day, He said, ‘I’m there!’

“So what was it that He set the seventh day apart for? For a day of rest. What does that mean? That’s the day He’s going to dwell on the earth. The purpose of Creation was so God could rest in it, and the resting in it is that He would dwell in it on a certain piece of real estate.”

When sea is no more, lake of fire awaits

Standing in front of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan is the famous sculpture of a naked man beating a sword into a plowshare, which is the main furrow-cutting blade of a plow. On the base of the work, donated in 1960 by “the people of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” is an altered version of Isaiah 2:4 that reads, “We shall beat our swords into plowshares."

The verse in Isaiah (which actually says, [4] And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more) refers to the future 1,000-year Millennial kingdom reign of Jesus Christ in a rebuilt Jerusalem.

During this time of unparalleled peace and prosperity in the earth following the Second Coming, Christ will rule with a “rod of iron” as the nation Israel goes out and controls the government of all the nations.

For this same 1,000-year span, Satan will be held bound in the bottomless pit with no ability to tempt man or deceive the nations. Amazingly, though, there will still be many people who choose in their hearts to rebel against God.

Jordan explains, “At the end of this 1,000 years of enforced righteousness—of absolute, instant capital punishment—Satan’s let out of the bottomless pit and instantly gets followers, demonstrating there’s a whole bunch of people who, in spite of Jesus Christ personally sitting on the throne, are led by their sin nature.

“You hear people all the time talk about wanting peace and a perfect world—a perfect environment, perfect social justice, everybody having plenty of food, no strife, no war—and they’ll have it then, but still the sinful heart of man ain’t right.

*****

“As Revelation 20 foretells it, ‘And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
[8] And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea.
[9] And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
[10] And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.’

“God just wipes them all out, sets up the Great White Throne Judgment and those lost people wind up in the lake of fire. So, the present world that now is will continue through the Millennium, and at the end of the Millennium will be destroyed and replaced by the ‘new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness.’

“And the sea won’t be there. The deep will be gone because the Enemy the deep is designed to contain—to hold and seal up and put bounds around—will be gone and down in the place that was prepared for him.

*****

“The rebuilt Jerusalem of the Millennium is not to be confused with the New Jerusalem defined in Revelation 21. In this New Jerusalem, which will be the command center of the redeemed universe, God the Father actually comes down and joins His Son, both of them dwelling with men.

“This is the ‘dispensation of the fullness of time’ (Ephesians 1:10) in its fullness, and the eternal kingdom of God begun with that 1,000-year transition period is never-ending.

“What’s so amazing is Psalm 104 actually tells us that the pillars for the foundation of this New Jerusalem are already laid in Palestine!

“At this future time, the saints in heaven will be able to visit the earth. Our job and our home as saints is going to be out there in the heavens, but there won’t be the bondage of time; the limitations of time and space and that kind of stuff that we experience now.

“If Jesus Christ can leave Planet Earth, go into the third heaven to God the Father, and come back in less than a two-hour time span in the Book of John, you’re not going to have any trouble. You’re going to have a body just like His. You won’t need a GPS system to keep from getting lost and all that kind of stuff.”

(new article tomorrow)

Fearing suffering: The great debilitator

World-famous missionary wife, Elisabeth Elliott, whose husband was brutally murdered (in 1956) trying to give the gospel to a semi-nomadic Indian tribe (considered among the most violent in the world) deep in the Amazon jungles of Ecuador, once wrote, “People who have themselves experienced both grief and fear know how alike those two things are . . . They are equally disabling, distracting and destructive.”

“Fear is a natural emotion common to all human beings, and it is neither inherently sinful nor godly,” reads a quote from an online ministry site. “Our fears are often connected to the things we love the most. We may fear losing something or someone we love. Or we might fear that we will fail to obtain something we desire. We may fear offending one we love. Or perhaps we feel a reverential fear of something or someone we admire. The cause of our fears is often the love or admiration of some created thing or of God Himself.”

People say they could never accept a God who allows such suffering in the world, but as a preacher points out, "We know the world isn't dying for love; the world's dying in spite of the greatest love anybody could ever know."

From what I’ve learned over the years, fear for an unsaved person contemplating believing in Jesus Christ can be very intense. They fear losing their relationships, their reputation, their social life, their comforts, habits, on and on. They fear being embarrassed, ridiculed, ostracized and left lonely. They fear the devil’s retribution. They fear God making them change at the expense of their basic happiness and/or ability to cope.

*****

In what C.S. Lewis calls an “inconsolable longing,” and uses to describe it the German word Sehnsucht (which has no direct English translation but is akin to words such as craving, yearning, hunger), he writes in his book The Weight of Glory:

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open an inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.”

*****  

Believers throughout time have attested to how the trials and tribulations of their lives either led them to Christ or made them lean on Him all the more closely.

One of my favorite hymns dating from childhood, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," has the line, "Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?"

The text for the well-beloved song from 1857 was originally part of a letter of comfort Joseph Scriven wrote to his mother upon learning she had a serious illness but knowing he could not be with her since he was in Canada and she was in Dublin.

Another great old hymn, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus," proclaims, "Free from the blight of sorrow, Free from my doubts and fears; only a few more trials, only a few more tears. . ."

The song was one of 9,000-plus spiritual pieces written by Fanny Crosby, who was blinded for life at two months of age in 1825 when a man falsely claiming to be a doctor treated an illness of hers with hot-mustard poultices applied to her eyes!

Crosby, who would go on to such success she was personally acquainted with all the U.S. presidents during her lifetime of 95 years, lost her father only a few months after going blind. Her mother was forced to take a job as a maid, leaving Crosby to be raised by her Christian grandmother.

Her first attempt at verse, at age 8, reflected her lifelong refusal to engage in self-pity:

Oh, what a happy soul I am,

Although I cannot see!

I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be.

How many blessings I enjoy

That other people don't,

To weep and sigh because I'm blind

I cannot, and I won't!

Also as a child, Crosby zealously memorized the Bible and could recite the Pentateuch, the Gospels, Proverbs, the Song of Solomon and many of the psalms.

Crosby once wrote about the doctor who unwittingly caused her blindness: “I have heard that this physician never ceased expressing his regret at the occurrence; and that it was one of the sorrows of his life. But if I could meet him now, I would say, ‘Thank you, thank you, over and over again for making me blind.’ Although it may have been a blunder on the physician’s part, it was no mistake on God’s. I verily believe it was His intention that I should live my days in physical darkness, so as to be better prepared to sing His praises and incite others to do so.”

*****

Preacher Richard Jordan makes the observation that personal suffering is exactly what makes the Bible appealing to an individual.

He explains, "You go through some difficult times, you get down and you're on your back looking up and I've asked myself this question many times: 'Why would I want to know about all this information if I never had a time in life when I needed it and could see it live in me?' All of a sudden, when you think about it that way, the tribulation isn't tribulation so much."

Paul says in Romans 5:3-4, "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope."

Trouble's not to be a curse, but a circumstantial context in which God works in a Believer's life. God uses our circumstances and surroundings as a context in which to apply sound doctrine.

"It's like your life is a stage, as the great bard says," explains Jordan. "You don't go out on the stage to find God's will; you find it in His Word. You hide His Word in your heart and go out on the stage of life to apply it. Our circumstances and feelings are not the means of divine revelation. Learning to apply God's will, I begin to grow. I apply the doctrine to my life and it begins to work in me."

Paul tells us it's the trying of our faith that works patience. The problems of life say, "Are you going to rest in who you are in Christ or are you going to go on your devices?"

"What trouble tests is your resolve to walk by faith," says Jordan. "It tests whether or not you're going to stay with the doctrine—stay with your identity in Christ—or you're going to go on your emotions, or other counsel.

“Tribulation is designed to teach us that if we stay with the doctrine, and that's where patience comes in, that ‘staying’ works experience. We develop a persistent fortitude and unwavering endurance by just sticking by the Word.

"And when you stay with it, and stay with it, and stay with it, in spite of the circumstances—meaning you say, 'This is the truth, I'm not going to walk by sight, I'm going to walk by faith'— you get some experience. Experience is simply skill in handling a problem. Experience comes when you face the problem, deal with the problem, and it comes to a successful conclusion.

“Paul tells us God is ‘the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’

“The idea is that the experience gained through tribulation lends an enhanced capacity of maturity to effectively help and comfort others by giving them some of the hope we've gained through our experience. It's about a maturing process.

"The justice of God can give you peace, but it can't give you patience. He can give you access, but He can't give you experience. Patience comes from the life application of the sound doctrine.

“Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’

"Paul says the thing you learn in your Christian life—and keep learning at different levels—is, 'It's not I, but Christ.' You see, when he says, 'You're complete in Christ,' you can't get God to give you any more. You can't say, 'Oh, God, give me some more of this or that.' He's got no more to give you. He gave it to you already. All you can do is appropriate what He already gave you and to appropriate it, you've got to do two things. One, you've got to know about it, and two, you've got to need it.

*****

“Life is made up of attitudes and actions. You go out in life and it doesn't take long before you know you need something bigger than you to take care of the way you act and your attitudes about life, and it's going to be Christ, His life. It's sort of a partnership in maturity, in wisdom, and it comes progressively as you grow spiritually. This is just the process of growing up spiritually.

“Through the tribulations, Believers are meant to reach a level of maturity where nothing motivates them but the love of God in Christ Jesus. That's why Paul says, ‘The love of Christ constrains us.’

“Through this maturing you're willing just to relax and not be motivated by a desire to make God happy with you so that He'll accept you and bless you. You're not motivated by being a big shot and showing everybody what you know. The thing that love lets you do is relax.

“Paul says in II Corinthians 4:14, ‘Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ Life is designed to be a walk of faith, and the things we endure down here temporarily on earth build a capacity in our inner man that will last FOREVER. The suffering is what strengthens that inner man.”

Sanctuary CITIES build into worldwide expression

Beginning with the first city built by Cain in Genesis, God runs a thread all through Scripture showing that cities are built as the embodiment and expression of man’s rebellion against God.

“The city represents man’s attempts to get away from the curse brought about by his own sin,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan. “It’s a monument to man’s attempts to raise a monument to his own self-sufficiency; his desire to do it his way.

“You find different cities expressing different aspects of this rebellion. Babylon, for example, encompasses all of what the city represents, and in the Tribulation period is going to take up ALL of the things that are expressed by the city, bringing to a crystallized form the conflict between the satanic policy of evil and God’s program.

“In Genesis 9, God instructed Noah and his sons to “scatter and replenish the earth,” but the response from the post-Flood inhabitants became, ‘No, let’s make us a name lest we be scattered abroad; let’s build a city in rebellion to what God told us to do.’

“The building of the city of Babel by world ruler Nimrod, a grandson of Ham, followed the curse God placed upon Noah’s son, Ham, and his descendants. Babel was actually an attempt to escape that curse.

“As ruler, Nimrod worked to bring untamed man under a yoke of bondage, and the spirit of Nimrod is the spirit of conquering force and craft and skill.

“Nimrod rules across the earth from this city, and out of that land goes forth Asher and Nineveh. In other words, man goes out from Babel and puts the spirit of Nimrod to work by building more cities.

“Now the city is the center from which war and conquest is waged. Urban civilization becomes a warring civilization. In Daniel 1, Daniel’s carried away into the land of Shinar into Babylonian captivity. In Genesis 14:1, Abraham delivers Lot from Sodom.

“While Babylon represents a system for the expression and philosophy and program of the Adversary, Jerusalem represents God’s system of righteousness, but it also represents man’s failure to meet up to that standard because the law brings bondage, hence there has to be a new Jerusalem, a new covenant, a new way when God will do for man—and for the universe itself—what man could never do for himself.”

*****

Church steeples and obelisks originate from the Tower of Babel, showing yet another example of how thoroughly Satan’s religious system permeates our world.

“The Tower was part of the city, and literally it was the symbol of the purpose and the enterprise of the city which was to seize for themselves what belonged to God. Who owns heaven? That’s His dwelling. The whole issue here is the deification of the creature.

“The city codifies and gives collective force to humans, bringing that ‘I’ Complex—that independent spirit of rebellion—into a mass.

“There are only two times in all of human history when the whole world knew God. One was in the Garden of Eden and the other was after the Flood when it was just Noah and his family.

“The problem isn’t that man can’t know God; it’s that they willfully walk away from God. So, the problem isn’t the heathen who don’t know; the problem is that what they do know, they reject.

“Romans 1 goes back historically to Genesis 11 and it doesn’t say that the people didn’t glorify God; they just didn’t give Him the supreme position as God Almighty.

“It’s the theology of a humanistic system to elevate man. They’re exalting themselves, and their whole goal is to change the glory of the uncorruptible God, and to deface and defy Him because they’re ‘so wise.’ They can do it themselves. They know better than God so they’re going to do it their way.

"The result is Romans 1:24-25: ‘Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves. [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.

“You know, the greatest judgment God could ever give a person over to is just to leave him to himself. What the world out there calls sophistication and liberation more often than not is just testimony to the fact God just left them to themselves to bear the bitter consequences of their own sin all by themselves with no restraint.

“The product of Babylon is uncleanness. If you don’t live in line with God, you’re unclean. I call you to notice they worshipped and served the creature MORE than the Creator. It isn’t necessary to completely throw God out and Babylon doesn’t do that. They just worship their own will more. They don’t give Him top billing.

*****

“What Revelation 14:8 tells us about future Babylon, she’s fallen but not before she’s made all the nations ‘drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.’ Revelation 17 and 18 represent the two great chapters about the fall of Babylon.

‘The details are held until there for a very special reason. The Antichrist is going to use Babylon’s system of Baal worship during the tribulation. Now, its modern manifestation among Christendom is embodied in Rome and the Protestant churches that are sympathetic to the Roman system.

“The Antichrist uses the system of Baal worship to rise to power, sitting on the great whore, but once he’s in power, he destroys her because it stands in his way.

“The reference to the kings of the earth and merchants in Rev. 17:18—it’s a political system that dominates the governments of the earth and every area of life, commerce and the economy. It’s a universal worldwide dominion. This system goes out and engulfs everything.

“Today, the battle is not in the physical realm—taking a physical city here and a physical city there. Today, we battle in a spiritual realm and we do it by working by faith.

“But the forces that are opposing themselves are the same and in the final culmination. . . You see, the reason the last seven years of that 70^th week of Daniel . . . the reason all the conflicts of the ages crystallize themselves in that one period of time in the Tribulation . . .

*****

“When Revelation 19 uses the word ‘hallelujah’ that’s the first time that word ever appears in the Bible. The host of heaven is shouting ‘hallelujah’ as a result of Babylon sinking down and being destroyed. It doesn’t come any sooner. Not until Babylon’s gone does heaven cry ‘Hallelujah!’

“You see, one day God’s going to purge this earth, and righteousness is going to reign from the city of righteousness, New Jerusalem. Revelation 3:12 calls it ‘the city of my God.’

“In the Millennium, they’ll have that wonderful city. Revelation 20:9 calls it the ‘beloved city.’ Revelation 21:10 calls it ‘that great city.’ There’s Jerusalem. There’s where God is dwelling and that city is going to take charge. It’s exciting to me to know God’s going to purge this earth of all rebellion and establish a city from which His righteousness reigns.”

(new article tomorrow)

Snapshot of kingdom life, complete with Satan-in-the-pit viewings

The Sermon on the Mount is mistakenly thought of as personal instructions from Jesus Christ to follow. What it really represents is the Lord's imperatives for the future Believer’s walk in the kingdom to come when Christ rules as king from His throne in Jerusalem after His Second Coming.

In a nutshell, Jesus Christ, during His earthly ministry, set up the standards for this future literal kingdom on earth. His sermon message is about the law dwelling in a person’s heart; about the heart attitude and motives for what a person does.

*****

Preacher Tom Bruscha of Warren, MI, says that sometimes when you ask a stranger what they think a person must do to be saved, their go-to response is, “Keep the Sermon on the Mount.”

He reasons, “It’s funny, I’ve been studying the Bible for quite a while now (30-plus years) and one of the things I understand least is the Sermon on the Mount! And for someone who doesn’t study the Bible at all to think they’re going to live out what the Sermon on the Mount says, I’d like them to sit down and explain it to me first!

“What Christ’s doing is describing to Israel’s faithful remnant the life they are to learn about and even begin to practice back (in the time of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), but which ultimately God will produce in them in the future kingdom.

“When Jesus Christ teaches in the Beatitudes about the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, etc., He’s describing the character of the repentant, contrite person in Israel who will ultimately be blessed ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

“We’re not talking about the defiant or stiff-necked during Christ’s earthly ministry, but God had a faithful remnant that believed the promises of God and would become His nation. The Sadducees, in all their hypocrisy and pride, didn’t have the character to be a recipient of that kingdom.

*****

“When Christ says, ‘Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart,’ He takes adultery from simply the practice of it to just looking upon a woman to lust. That tells me that when Jesus Christ does set up His kingdom, there’s not going to be any pornography there. It will not be allowed.

“Now, if someone smuggles it, which they probably will, and tries to practice it and promote it, those people are going to be caught. There’s no freedom of artistic expression and all that other stuff in the kingdom. There’s going to be immediate judgment; there’s not going to be an appeal to the court. They’re going to be cast into the lake of fire.

“I get a kick out of verse 29 because it’s talking about looking upon a woman to lust and then it says ‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.’ Doesn’t your right eye and left eye go together? Mine do.

“It’s like a woman goes by and, ‘Okay, I’m not supposed to lust,’ and the right eye just keeps going and you’re trying to keep the left eye from following! . . . of course, later on He’s going to talk about having your eye straight—a straight eye. In other words, keeping your eyes fixed where they’re supposed to be fixed.

“If you’ve got eyes going in two directions, they’re not straight. Your eyes are to be singly fixed on what God would have you to do, not wandering around. The hands, too, are not going to go off and work the works of wickedness, and that’s why there’s the reference to the right hand.

*****

“Under Paul’s ministry for today, we are to forgive one another ‘even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you,’ but under the kingdom program, those people have to forgive in order to be forgiven, and if they don’t forgive, judgment’s going to fall. They won’t be forgiven!

“. . . You can read in Hebrews how it talks about this new covenant and says, ‘The old is vanishing away and the new is coming.’ The Lord Jesus Christ’s blood is the provision for Israel to receive this blessing right here.

“It says in Hebrews 6 that they had a taste of ‘the world to come’ on the day of Pentecost. You need to realize that the day of Pentecost, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, was a taste of what the new covenant is going to do in Israel when they are all filled with the Holy Spirit to speak the Word of God and live the Word of God.

*****

“As Jeremiah 31:33 says about the future kingdom, ‘But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.’

“Instead of God writing in stone, like He did when He brought them out of Egypt, He’s going to take His laws and write them right into the heart of His people Israel. Now, if God writes something, isn’t that Scripture?

“God’s going to take His Word and implant it in their heart. You and I today, we are to study God’s Word and put it into our heart and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit, live what those things say. That’s what being filled with the Holy Spirit is all about.

“But what God’s going to do for the nation of Israel in the kingdom is write the Bible right into their heart. When He says in Jeremiah 31, ‘For they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them,’ doesn’t that remind you of what the Apostle Paul said his goal in life was—‘That I might know Him’?

“We can KNOW Him because the Scriptures given are the full revelation of Jesus Christ. God says about the future kingdom program, ‘Not only are they going to know Jesus Christ is their Messiah; they’re going to know their Messiah! They’re going to know my will; my ways.' ”

*****

Of this future kingdom, God says in Ezekiel 36, “And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen, which ye have profaned in the midst of them; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, saith the Lord GOD, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.
[24] For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
[25] Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
[26] A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”

Bruscha explains, “The (nation Israel) was supposed to TEACH the Gentiles, not profane God’s name among the Gentiles. Their hearts were so callous and hard He calls it a stone and says, ‘I’m going to take away your stony heart and I’m going to give you a heart of flesh—one that’s tender; one that I’m going to have my Word written in.’ He’s going to give them a heart transplant!

“That’s when Israel’s finally going to be what God always wanted them to be, and when you read Isaiah 61, He says, ‘The Gentiles are going to call you the priests of the Lord; the ministers of God.’ They are going to ‘teach them all things whatsoever I command you.’

“So God is going to glorify the nation of Israel. In fact, Isaiah 60 says they’re going to be seen as glorified. I imagine that the Believer within Israel is going to glow as a resurrected saint; they’re going to be glorified with the glory of Jesus Christ, all the time teaching the Gentiles the things Israel finally has learned from Genesis to Revelation.

*****

“In the kingdom, the law of the Lord is going to come out of Jerusalem and the Gentiles are going to be ruled with 'a rod of iron' and taught God’s standard of the law. They’re going to have that influence on them so they won’t have to worry about Satan’s deception during that 1,000-year-period.

“Isaiah 14:16 tells you about how Satan will be taunted: [16] They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

“The human race is going to look at Satan down in that pit, which will be visible from the ground during that time, and say, ‘Is this the man?!’ and he’ll look so pathetic all chained up in there; a little, humble soul chained up in the bottomless pit.

“They look into the pit and say, ‘Is THIS the man that did all the things I read about in this Bible?!’ You see, during this 1,000 years, life for them is almost what it was in the Garden of Eden. The lion and lamb will eat together. They’re going to hear stories about how lions used to eat lambs.

“Some will think, ‘Oh, that’s gruesome—you mean, they had to run and hide because a lion would eat them?! Children had to worry about snakes biting them if they went and played in a field?! No, I don’t believe that! What do you mean, someone was 100 years old and they had a party for them because they lived so long?!’

“You see, they’re going to have to read the Bible and believe that life as we know it really did exist, and Satan really was evil and destructive and his lies hurt and destroyed.

*****

“At the end of the 1,000 years, Satan is loosed and when it’s all over . . . these people who are ruled with 'a rod of iron' have only known the reign of Jesus Christ and His rule over them, and they’ve never been tried to find out if they really do believe Jesus Christ is holy and true and righteous.

“Remember, they’re just as wicked as we are because they’re still in natural bodies and ‘desperately wicked and deceitful.’ Do they really believe Jesus Christ had to come to earth and die on a Cross to pay for their sins before He could reign in His glory? Do they believe that they cannot trust ‘in the arm of flesh’ and that they, too, must trust in the Lord?

“Satan will be loosed and he’ll argue things like, ‘I ruled this world in righteousness and peace; I wasn’t mean and ruling with a rod of iron. I didn’t hold you responsible. I’d let you have artistic expression; freedom of speech to cuss when you want.’

“And the world’s going to have to make a decision—do they want Jesus Christ to be their eternal king or would they rather follow Satan in his last, final rebellion? The Bible tells us multitudes will follow Satan.

“You see, everybody of all ages has to make a decision in their heart of what they’re going to do with Jesus Christ and the truth that’s written down in this Bible concerning our sinfulness and the provision He’s made through Jesus Christ because of God’s great love.”

Babel Effect: From reddish brown to freckled, exclaiming 'Uff da!'

 When God judged the rebellion against Him at the Tower of Babel, He didn’t just supernaturally give the human race new-spoken vocabularies and dialects; He miraculously scrambled the cells in their brains so they were different.

“Folks who speak 2-3 different languages know that you think differently in each language and God literally reprogrammed their thinking processes where all of a sudden they couldn’t communicate with one another,” explains Preacher Richard Jordan.

“Not only did they wake up the next morning with their brains rewired, their bodies had been changed and suddenly there were ethnic changes to physiques, skin color, facial expressions, etc. You say, ‘Can God do that?!’ Sure He can. He made you to start with!

“But there’s more than that, because if you go to Genesis 10 where it describes the migration of Noah’s descendants, you see in verse 5: ‘By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.’

“What it takes to make a nation is an identity of geographic territory. We say ‘borders, language and culture,’ and that’s what that was right there. Without identifiable borders enforced by a government, you don’t have a country.

“A family is simply you have a head you come from and that’s the ethnic division that happened at Babel. The culture came from that ethnic identity.

“Think about what Christ does? He comes into any culture and lives His own life. He sanctifies that culture; purifies it. He says, ‘This is how I live in that culture.’ It demonstrates the life and, by the way, when you get every culture filled with Christ, what would you have? Christ in a multi-faceted array.

“You remember ‘the coat of many colors’? Adam had it first because the Lord Jesus Christ had it first. Jacob didn’t get the first. You have this multi-faced display of the life of God through the people He created, demonstrating all that the Father’s put into His Son.

*****

“Genesis 10:31 says, [31] These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations.
[32] These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

“This chapter’s talking about God establishing national entities made up of government-enforced geographic identifiable boundaries out of which are languages groups and then ethnicity.

“When God set the nation Israel aside politically with their captivity, putting them off into Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar was the first head of the Gentile nations to replace Israel in the earth temporarily and the Bible says seven times in the Book of Daniel: [4] Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations, and languages.

“Obviously when God divides up humanity, He divides it up as people, nations, languages and that issue about dividing the thing ‘on the face of the earth’ is important. Genesis 10:25 says, ‘And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.’

“Eber, by the way, is where we get the name ‘Hebrew.’ Abraham is a descendant of Eber. The name Peleg means ‘divided, torn apart.’ His daddy named him that 'for in his days was the earth divided.' Genesis 11:18-19: [18] And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
[19] And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

“So if Peleg was 30 years old when he had his first kid, and then he lived 209 years after that, how long did he live? He lived 239 years and during that time the earth was divided. Obviously the earth was divided at the time of Babel. How long did it take God to scramble the brains and change the language? Bingo!

*****

“Ever hear anybody talk about the ‘mark of Cain,’ telling you that’s where black people came from? That’s about as stupid as you can get because, if that’s where it came from, how did it get through the Flood? The mark of Cain wasn’t a skin color anyway. People say, ‘Well, it’s the curse on Ham,’ but did you ever notice in Genesis 9 He didn’t curse Ham? That’s another non-starter.

“By the way, when God changes people’s skin color and wants to curse them, the color He changes them to is white. When Miriam rebels against Moses, for example, God smites her with leprosy, which turns your skin white.

“So people who want to argue about that stuff, you know, they prove too much. Adam wasn’t white or black; he was reddish brown, made out of the dirt (reddish-brown clay) of Palestine. But that’s the only way you can get the other extremes. God heals a guy of leprosy and what color does his skin turn? Back to what it was before and He does it instantly.

*****

“The idea often put forward is that when the verse says, ‘the earth was divided,’ it wasn’t just about dividing the languages and that this is where the ‘continental drift’ came in. I don’t know if there was a continental drift, but if there was, for 239 years the one earth mass had to divide up to where it now is and that means it had to move about 10-12 miles a year. I know in the text it tends to say there was something that happened, boom, this day, and the earth was divided. You can study in Amos about the earthquakes.

“Many people say the division of the earth and the change in its topography all took place at the Flood, but if you’re going to believe in continental drift you have to say it took place about 250 years after the Flood in the time of Peleg.

“The idea there is when God divides it, he divides it out of distinct geographic areas. Deuteronomy says He divided men their inheritance. The continental configuration of the way the planet looks today is designed to facilitate this issue.

*****

“Now, if Peleg lived 239 years, he lived within a decade or two of the time of the birth of Abraham. So when Abraham’s born this stuff is freshly happening. Sometime we think about all of that going thousands of years long and then Abraham just showed up. That’s not what happened so this stuff is in the mix and the nations have rejected God and defied Him.

“God separated out humans to compartmentalize the violence that came from rejecting Him and then He chose one man out of it, who was one of them, a Syrian ready to perish and an idol-worshipper, and He made of him a great nation.

“The word Gentile in the Bible is almost always, not every time, the translation of the Greek word ethnos, which we have in our language as the word ethnic. Our term ethnic is to describe the difference in the racial makeup of people and is the term that comes from the term Gentile.

“When the term Gentile, or nations, is used in the Bible it’s really addressing the various types of people that make up nations. You realize the colors aren’t really the issue. It’s not that I don’t see any differences; it’s that I do see the differences and the differences are not what make the difference.

*****

“When we think of the word Gentile, most of the time we think of this blob of people; everybody out there who’s not Israel. But in the Bible, and in Paul’s thinking, when he thought about Gentiles, he understood that it wasn't just everybody who wasn’t a Jew; he understood that the Gentiles had divisions among them that God put there so that when it's asked, ‘What’s the origin of the different races in the earth?’ you see in Scripture God did that.

“The issue of who did it and where’d it come from, or when and why did God do it, are all questions Paul understood and had a very definite viewpoint about. You have to understand it’s a radical thing for the Apostle Paul to think these things. Paul was a rabbinical scholar. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamim.

“He was a thoroughbred Jew and they don’t think well of the Goyim. Acts 10:28 says, [28] And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.

“For Paul to talk about being the Apostle to the Gentiles there was a radical racial change in his thinking. He started out thinking, ‘It is unlawful keep company.’ Now what made the difference? What made the difference was Jesus Christ.

“I want to tell you something, the only place you’re going to find making a real difference is in Jesus Christ. The answer to the divisions is not going to be in politics, not in economics, not in education, not in social justice. It’s going to be in Jesus Christ, and when you have that answer then you can go out into the social-political issues and live out the answer.”

Power is in Him as your connection

I found it interesting that the woman who recently took over Willow Creek Community Church as the head pastor credited one book for influencing her and other members of the “succession team” for the past year. It’s called, The Power of the Other: The startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond--and what to do about it.

In a short critique of the book, a CEO of an internet company writes, “As a habit, I am always on the lookout for ways to either confirm my philosophies or challenge them.  Most of the time, I have a vague idea of the direction I must head, but cannot clearly explain why that direction is correct. At such times, it is important to adjust my focus. This happened with a book I recently read. The Power of the Other is Dr. Henry Cloud's newest book. In it he discusses, among other things, the science that proves positive human interaction makes all of us better. It is fascinating."

*****

Wisdom, as the Bible uses the word (over 240 times), is simply the application of knowledge. Transformation occurs through faith in what the Word says about who we really are, seeing ourselves in our new nature in Christ.

“We have an identity in Christ in the spirit world that we can’t touch or feel, but it’s REAL,” explains Jordan. “So how do I bring it into my experience where I live? It’s the w-o-r-d-s of the Spirit on the physical pages of a Book that’s the connection. It’s my faith resting in those words in a Book that energizes my inner man and that’s the mechanics of it. That’s how it works! It’s just that simple!”

“If you talk to God about what’s on your mind, wouldn’t you like to hear what’s on His mind? So, how’s He going to talk to you?

*****

Bible authority Keith Blades writes, “Paul makes it clear that the power of God’s Word at work within us today is the most excellent display of God’s power. The exceeding great power that belongs to God’s Word is put on display in an unprecedented manner.

“This is because not only is God’s Word working within us able to do ‘exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’ regarding the condition of our inner man, it is also able to do exceeding abundantly above all that Satan thinks he can do, as he works to show the capacity he still has to influence us in our inner man.

“That Satan desires to show that he is still able to affect our inner man, is something Paul makes clear throughout our epistles.”

*****

The hip credo today is No. 1, “God is irrelevant,” and No. 2, “Human reason is supreme.”

“Our culture today is totally dominated by the human viewpoints and philosophies of men,” says Jordan. “There’s a complete rejection of God’s Word and God’s truth.

“The Psalmist in Psalm 39 says that ‘man at his best state is altogether vanity.’ That means the best you’re ever going to do with your human thinking processes apart from the Word of God, and what God has to say, is going to be empty, futile and delusional.

“In Isaiah 55:8, God talks, saying, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’

“Folks, the best you can do is going to fall short when it comes to figuring out what life is all about. The 19^th century English poet Matthew Arnold wrote, ‘What is the course of the life of mortal men on the earth? Most men eddy about here and there—eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurled in the dust, striving blindly, achieving
nothing; and then they die.’

“That’s saying exactly what the wisest man in the Bible, King Solomon, says. I think the first two verses of Proverbs 18 are two of the most deadly verses in the Bible:
[1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.
[2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

“Now, notice how that passage reads. ‘Through desire’; an inner desire. You got something you want to do. Your heart wants to get something.

“Solomon writes, ‘Through desire, a man having separated himself.’ When you separate yourself away, and you seek and intermeddle with all wisdom, there’s a word that comes out of that and it’s the word elitism. Another word is egalitarianism."