'Fear not' ultimate venture in faith

“Don’t do anything that doesn’t require faith,” advises a Christian minister. “The key to momentum is always having something in faith to look forward to, something to anticipate. We live by faith or we don’t live at all. Either we venture or we vegetate.”

A great inspirational maxim says, “Worry is faith in the negative . . . wasting today’s time to clutter up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles.”

In Philippians 4:6, the Apostle Paul says, "Be careful for nothing.”

Of this counsel, Bible scholar C.R. Stam once wrote, “In our modern day language we would say, ‘Don't worry about anything.’ The Greek word behind the term ‘careful’ here is merimnao, which means to pull in different directions, to distract.

“This is exactly what worry will do to you—it will tear you apart both emotionally and physically. It can be one of the leading causes of ulcers, which is something else to worry about!

“Worry always dwells on the future in regard to what may or may not happen. . .Worry is a sin! As we have seen, it focuses on the future, which is divine ground. It has been correctly said, ‘Worry is assuming more responsibility than God intended you to have.’ ”

*****

In Luke 12: 4-5, Jesus Christ advised, “And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him."

Jordan explains, “It’s important to know who to fear and Christ says you’re to feel about things just the way God does. You’re going to fear God and think the way He thinks rather than fear the Pharisees and think like they think.

“Obviously killing your body does not equal killing you. That’s a great statement demonstrating something about the nature of man. It shows someone can kill your body and yet you can do something to your soul that’s still there.

“Jesus Christ reasons, ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.’

“I once typed into Google the key words ‘hairs on your head’ and learned that an average blonde person has 145,000 hairs on the head, a brunette has 120,000 and a red head has 90,000.

“So if you’ve got all those hairs on your head, the Father hasn’t forgotten you. You’re more valuable than a bunch of birds.

“Christ in Luke 12:8: ‘Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.’

“Jesus said not only did the Father not forget, but you know what’s going to happen if you acknowledge the Son? He’ll acknowledge you and He won’t forget you either.

“In verses 9 and 10, Christ continues, ‘But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.’

“What’s unfortunate is how many preachers take Luke 12:8-10 out of context to destroy a Believer’s confidence in eternal security, all because they’re unwilling to recognize the verses are written to the nation Israel with the Tribulation in view, not to members of the Body of Christ in today’s dispensation of grace.

“Whole generations of people have been raised believing that the way you get saved is to walk an aisle and make a public confession. This goes back to men like Charles Finney and then D.L. Moody. The idea is to have every head bowed and every eye closed tonight and the organ softly playing ‘Just as I am.’ You need to ‘step out for Jesus’ and walk the aisle. The whole thing becomes about courage—it’s not faith. It’s, ‘Man, I’ve got guts!’

“To have faith, you have to have absolute personal privacy. Faith is a personal matter, and if I invade your privacy and space with psychological techniques to try to force you to do something I want you to do, and I force you to do it, you didn’t really do it out of the choice of your will.

*****

“There are three times in connection with the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ that the expression ‘fear not’ occurs. The first one is said to Joseph by an angel, who comforts him in a dream with, ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’

“Mary was Joseph’s intended wife, it’s just that their commitment hadn’t been consummated yet, and the fact she was ‘found with child’ was a crime punishable by stoning death by Israeli law.

“Now, you got to think about Joseph’s perspective in all of this. Joseph’s got this young girl, he’s looking forward to marrying her. Everybody knows they’ve already gone through the formalities (the announcements and the invitations are out) but she comes up pregnant and Joseph’s in the dark about why. He doesn’t have ANY idea what’s happened. He doesn’t know HOW she got pregnant.

“I don’t know about you, but my mind kind of imagines things like that. I sit around sometimes thinking about these verses. You can just see Joseph wondering, ‘Why did something like this happen?!’

“He’s having to deal with the hurt of the betrayal and the disillusionment that would come from this kind of thing. You can just see him sitting there trying to figure out exactly how to get out of the mess that Mary’s gotten him into. You can see his heart all filled with turmoil. ‘How am I gonna fix this mess?! How are we ever going to get beyond this?!’

“There’s Joseph in this impossible situation. The things he’s thinking about are testing his mettle; his goodness. And in the midst of all that, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep.

“Suddenly God broke into Joseph’s predicament and the explanation He gave him was a doozie! If you think it’s unbelievable that an angel would show up, that kind of message from an angel even sounds stranger! Here’s something that’s never happened before!

“He’s told, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.’ It even gets stranger but then the angel gives Joseph something he can hang onto: ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.’ (Matthew 1:23)

“You see what that angel really did for Joseph was he said, ‘Here’s a verse of Scripture God’s fulfilling in YOUR life right now! You don’t need to be afraid! I know it’s outrageous! Here’s what God’s Word says though.’

“The message was ‘fear not for God said.’ The message is you can hang your life on God’s Word and you’re never going to get rid of fear in your life except that way.

*****

“The other two times the angel-sent encouragement of ‘fear not’ shows up in relationship to the birth of Christ is in Luke 1:13 (‘But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John) and in Luke 1:30 (‘And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.’)

“Now, if you think Joseph was little upset, can you imagine how shocked Mary must have been when the angel Gabriel started talking to her!

“By the way, Luke was a medical doctor, so the specificity of terminology here is not being used casually. It’s being used very specific with precise meanings. Luke starts out his book saying, ‘I’m a good historian.’

  

“There’s this little thing he writes in Chapter 2 that I’ve always been touched by. Luke says, ‘But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.’

“I think, here’s a little mother who, when Luke met her, recounts the nativity and the birth of the child, and there’s certain things she never told anybody else. She just kept them hid and thought about them and pondered them in her heart.

“Mary shared with Luke what was going on in her mind. I have a hard time putting myself in her situation. The questions this little girl must have had at the time!

“She’s told, ‘Hey Mary, you’re going to be the mother of the Messiah!’ Whoa! I mean, what a privilege, but what a shock! Mary asked the logical question: ‘How shall this be, seeing as how I know not a man?!’

“In the presence of something that’s obviously going to be supernatural and can’t be understood in human terms, you can just imagine . . .  but verse 37 is the answer: ‘For with God nothing shall be impossible.’

“Mary’s fear turned to faith in what God’s Word said. So Mary, like Joseph, trusted God’s Word. When it says she found ‘favor with God,’ that’s undeserved favor. That’s a definition of grace: ‘Mary you’ve got nothing to be afraid of; you are perfectly loved.’ ”

God created another you inside you

When God created humans with a soul, He literally placed a bodily shape inside of us meaning, in essence, there’s a person inside of our body.

Not only is there the account of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16 as proof, but Paul makes clear in II Corinthians 12: 2-3, “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)”

As Jordan explains, “If this guy’s caught up in the third heaven and Paul says, ‘I can’t tell if he’s still in his body or not,’ then when he wasn’t in his body he must have still looked like he was.

“He said, ‘By looking at this guy I can’t tell whether he’s dead or alive. He’s up in the third heaven, though.’ So what’s up in the third heaven is his soul. But what did he look like? Paul didn’t say, ‘Well, he died but I don’t know who he is up there.’ When out of the body he looked just like he looked in the body.

*****

“Some people wrongly have the idea that when we get our glorified body in heaven, we’re all just going to be carbon copies of one another, but Paul makes clear in I Corinthians 15: 35-38 the resurrected body bears your distinct identity.

“Paul writes, ‘But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.’

“Because we’ll have our own personal body with its own personal appearance, we’re not just conscious of being in someone else’s presence, we can put a name to them and a face.”

“Not only will we recognize and know those we’ve personally met in our lifetime, but we’ll be familiar with people we’ve never come face to face with.

“In Matthew 17, Peter instinctively knows who Moses and Elijah are even though there were no introductions given. While Peter had studied about the two men, and was taught things about them, he couldn’t have known what they looked like since they lived centuries before he did.

*****

"While Luke 16:25 reveals we’ll have memory in heaven, remembering incidents and things that happened on earth, we’re not going to have bad memories surrounding any of the people we encounter in heaven.

“You’ll say, ‘Hey, there’s Brother Rick,’ and all you’ll remember is Christ in Brother Rick and not all that was ‘I, not Christ’; that will all be gone. The blood of Jesus Christ is going to cover all the bad-memories stuff for you. It’s just going to be gone, and what you’re going to remember is Christ and who you are in Him.

“In our relationships with one another today, the key is to have Christ living in us so that when we meet up there, we’ll have something to remember.

“Paul urges in Romans 6:11 to ‘yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead,’ meaning the resurrection life we’ll have for eternity is the life we are to have live in us right now.

“The key is to let our resurrection lives be in effect today so that when we get out there in our resurrection body, the life we then live will already be familiar to us.

“The verse is saying, ‘Don’t live in your old identity, live in your new one, because the new one’s the one you’re going to take out there.’ Let everybody get to know you in your new identity NOW because that’s who they’re going to recognize out there.”

*****

Adam was only two days old when he appeared on the scene in Genesis as a fully mature 30-year-old adult.

“If you had anatomically examined Adam, he’d appear 30, so how would we know he’s two days old?” asks Jordan. “God told you. He created him with the appearance of being older. So, if He created the world with the appearance of age, how is it then that you look at the world and say, ‘Look, see, it’s really young’?

“How can you prove it’s young by its appearance if it’s created to appear old? You follow that? That’s the logic used by Creationists, and that logic just leaves me to say, ‘I thank God for Genesis 1:1 and Hebrews 11:3.’

“Verses tell me is there’s something to the ‘ruin- reconstruction theory’ include Genesis 2:4: ‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.’

“Notice it doesn’t say, ‘This is the generation’? No, it says, ‘These are the generations (plural) when He made the six-day creation.’ The six-day creation is not the generation of the universe; it’s the generations. If that’s the first creation, don’t you think that word ‘generation’ would be singular?

“The second time this word’s used is in Genesis 5:1: ‘This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.’

“Now, Seth is the beginning of the book of the generations of Adam, right? But is Seth the first child Adam had? Cain and Abel came before Seth. The ‘book of the generations of Adam,’ refers to a starting point in time that skipped two previous sons at least.

“Now, why did it do that? Well, look at Genesis 4:25: ‘And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.’

“It says ‘another seed.’ We’re talking about the Messianic line here! The Messianic line started with Abel, but Abel got knocked off and was replaced by Seth. So, when you look at the second time the word ‘generations’ is used, it skipped over previous generations.

“Genesis 6:9 is the next time the word’s used. The verse says, ‘These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.’

“God begins a new generation in the earth. God wiped out a previous generation before Noah, meaning there was a destruction of the old world and then a new starting point.

*****

“Genesis 2:4 is at least consistent with the use of the term ‘generations’ in Scripture. That suggests there was a previous ‘generations of the heavens and earth’ before the Creation of the six days in Genesis 1:3 and following.

“Genesis 1:28 says, ‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’

“God said what? ‘Replenish the earth.’ And do what? ‘Subdue it.’ If you subdue something, doesn’t that imply it needed to be put in subjection? If something’s in perfect harmony, would it need to be put in subjection? That implies it’s in rebellion, doesn’t it?

“Man’s original commission is made in light of the world being in rebellion against God. And he’s told to go out and replenish the earth. Now, people say, ‘Well, that word replenish really means to fill it up.’

  

“But if you look back at verse 22, it says, ‘And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.’ That word fill there is exactly the same word translated replenish in verse 28.

“When they translated that word in the King James Bible, they chose specifically to translate it replenish and not fill. They knew what they were doing and they did it on purpose. Now, why would they do that?

“By the way, the re concept in ‘replenish’ means what? Fill it again. ‘Plenish’ it again. Why did they do that? Genesis 9:1 says, ‘And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.’

“He’s saying, ‘Replace; repopulate the earth. Replace the previous occupant with a new set of occupants.’

“The implication all through here in Genesis is that there could have been, and probably was, a previous . . .  the old world. And the heavens which were of old, and the earth, they perished in a flood—probably the flood in Genesis 1:2."

Wilted Creek's sinking apostate

I'm working on a new piece to post in a few days. In the meantime, here's a blog entry from 2016 that's still receiving hits:

"Come join us for the Willow Creek Easter Celebration. Celebrate Easter with a Latin AND Indian Flair on March 26th at 7:30 pm. This American Easter tradition starts out with:·      A dramatized, multi-media presentation of the Easter story followed by            ·      Latin and Indian music, food and dance presentations! Can you really resist Chicago’s BEST tacos with all the trimmings and Indian food like vegetarian and non-vegetarian biryani or pilau rice? Then,  add
·      An Easter Egg Hunt with lots of eggs and prizes for every kid on a beautiful Saturday evening AND live Easter bunnies and chicks galore?  Nowhere but at … Willow Creek!
There will be plenty of space for all to enjoy the dramatized Easter Story.  But space is limited for the after-party. So register today to be sure you, your friends, and family get in on the fun!"

*****
“Did you know that people like Bill Hybels at Willow Creek, and John Piper up in Minneapolis, people of great fame in our day, believe the nation Israel should be left to be destroyed and supplanted by a Palestinian state, and that we should not have a nation Israel in the earth?” informs Jordan.

“You go on the other side of the spectrum, and (popular preachers and theologians) say, ‘Well, they’re God’s people, and if you bless Abraham, you’ll be blessed; if you curse Abraham, you’ll be cursed. So, in order to keep America safe, we need to bless Israel.’

“Both of those things are totally unscriptural. They’ve nothing to do with the Bible. One is a whacked out view that thinks God is through with Israel, and all the promises He ever made to Israel about giving them the land, and giving it to them forever, have been spiritualized and somehow have already been fulfilled, and that all the curses belong to the nation Israel and all the blessings belong to us.

“Both of them just completely abandon a Bible base even though one of them believes there is a future for Israel, as Scripture teaches there is.

“I read that stuff, and I think, ‘What kind of confusion you get in that! No wonder the world out there thinks it’s time to take a couple of Alka-Seltzers and go to bed when people start talking about the Bible.'

“But the day in which we live is a day in which that’s going to change. No matter what the world thinks, you and I are 'the church of the living God.' The false system out there isn’t the criteria; the measure of our ministry isn’t what’s against us but who’s for us.

“The thing you have to understand is the course of a nation in the dispensation of grace is determined by the amount of sound doctrine resident in the populace; that’s going to determine the strength of the true church; not the institutional, civil religion, but the true church and our impact.

“We don’t have to be the majority, we never have been, but the spiritual impact of truth is so powerful. Paul says, ‘As unknown and yet well-known,’ and that’s the way we are, but when that is so diminished it comes to the place where there’s no ability to affect the culture.”

*****
“Simplicity is truth’s most becoming garb,” says Jordan. “It doesn’t have to get all complicated. Every time Paul talks about an inheritance, he never puts an ‘s’ on that word one time. As far as Paul’s concerned there’s only one inheritance. That one inheritance is distributed based upon the capacity; there’s what he calls ‘the reward of the inheritance.’

“There are various positions, stations, responsibilities in the inheritance but it’s still just the one inheritance.

“The issue of reigning with Christ is not the elitist, political reigning that you’re so familiar with; like what Jesus talks about in Mark 10 where you reign like the Gentiles, just having power and being in control and being boss.

“You look at our government today. Some of you older people can remember when we had what we’re called 'statesmen.' You don’t have any of those today.

“I get such a kick out of these guys when they talk about ‘gridlock.’ The president says, ‘I can’t get the Republicans to do anything,' and the Republicans say, ‘We can’t get anything done because of the Democrats.’ All they mean is the other guy won’t capitulate to do what I want. That’s all they’re talking about: ‘We want to reign.’

“So instead of seeing people lead your nation who are grateful for the privilege to serve, you have people who are grabbers of power and want the power to force people to do what they want done. Jesus said, ‘That’s not the way my kingdom works; that’s not the way ruling for God works.’

“You see, having God’s life is to have a life that always just instinctively lives for the benefit of others, never for itself. The Father finds all His pleasure in His Son. When you exalt the Son, who do you exalt? The Father.

*****
“In our situation we’ve been given the same kind of mandate that Adam had, only to do it in the heavenly realm.

“What He gave man on the earth is the example; the visible representation of what our function in the heavens is going to be. We’re going to be in a different dimension but the purpose, the activity, the mandate there is the same as the mandate here.

"We’re to go there and have dominion just as Adam was to have dominion here. We’re going to do it through the same kind of procedure—the discovering of wisdom, knowledge and understanding and the application of it.

“Colossians 1:9 says, ‘For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.’

“Look at chapter two verse two: That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ;
[3] In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

“You see, our job is do just like Adam. God had hidden all these treasures in creation and Adam was to go out and harness that. Our privilege is to find the wisdom, understanding, knowledge that’s hidden in Christ; to harness that and then to put it on display.

“That’s what that thing is in Ephesians 2:7: ‘That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.’

“That’s the exceeding riches where you take that peach and wind up with peach a la mode. What we’re doing is digging out all the hidden riches God has put in Christ and developing this entrepreneurial reigning of a servant. It’s sonship service.

*****
“It’s always fascinated me how the Book of Mark starts out. The only one of the synoptic gospels that starts out saying Jesus is the Son of God is the one that’s going to present Him as the servant.

“So what you’re going to see in Mark is the sonship service that the Messiah accomplishes. What is that? The Son, an adult in the family, understands the Father’s will and is out carrying on the Father’s business. Not doing His own will; doing the Father’s will.

“And everything He does (‘The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.’) is extracting out of what God's put there and developing a greater capacity to do that.

“His plan was for Adam to go out among the trees and discover/develop technologies. An entrepreneur is somebody who takes something and makes new things out of it that add value to what’s already there.”

Prince Harry and the Purple People Eater

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.”--Confucius

Illuminati and Freemason fans signal allegiance by closing their right eye or covering it up with their hand. Some men like to tuck their right hand inside their coat. Think Napoleon and Hitler.

Last month, Good Housekeeping magazine put this fake news spin on Prince Harry’s penchant for hiding his right hand in his suit jacket during publicity shoots:

“According to Blanca Cobb, body language expert and author of Method of the Masters, this gesture is Harry's way of putting his guard up when he's in public situations (a.k.a. an engagement photo shoot with hundreds of photographers). ‘Prince Harry's arm placed across his abdomen serves as a barrier to separate or distance himself from something that makes him uncomfortable. In this case, it could be having photos taken.’ It may also be a way to show others that he's protecting not only himself, but his loved ones nearby — we're talking about Ms. Markle, of course.”

In 1958, a novelty song written by Sheb Wooley that hit the top of the charts, was called “The Purple People Eater.” Lyrics include, "Well, I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had one long horn and one big eye. (Ooh!)
I commenced to shakin' and I said, 'Ooh-eee!
It looks like a purple people eater to me!'

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)"

“That Bible you’ve got in your lap, people, is the greatest scientific textbook on things you don’t understand," says Jordan. "You see them and you say, ‘Go on, I don’t understand them,’ but it’s amazing.

“When I was a kid there was the song, ‘The Purple People Eater.’ Well, he's right there in Zechariah 11. He eats people—‘he shall eat the flesh of the fat.’ He flies (Genesis 6) and he’s red, which ain’t too far from being purple."

*****

Judas was a half-breed Syrian Jew indirectly kin to Nimrod, a classic type of the Antichrist in the Word of God.

The name Judas Iscariot itself breaks down to mean “the man from Kerioth.”  As Jeremiah 48:24-26 reports, “And upon Kerioth, and upon Bozrah, and upon all the cities of the land of Moab, far or near.

[25] The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, saith the LORD.
[26] Make ye him drunken: for he magnified himself against the LORD: Moab also shall wallow in his vomit, and he also shall be in derision.”

  

Jordan explains, “Notice there’s a man whose judgment comes at the Second Coming of Christ. If you look back at verse 15 it talks about the king whose name is the Lord of hosts. That’s Christ. In Moab, judgment’s going to be upon Kerioth, and upon a man who’s got a broken arm—a broken-armed man from Moab.

“Zechariah 11 puts this stuff together. Verse 17 says, [17] Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

“That word ‘idol’ there means like a statue, an icon. You know that fellow over there in Revelation 13 who sets up an image and they fall down and worship the image? That’s this guy right here!

“It says ‘the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye.’ That’s a reference to the deadly wound the Antichrist suffers in the midst of the week. Did you ever see a picture of Napoleon? He’s standing with his arm tucked in there like that. People say, ‘I wonder why he did that?’ Well, I wonder why you see old Adolph and he’s walking around like that.

“Then you see these pictures of baby Jesus and His finger’s out. You buy a Bible for kids and it’s got all these pictures of people who’ve got their hand out like that. You ever watch the pope bless somebody? It’s the same thing. That’s the sign of the papal blessing—three fingers out like that and two fingers out like that.

“And so you see the baby Jesus at Christmastime and His hand’s out like that, or His hand’s over here like this. And in Revelation 6, that Antichrist is described as an archer and he shoots that bow, and you know what the sign of an archer is?

“In a college archery class I took, the instructor would show us how to shoot and aim, and he said if you do it right—if you pull that bow out and pull it back, and you always seat that little ‘v’ in your hand right up next to your chin and then let it go—you come out like that with the sign of an archer.

“I’ll never forget him standing out there on that hill, holding those two fingers up, saying, ‘That’s the sign of an archer.’ I thought, ‘Aha.’

*****

“Go back to verse 12 of Zechariah 11 and notice why I bring that passage in. It reads, ‘And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.’

“Where else do you read about 30 pieces of silver? Isn’t it in Matthew 26? That’s it! The next verse in Zechariah says, ‘And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.’

“So you’ve got a prophecy about the betrayal in verses 12-13, and there you have the 30 pieces of silver, or how much he’s going to betray Him for, and in the context, it’s the Antichrist.

“In II Thessalonians 2:3 is a reference to the Antichrist. John 17:12—this is Jesus praying to God the Father about the 12 apostles—it’s Judas in the passage.

“People, Judas Iscariot in this Bible, is associated as a type of the Antichrist and what you’re dealing with when you’re back here in Matthew 26 is a satanic operation designed to cause and bring about the destruction of the Lord Jesus Christ and the purpose and program of God Almighty.

“Matthew puts all the elements on the table for you. There’s the sovereignty of God and the foreknowledge of God: ‘I’m going to go die.’ There’s the religious plot of the religious hierarchy and then there’s the disciples just sitting around fat and happy, not knowing what’s going on.

“Then there’s that little group of people who really enter into it, and then there’s Judas and the Adversary coming in.

“In Exodus 21:32, you’ll see that 30 pieces of silver was the price that was paid for a slave when he was either killed or rendered useless. The guy that did it had to pay 30 pieces of silver to his master. So what Judas sold Christ for was just the price of a useless slave.”

*****

In Matthew 26:21, when they’re in the Upper Room having supper, Christ says, ‘One of you fellows is going to betray me—one of you men, my friends.’ He wants the idea to sink into them.

Jordan explains, “And they say, ‘Is it me? Is it me? Could it be me?’ In other words, these fellows, all of a sudden, they’ve got a guilty conscience. All but one of them.

“In John 13:25, notice one of the disciples didn’t say, ‘Is it I?’ One of them didn’t have a guilty conscience. One of them knew it wasn’t going to be him. John doesn’t say, ‘Is it me?’ He says, ‘Lord, who is it?’ You see, John was the only one of those guys who had a clear conscience.

“In John 18:15-17, there’s old John with Jesus in the palace of the high priest while Peter’s standing outside. John stuck with Christ all the way there. In John 19, who is standing at the foot of the Cross that Jesus commits His momma to? John goes with Him all the way. John was true.

“There wasn’t but one of the apostles to whom Christ revealed who it was that would betray Him and it was John. John is a type . . . you’ll hear people say that in Revelation, John is a type of the church the Body of Christ. If he is, then the church the Body of Christ, in type, is going to have the Antichrist revealed to them and therefore they’re going to have to go through the tribulation.

“John’s a type, people, of the tribulation saints who have the Antichrist revealed to them and remain true to the Lord in the face of it.

“Now in Matthew 26, notice that while the other disciples ask, ‘Lord is it I?’ Judas says in verse 25, ‘Master, is it I?’ Judas Iscariot just could never bring himself to call Jesus Christ ‘Lord.’

“In John 13:13, Jesus says in the Upper Room to His disciples, ‘You call me Lord and Master.’ All the rest of them call him Lord, but with Judas it’s ‘Master.’ He just never could bring himself to be submissive to Christ as Lord.

“In this chapter, there are seven different times Christ tries to win Judas from doing his dastardly deed, and Judas went on in spite of all those attempts by the Savior to stop him.

“Judas went on his way and had his way in spite of the Savior’s attempts to change him. I suppose you and I will never fully understand what that means to live a godly, faithful life, as the Savior did, and then at the very end be betrayed by a trusted confidant—one that you thought enough of that you let him keep the funds for the group.

“He was someone Christ had confidence in and then to be betrayed by him. That’s a heartache that we’ll probably never fully understand, and yet it’s there.”

Angel animates 'dead' Antichrist and world goes, 'We knew HE was the One!'

Regarding the Antichrist, Zechariah 11:17 reveals, [17] Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.

“The way that verse is understood in most teaching is the sword, like in the Book of Job, is his power that’s going to be broken. You know, Christ sits at the right hand of God; the right arm of power.

“Then they say his eye--the source of light, wisdom, understanding--is going to be dried up and so the judgment’s going to come and his arm’s going to be clean dried up. He’s going to lose all his power and his wisdom’s going to be completely gotten rid of and that's what’s going to happen in the Second Coming of Christ. The Antichrist and his power will be negated and gone forever.

“That’s what the preachers say about the passage and that’s okay if you want to take it with a spiritual bent like that, but if you just leave it for what it says, there are some fascinating things in connection with this. What it would mean is that the sword shall be upon his arm and his right eye. This guy’s going to be wounded.

*****

“How do you get both a guy’s eye and his arm? You could probably get this eye and that arm but you’d have to whack at him. You remember Peter in the garden, he cuts the guy’s ear off with a sword? How would you do that?

“To swing hard enough to get it you’d hit his shoulder. But if he was ducking, you could get his ear and it would fly up in the air. Jesus caught it and stuck it back on and healed him. In other words, Pete was trying to cut his head off. Well, in the case of the Antichrist, there’s a sword attack that wounds his arm and his right eye.

“Revelation 13, talking about the Antichrist in verses 1-2, says in verse 3, [3] And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.

“The Antichrist sustains a deadly wound that’s healed. If you have a deadly wound, that’s a mortal wound you die from, so this means he’s not dead anymore. In the process he lives.

“Talking about the two witnesses, Revelation 11:7 says, [7] And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

“Notice there’s a beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit that used to be on the earth. You’ll see him again in chapter 17:8. The beast used to be on the earth, he’s gone out, and now he’s going to ascend and be the one who ultimately goes into perdition.

“Isaiah 37 reports, [5] So the servants of king Hezekiah came to Isaiah.
[6] And Isaiah said unto them, Thus shall ye say unto your master, Thus saith the LORD, Be not afraid of the words that thou hast heard, wherewith the servants of the king of Assyria have blasphemed me.
[7] Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land.

“This is Hezekiah and the Assyrians that are attacking him, but notice what he says in verse 7. You can find all that in Daniel 11. ‘And I will cause him to fall by the sword.’

*****

“About the judgment on the Antichrist, Isaiah 14:18-19 says, [18] All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, every one in his own house (i.e., they’re all dead).
[19] But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet.

“He’s killed by his enemies with a sword but notice what happens to him. He goes down into the grave, wounded with a sword like all these others, but then he gets cast out of the grave.

“The idea there is this guy professes himself to be God. Somebody says, ‘Well, how do you know Jesus Christ is God?’ Romans 1:4 says, [4] And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:

“The dude gets assassinated. He dies. When a man dies, you know where his soul goes? To hell. You know how his soul gets out? You know how people get out of hell? You get out at the Great White Throne Judgment when God casts you into the lake of fire.

“But there lies that dude’s body and there’s a spirit down in the bottomless pit (a fallen angel) which ascends up, takes residence in that body and animates that body.

"He stands up and all the world goes, ‘We knew HE was the One!’ That deadly wound is healed and all the world declares him to be God because he’s declared to be God by that resurrection.

“Listen, Satan is a consummate imitator and counterfeit of what God has done. Satan is a counterfeit of God the Father; ‘your father is the devil.’ The Antichrist is a counterfeit of God the Son and ‘the false prophet’ is a counterfeit of God the Holy Spirit. That unholy trinity--the beast, the false prophet and Satan--works together. Revelation 20:10 says they all wind up in the lake of fire.

“That idol shepherd and the wound he has--the things we’re reading about and why those things become so prominent in the Scripture is because there’s some things that go on in the midst of that 70^th week in connection with the Antichrist BECOMING, and that’s the word people use—he’s becoming.

“You ever seen the movie Red Dragon? The red dragon, the protagonist, keeps saying, ‘I am becoming. I am becoming.’ And he’s transforming himself into this great demonic thing. That becoming is a part of the occult.

*****

“Mystery Babylon the Great comes into all of that. Zechariah 11:16 says, [16] For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor heal that that is broken, nor feed that that standeth still: but he shall eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces.

“You remember how they worship the queen of heaven? They have drink offerings of blood, as Psalm 16:4 calls it, and are eating flesh. You go to a Catholic church and their Mass and they believe when they ring the bell and do the blessing that little cracker becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ. When you put that cracker in your mouth you’re literally eating the flesh. When you take in that hooch you’re drinking the blood.

“In Zechariah, when they eat that flesh, they’re literally sacrificing those believing Jews, the souls under the altar. They’re literally sacrificing them to this character in their religion. ‘They teach thy servants to commit fornication and eat things sacrificed to idols.’ That’s not just the symbolic stuff; at that point it gets to be the real thing!

“So God’s people are being persecuted in a way that’s hard to fathom. Back in Kings it says they had such famine they ate their babies a span long. They’d take a little 18-inch baby and starve him so bad that he dies and then they eat him.

"You think, ‘How does it get that bad?’ When you’ve got a Burger King and a McDonald’s on the same corner you’ve got no way to imagine what it is when you’re starving. This stuff, though, they’re not doing it just because they’re starving; they’re doing it to sacrifice to Satan.”