To everything turn, turn--turn INTO, not BACK

(new article still in process)

In a list of "9 Things Remarkably Successful People NEVER Do," posted to Inc. Magazine's internet site, No. 1 is, "They never let the past dictate their future."

"We all have limitations, we all have challenges, we all make mistakes," reads the entry. "The key is to not be constrained by those things but to learn from them.

Easier said than done? It all depends on your perspective.

"Take mistakes: When something goes wrong, turn it into an opportunity to learn something you didn't know--especially about yourself. (And when something goes wrong for someone else, turn it into an opportunity to be gracious and forgiving.)

"Where you've been, what you've done--everything in the past is just training. Remarkably successful people believe their past should inform them but should never define them."

*****

Most commentaries on the story of Lot and his wife, who looked back and turned to a pillar of salt, would have us believe God is simply teaching morality/discipline lessons, ignoring the account's tremendous prophecy.

For just one example, “Christian living” author Jen Wilkin, who actually admits in her internet article, “I am Lot’s wife,” writes, “As much as we long to move forward in grace, we find our past still pulls at us."

“But it’s not enough to recognize and regret our sin,” she continues. “To leave it behind, we must learn to hate it. And this is where I begin to think about Lot’s wife.

"You remember her—raised a family in a city known for its sexual depravity, had to be physically dragged out of her hometown to avoid its imminent destruction, checked her rearview mirror, and, presto-change-o, turned into your favorite popcorn flavoring. Pretty high up there on the ‘Weird Stories of the Bible’ list.”

*****

“Lot was the opposite of Daniel," explains my pastor, Richard Jordan. "When the king’s meat was set before Daniel, Daniel reasoned, ‘I think I’ll have what God would have for me and not what the king has.’

"Lot was a guy who had absolutely no interest in doing anything but pleasing himself, and so he leaves town without a testimony, dragging his wife and two girls with him.

“Of course, he lost his wife when she turned around to look back and was turned to a pillar of salt. But even after that, Lot wound up living in a cave with his two daughters, and if you know the sad end of that story in Genesis 19, his daughters got him drunk and committed incest with him in order to have children.

“The two kids born of those girls by their daddy in that incestuous relationship.. . wonder where they learned to live in incest with their daddy? They didn’t learn that sitting at the feet of Abraham. They learned that in Sodom.

“They learned that because of the influence of the compromises of their dad, resulting in a pitiful flop of a life, and those two kids who were born of them--go back and check Genesis 19-- plagued God’s people all through the Old Testament. The works of the flesh always do that.

“Lot was vexed, troubled, haunted by the lifestyle that was in Sodom and Gomorrah, but he was a righteous man and because of that God delivered him and he’s a picture of people.

"God cries out to His people in Revelation 18, he cries to Babylon, ‘Come out of her! Come out!’ and God is doing that with Israel. He’s gathering His ‘believing remnant’ out in the Tribulation even in their failure.

*****

“Luke 17 will show you why Peter would have picked up on Lot. Verses 26-32 report, [26] And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
[27] They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
[28] Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
[29] But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
[30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
[31] In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
[32] Remember Lot's wife.

“Lot’s wife is an example of somebody who’s going out but does what? Turns back. Do you remember Hebrews 6 and it says, ‘Here you are, you’ve tasted of the good Word of God and the powers of the world to come, and you’ve been enlightened and so forth. It’s impossible to renew someone in that condition again to repentance if they go back.’

“That’s a verse they use to make you think you might lose your salvation. Hebrews 10:26-27 is another one:  [26] For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,
[27] But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

“These verses in Hebrews match what’s going on in Luke 17. They are ‘Tribulation truth.’ I’m tempted to believe that in the Tribulation period somebody’s going to be going around preaching the eternal security passages in Paul’s epistles--such as Romans 5, 8 and Ephesians 1--making it truth for them. That would be sort of the way things would work, you know.

*****

“Most heresy in the church the Body of Christ today that is Bible heresy, it’s scriptural but not dispensational. Most of it is Tribulation truth. It’s scriptural and will be right and true in the Tribulation, it just isn’t true today. It isn’t what God’s doing today. People who quote these verses take them out of where they fit.

“Well, this passage here is talking about some people who get out and stay out and go, but then there’s some people who turn back and they are those Hebrews 10 talks about. They’re the ones that I John 2 talks about and the ones we’re going to read about later on in II Peter 2.

“These are people who have escaped the corruptions of the world and yet have gone back into it. I John says, [19] They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

“If God’s going to take a literal, physical, visible, earthly nation into a kingdom, He’s not going to take a mixed multitude into that kingdom. And the purpose of the Tribulation period is for the nation Israel—Isaiah 10 says He’s going to take His rod and make them pass under it and it’s only the Believers . . .

“There’s a lot of professers and would-bes that come in, but it’s only the Believer who’s going to get on to the other end, because they that endure to the end shall be saved. The ones who turn back are the ones who don’t ever get the salvation, because you don’t get it until you get into the kingdom. It’s only the ones who are in the kingdom that gain this salvation program, so he says, ‘Don’t be like Lot’s wife.’

*****

“The temptation for these people is going to be to turn back. They’re going to have Judaism restored. They’re going to have the Old Testament sacrificial system, the law and the prophets—they’re going to have it ALL restored for them back in Jerusalem.

“Two hundred and twenty days after the Antichrist signs a covenant with the nation Israel and rescues them from utter destruction, he comes in as their Messiah and their Redeemer.

"Two hundred and twenty days after they make that peace covenant with him--planet wide on CNN and on FOX News--they’re going to inaugurate again the daily sacrifices right there in Jerusalem, in their own temple. The temple will be rebuilt and they’ll be back at it. And then there will be a call that goes out and across the world for the Jews to come back.

“You see the movie Schindler’s List and it says there were less than 2,000 Jews left in Poland at the end of WWII. That’s sort of weeding them down to pretty near nothing. If there’s only 2,000 animals left of a certain species, you call that an endangered species and you’ve got the whole planet going out and trying to save it.

“Well, all those people are going to go back in droves and be set up back over there, and then there will be some little street preacher who stands out on the corner and says, ‘No, no, no, no, no, this is not the real nation! The real Messiah has already come 2,000 years ago. This one who just delivered you, who’s bringing us economic prosperity and peace and giving us our religion and our identity and our homeland back, he’s a phony!’

“Now, what kind of reception do you think that preacher’s going to get?! These people are going to be tempted, pressed, troubled into turning back and the whole issue in the Hebrews epistle is to motivate them not to turn back.

*****

"The message is, ‘Remember the provision God has made for you in the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ and see the finished work and what God has done so you don’t need Judaism anymore. You don’t need the Mosaic Law; He’s put away the old covenant and given you the new covenant!’

“Hebrews never says, ‘Here, look, we’re the members of the Body of Christ.’ It says, ‘Here, Israel, look what God’s done for you in YOUR program through the Cross!’ The Book of James challenges them about the issue of their justification, meaning they needed to go and hold out and do the works that were ‘meet for repentance.’

“I Peter talks to them about that ‘lively hope’ they have. II Peter talks to them about the challenges they’ll have in suffering through these things. I, II and III John talk about the test they’ll use to identify the true believer from the false believer in those days.

“You better not take all those tests for yourself today; they won’t work! That’s why people wind up thinking they can earn their salvation and lose their salvation, or that they’ve got to do something to prove it’s really there’s.

"Because you’re over there in those books trying to make out like something is true of you when it isn’t. There’s something involved here that’s far more serious that just worrying about your money; we’re talking about your soul and your security and it living in you.”

*****

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

“The three illustrations given in the chapter of those God has reserved to judgment are the angels (verse 4), the old world (verse 5) and Sodom & Gomorrah (verse 6). As Peter says in verse 3 about the false prophets and teachers, their damnation is sure and it’s not going to slumber; it’s not going to linger forever and God will pour out His judgment on them.

“II Peter also uses illustrations with Noah and Lot about God delivering the godly from/out of the trouble. It’s interesting that he uses these two men. Noah and Lot are the real ‘latter-day saints,’ not the Mormons. They are illustrations, types and pictures of two classes of people who are going to need to be delivered out of the time of Jacob’s trouble.

“Of course, before God poured judgment out on the world with the Flood, He had Noah, the preacher of righteousness, go and build the Ark. Genesis 7 says Noah and his family were righteous before the Lord and perfect in their generations. That is, they had not had their line contaminated by ‘the sons of god.’ They hadn’t entered into that angelic intermingling, but were people who walked before the Lord by faith in the things of God.

“Now, Lot, on the other hand, was a different kind of a Believer. You notice in II Peter 2:7, it says, [7] And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked:

“That word ‘just’ there doesn’t mean ONLY Lot; it means ‘justified’ Lot. You know that in verse 8: [8] (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;)

“Lot chose to live in Sodom. He could have avoided the influence of Sodom, but he pitched his tents toward Sodom. Lot is the picture of a compromiser. Lot is a picture of a man with no separation in his life and testimony.

“When Lot was delivered out of Sodom, he convinced his two unmarried daughters to go with him, but with his other daughters and their husbands, they wouldn’t go. Lot had no testimony of any value to anybody.

“When Lot tried to share God’s Word with them and tell them about the coming judgment, they laughed up their sleeve at him. He had all kind of influence in the social, economic, cultural and political societies of Sodom, but Lot had no spiritual influence because of him being a compromiser."

Immense jungle

(new article tomorrow)

Noah lived 350 years after the Flood and died at 950, only 50 years before Abraham’s birth. “It is entirely possible that Abraham saw one or more of Noah’s three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth,” writes Noah W. Hutchings in his 1998 classic God Divided the Nations. “Ham had 30 sons, Japheth had 14 sons and Shem had 26 sons. We are not told how many daughters they had.

“It certainly would be improbable for a woman to have this many children in a normal life span today. Peleg, who lived at the time of the Tower of Babel, lived to be 239 years of age, and Eber, a grandson of Noah, lived to 464 years of age. So even after the Flood, for about 400 years, men lived to be 700 years old, and had large families. This was for the purpose of the rapid replenishing of the earth with people, since God desired that all the earth be reinhabited again.”

*****

“The ‘old world,’ which was the pre-Flood world, offers some very interesting things to examine when you study Genesis 1-10 and then come to Genesis 11,” says Richard Jordan. “In Genesis 11 is a genealogy you can compare to the time period of the peoples’ lives in Genesis 5.

“In Genesis 5, people lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Methuselah lives 969 years and his life is cut short actually. People aren’t even having children until they’re 200-300 years old.

“Immediately after the Flood the longevity span begins to drop to less than 100 years. It quickly tapers down. The question asked is, ‘Why is that?’ One of the obvious reasons is there was a tremendous difference in the way the world was structured prior to the Flood and after the Flood.

“Before the Flood, the earth was not tilted on the 23.5 degree axis that it is now. That’s what makes us have seasons. Seasons are introduced in the Bible in Genesis 8:22, after the Flood. Prior to the Flood, the earth would have been a tropics kind of environment all around. That’s why in the archaeological evidence you find all kinds of indications of that in strange places.

*****

“Another thing is the Garden of Eden was on earth. In Genesis 4, Cain and Abel go to the door of the Garden and the cherubim are there providing the way that man can bring a sacrifice and offer it before God. There was place to go in the earth for those sacrifices.

“After the Flood, that place is gone; it’s been removed from the earth. When Noah gets off the Ark, he offers for the first time a burnt offering. The offering had to ascend UP into God’s presence. Noah is a second Adam. We’re all the sons of Adam here tonight but were also all the sons of Noah.”

Hutchings writes, "The Garden of Eden must have been an immense jungle of vegetation and animal life. The general area, as evidenced by the junction of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, was somewhere in the Persian Gulf near Kuwait. Oil is the residue of the decomposition of animal and vegetable matter, and there is more oil under the ground in that area than in any other place in the world . . . 

"Before the Flood it was unnecessary for men to eat meat, because the nuts and herbs were delicious and nutritious. Adam was told in Genesis 1:29 that the herbs, the seeds and the fruit of the trees 'shall be for meat' . . .

"If the world was restored to its Edenic condition, many of the reasons nations go to war against each other would be resolved. There would be food, shelter and clothing for everyone."

Historian Josephus says the "Garden was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts."

*****

“In this Garden, God has planted precious plants, costly spices and aromatic herbs. writes Bible expositor Cora MacIlravy, circa 1916, in her book on the Song of Solomon. "He has planted lilies, which are white and pure, humble and fragrant; and among these lilies is found the One who is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valleys . . . 

"When God sends the Holy Spirit as the north wind, He comes and uncovers our nakedness, exposing the selfishness of our thoughts, and our false position. With a blast of conviction, He blows upon those suckers, and like a mighty wind He sweeps down upon them to try them. As they fall off, we are left apparently stripped and bare; but, in reality, we are in a better condition to bring forth blossoms and fruit to His glory than we have ever been before . . . 

“In spiritual things, as in the natural, the blossom is not the fruit. How many times we see a vineyard or fruit tree beautiful with fragrant blossoms, and we begin to look forward to an abundant harvest of fruit. But when the blossoms fall off, and it is time for the fruit to appear, there are only a few small, weakly apples, pears, or grapes, whatever the fruit may be; and all the beautiful blossoms lie decaying and unsightly upon the ground beneath the tree.”  

Nix pre-trib Rapture and Satan smiles

Ephesians 1:18: [18] The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.

"He's going to use us to inherit the heavenly places, reoccupy them and bring them to fruition to do what His original plan was," explains Richard Jordan.

"We have a calling that gives us a hope. Too often people misunderstand Titus 2:13 and it causes you to lose a lot.

"If you start in verse 11: [11] For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

[12] Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
[13] Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

"That word looking is the idea of 'What's next?' Expectation. Notice you're not looking for anything except the blessed hope and the glorious appearing. That's where we get the idea of imminence of the Rapture. There's nothing you're told to look for happening before that.

"Imminence means there's nothing else that needs to take place before that happens. It's the next thing God's going to do. That's where the idea of the pre-trib Rapture comes in.

"The pre-trib Rapture is being abandoned on every hand today because dispensationalism is being abandoned on every hand today in the evangelical world. Without understanding how to rightly divide the Word you would never divide between the coming for the Body of Christ and Israel because you would think they're all the same.

"Am I looking for one thing or two things; am I looking for the blessed hope AND the glorious appearing? Is that two things or one thing? When you make it one thing, that's when people say, 'What I'm looking for is the Rapture.'

"You've said this: 'Can things get any worse? The Lord's just got to come; things are getting so bad you know He's got to be coming to get us out of here.' Is that all you're looking for--to get out of here?

"If the hope is the appearing, yeah, but if it's not that--what if it's two things? What if the blessed hope is where He's going to take us. That is, what is my confident expectation of the future?

"The idea of the pre-trib Rapture is critical because WHEN the Rapture takes place tells you WHAT takes place.

*****

Here's an old post:

Answering the question of, “Will the Body of Christ go into or even through the tribulation?” Les Feldick writes in his book Questions and Answers from the Bible, “Paul alone gives us the Scriptures concerning what many now ridicule—the rapture or the catching up of the Church which is His body . . .

“Every book that listeners send me advocating a later out-calling mixes verses (from Paul’s epistles) with all other verses that apply only to the Second Coming when Christ will stand on the Mount of Olives. If you mix Paul’s doctrine concerning the rapture of the Church with the Second Coming, then you can mix law and Grace. And, when you mix law and Grace, Satan smiles and God is grieved.”

*****

Jordan relays, “Some years ago we had some brethren say, ‘Well, we don’t believe in a pre-trib Rapture anymore; we believe the Rapture takes place at the end of the tribulation, after revelation of the Antichrist right before the end.’ They kept asking the question, ‘Do you have a verse that shows you the Rapture is pre-trib?’

“Well, a lot of verses clearly indicate that it is. But they wanted a verse that said it and I always point to II Thessalonians 2:13, which tells you that from the beginning of the 'dispensation of grace,' God’s plan is to save you from the Antichrist.

“Paul writes, [13] But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:

“This is a Calvinist’s favorite verse because it’s the only verse that connects ‘election’ to salvation. In your Bible, though, election is never connected with anybody’s soul salvation or justification. It’s always associated with ‘the purpose of God according to the election,’ which is that the elder might serve the younger. Election always has to do with service in the Bible, never with salvation.

“When you tell people that, somebody will always say, ‘Yeah, but, Brother Rick, what about II Thessalonians 2:13?’ Well, here’s a ‘what about.’ 

"See, God from the beginning chose you to be saved. But you can’t come in with a theological thinking based on some philosophical speculation in the theological gymnastics. You have to come to the verse and read the verse in its context.

*****

“What ‘beginning’ is he talking about? Look at verse 14: [14] Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Was there a time when Paul’s gospel was not preached? Was there a time when Paul’s gospel began to be preached? So what do you think the ‘beginning’ in verse 13 might be? It’s the time when verse 14 began to be preached. When is that? That’s the beginning of the 'dispensation of grace.'

“From the beginning of the 'dispensation of grace' God has chosen the Body of Christ to salvation. What salvation? Keep reading verse 14: ‘to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

“When does that happen? You have salvation in three parts. The first phase is justification, where you have salvation in the present tense. Sanctification is where we grow and walk in that grace. Glorification is that salvation in the future tense when you receive your glorified body and obtain the glorification of our Lord. That’s why Paul talks about having peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

*****

“Romans 5:1-2 says, [1] Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
[2] By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

“When Paul writes, ‘and we rejoice in hope,’ that’s our future. That glory out there, that’s our hope. It’s not just going to be a prospect; it’s going to be ours. We’re going to obtain it. When? That’s what happens in the Rapture.

“What the verse is telling you is God’s purpose has been to save the Body of Christ from the prophetic program’s wrath. Look at I Thessalonians 5 and 9. You’re not appointed to wrath and that’s what II Thessalonians 2:14 is talking about.

“Paul then says in verse 15, [15] Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

“By the way, the only way you’re going to believe in the pre-trib Rapture is by ‘rightly dividing the Word,’ recognizing the distinctive ministry of the Apostle Paul.

"If you try to go back into Matthew 24 and 25, or Mark 13 and Luke 21, and get a pre-trib Rapture--and a lot of Acts 2 people do it all the time--it isn’t going to work because it’s not back there. The people Christ’s talking to back there are going to go through the tribulation and He prepares them to do it.

“I see people all the time trying to prove an imminence of the Lord’s coming, where He can come at any moment, and they use Matthew to do it and I say, ‘Don’t you read?’ That’s why people abandon the pre-trib Rapture; because they go to passages that aren’t pre-trib.

*****

 

“At the Rapture, God literally gathers the Body of Christ and puts the head and the body together for the first time, completely, right in the midst of Satan’s dominion. Pastor Kurz likes to say that when God created Adam, he threw dirt in the devil’s face, and the ultimate throwing of dirt in the devil’s face is going to be right there.

“Paul writes in II Thessalonians 4: 16-17: ‘[16] For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
[17] Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
[18] Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

“Now, when he says we’ll ‘be with the Lord,’ that’s not just the idea of I’m going to be in the room with Him. People argue, ‘Well, I need to know if I’m going to come back on the earth with Him because He’s going to be on the earth.’ Listen, if it had to be that you were going to be in the physical location where the Lord is, how would that work? There’s too many people to be physically with Him.

“That ‘be with the Lord’ is more the idea of ‘those who are with me and those who are against me.’ He’s saying that forever we’re going to ‘get with the program’; we’re going to spend eternity operating and functioning in, rejoicing in what He’s doing and we’re going to be with Him through it all.

“I used to have a friend who’d say, ‘The greatest thing about heaven is I’ll never disappoint the Lord again.’ I came to realize, ‘What’s wonderful to know is you don’t have to wait ’til heaven for that; you’re that in Christ already!’

“You already are accepted; you already are blessed, approved, blameless. You just need to go live in the reality of who God has ALREADY made you in Him. You don’t have to try and attain it; it’s already yours. Go live like it! You see, it’s a different perspective of the Christian life. What a prospect that is!

“By the way, when Paul says ‘wherefore comfort one another with these words,’ the idea is these w-o-r-d-s give internal strength and fortitude. They put fortitude down inside of you where, no matter what happens to your outer man, that ‘inner man is renewed, strengthened by His Spirit with MIGHT’; with the miracle-working power of God in your inner man. That’s God’s Word; that’s God Spirit working in you.”

(new article tomorrow)

Hell only holding cell for Big House

(sorry for delay--new article tomorrow for certain)

There’s a dangerous but popular doctrine among Christians that says when Jesus Christ died on the Cross, He first went down to the torments of hell and "dumped off" saved people’s sin before being resurrected and going up to heaven.

“When Jesus Christ said on the Cross, ‘It is finished,’ He meant it’s finished,” explains Richard Jordan. “Is that hard to understand?! It’s done; it’s finished. What was finished? Fulfilling the Scripture. As we know from John 19:28, He thought through all the Scripture and the one verse that hadn’t yet been fulfilled, He said, ‘I thirst,’ which was Psalm 69, and it was all done!

“To say Christ died, went to hell and somehow deposited your sins there is also a misunderstanding of what hell is and the issue of eternal judgment. It’s a dispensational issue in the sense that where (lost dead) people are, and where they’re located and how they’re treated, changes progressively as time goes on. Ultimately, lost people wind up in a place called ‘the lake of fire,’ and hell and the lake of fire are not the same thing in the Bible.

*****

“In time past, hell, which is in the heart of the earth, had a torment side and ‘Abraham’s bosom,’ or the paradise side (Luke 23:43). That’s why King David could say, ‘Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell.’ He went to Abraham’s bosom because he was a saved guy. Lost people went to the torment side.

“As Jesus Christ says of the rich man in Luke 16:23, ‘And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.’ In other words, the rich man, who’s lost, goes down to the torment side and Lazarus, as a Believer, goes to Abraham’s bosom. Any question about that?

“By the way, the rich man sees Lazarus. He’s conscious. It’s conscious existence in torment. That’s what the text says. Somebody argues, ‘It’s a parable.’ Then the reality is worse than what you’re reading! You make it a parable and that means the reality is more severe than the illustration. People have all these ideas to get around it, but you just get yourself in the soup even worse.

“Verse 24: [24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

“Notice what’s in hell and in paradise has a finger and a tongue. The rich man’s buried body is just a carnival for the maggots up on the surface, but your soul has a physical shape to it--appendages to it that are comparable to your physical body. In other words, it’s REAL; it has substance to it.

“He says he’s ‘tormented in this flame.’ If you say, ‘Well, I don’t believe it’s literal,’ then it’s something WORSE than fire. Whatever it is, it’s going to disintegrate you just like that. If you want to do all the symbolic, figurative and apocalyptic stuff, go ahead, but it just makes it worse; it doesn’t make it less.

“This is why people think the grave is hell because these two guys are there. It’s not. The body’s in hell. Verse 25: [25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

“Do you see how you still have your mental faculties? It’s a conscious ability to think. You know, one the most tormenting things to me about a place called the torments of hell would be that issue of remembering.

“If you’re lost, you’re going to die and go to hell and remember every opportunity you had to not to be there. Sure as you’re sitting there, there’s some little bony-fingered demon going to come up in your face and say, ‘forever, forever, forever, forever,’ and you’re going to remember it didn’t have to be that way.

“Verse 26: ‘[26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

“So if Jesus Christ died and went down to the torment side, that verse says you can’t go from the torment side to the comfort side. You see how that works? There’s a gulf fixed where you can’t go back and forth.

“You say, ‘Well, Jesus is God; He could do what He wanted to do,’ and yeah, He’s telling you right there how He set it up to do! He doesn’t contradict His Word. How does it work? If you’ve over there, you stay over there, and if you’re over here, you stay over here. You see, folks who don’t understand how hell works in the Bible wind up with doctrines that don’t fit how things work in the Bible.

*****

"Come to Revelation 20 and notice how hell is not the ultimate end of lost people. Starting in verse 11, it says, [11] And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
[12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.
[13] And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.
[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

“After the Cross, and the Old Testament saints are moved into ‘the third heaven,’ who’s down there? Nobody but lost people. Today when somebody dies and goes to hell, it’s because they’re lost. In the Old Testament you could die and go to hell and be a Believer. Paul says 'to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.'

“Isaiah says ‘hell hath enlarged herself.’ It took over the whole place. After Christ comes back, and at the end of the millennium kingdom's thousand years, you have this Great White Throne Judgment where the dead, small and great--all the people down in hell--stand before God and all the people not found in ‘the book of life,’ i.e. lost people, are cast into the lake of fire.

*****

“The verse says hell and death are cast into the lake of fire. Hell is a temporary holding cell until the final judgment.

"John 3:18 says, ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’

“You see that word ‘already’? They didn’t have to become condemned; they are condemned already. You see, God isn’t waiting to see whether you deserve to die and go to the lake of fire. You deserve it! You were already a sinner come short of the glory of God and condemned.

“It’s like if you go to courthouse and they find you guilty, they then send you out to county jail, but you return to the courthouse for your sentencing. There’s no ‘finding you guilty’—you’re already guilty, dude! The trial’s already been had.

“If you want see the transcript from your trial—all of your arguments to get around it—go back and read Romans 1-3. In chapter three, Paul says, ‘We have before proven. We’ve taken you to court and proven you that you’re guilty!' You were hoping for a ‘not guilty’ sentence? YOU? Knowing about you what you know about you, and you think you’re going to stand before a righteous God . . . well, you know better than that.

“What the Great White Throne Judgment is is the sentencing where you’re sent to the Big House called the lake of fire. That’s where you’re ‘judged out of the books’ and laccording to your works.

"The severity of the punishment takes place there and then all of that is cast down into the lake of fire. They don’t experience the second death in hell; they experience the second death here. Hell’s bad, but in the lake of fire there’s something else that goes on that’s even badder than bad.”

Man of sin: 'Give peace a chance'

As a kid I liked the Coca-Cola song that went: 

I'd like to build a world a home
And furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves
I'd like to teach the world to sing

In perfect harmony
And I'd like to hold it in my arms
And keep it company
I'd like to see the world for once

All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land

Matthew 24:15-16 says, [15] When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

[16] Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

During the midst of the 70th Week, the 'abomination of desolation' is set up in the holy place; the man of sin sets it up in the temple inside Jerusalem. This is when God commands Believers in Israel to flee into the mountains.

"In Revelation 18, what did God say to His people? 'Come out of her.' So they had to be located within her," explains David Reid.

"Well, isn't that what Matthew 24:16 says? Revelation 18 has to be referring to where those Believers were currently located in Jerusalem.

"Mystery Babylon, i.e., Jerusalem at that time, will be incredibly enticing, incredibly attractive to the Jewish people. Why is that? One reason is it will have peace.

"During the 70th week, the man of sin acquires enough political power over the nations around Jerusalem that he will sign a covenant with Israel to guarantee their peace and safety.

"Ultimately he's going to act contrary to it, but he signs that covenant guaranteeing peace and you can imagine Israel would be happy to sign that after years and years of wars and terrorism.

"What Israel also has is incredible wealth, as told in Revelation 18: [2] And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

[3] For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. 

*****

Jordan explains, “Remember, the power of the state is in the police and military; that’s why they can be so dangerous. They are the enforcing arm of a government and that’s why you have to have a rule of law so they operate in an agreed-upon social contract.

“If you want to see the kind of guy this character the Antichrist will be, Daniel 7 tells you he’s an intellectual genius, a wizard at words and communication. It says he speaks with great swelling words. He’s a military genius, a political genius, a commercial genius.

“Daniel 8:23 says, [23] And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.

“The Antichrist’s going to be a genius about understanding dark, difficult, hard, mystical sayings. He’s also that fierce, bloody, violent man.

“The passage goes on, [24] And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.
[25] And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.

“When it says ‘his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power,’ that’s saying he’s going to have Satan give him his power and his seat.

*****

“It says, ‘He shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and by peace shall destroy many.’ He’s going to come in and say, ‘Peace, peace.’

“Daniel 11:21-22 says, [21] And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.
[22] And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant.

“That’s all that stuff in Isaiah 30 about ‘speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.’ His words will be smoother than butter. Deceit’s in his heart but he doesn’t say he’s going to obtain the authority. Israel’s going to literally surrender to him through a peace plan.

“Daniel 11:24 says, [24] He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall forecast his devices against the strong holds, even for a time.

“They’re going to think, ‘This guy, he’s a commercial, military, political genius and we’re getting RICH by helping him!’ As soon as they get there, though, he pulls the rug out from under them. He’s a deceiver.

*****

“In Daniel 8, Daniel sees another end-times vision in the third year of the reign of Babylon. It’s a subsequent vision to chapter 7. What he sees is a ram with two horns. Then, in verse 5, he sees an he goat come up and destroy the ram. Daniel then says, ‘What is this?’ By the way, after the he goat destroys the ram the he goat fills up the whole earth and then the he goat’s broken into four pieces.

“The interpretation of that starts in verse 8: [8] Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.

“Come down in the chapter and look at the interpretation: [19] And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall be.
[20] The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.
[21] And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.

“Again, we’re talking about the ‘last days’; end-times prophecy. The he goat is the king of Grecia. The great horn between his eyes is the first king. The ram is Media-Persia. The horn that comes up is the first king of Greece. Who was that? Alexander the Great.

“Verse 22: ‘Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.’

“So that king, the Antichrist, comes up out of one of those four divisions of the Greek Empire. The king of the north is Assyria. The king of the south is Egypt. If you keep reading, it’s the king of the north and the king of the south that battle in chapter 11.

“Out of those two nations, the Antichrist comes out of Syria. He doesn’t come out of Europe. He is the Assyrian by national origin. Daniel tells you that’s where he’s going to come from, so when you’re watching the politics of this thing, watch this guy. And when you see the guy take over the 10 kings by subduing three and rising up, you know you’ve got your man. So there’s descriptive prophetic details that will help a fellow.

“Daniel 11:30 says, [30] For the ships of Chittim shall come against him: therefore he shall be grieved, and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant: so shall he do; he shall even return, and have intelligence with them that forsake the holy covenant.

“He’s going to break the covenant and blame Israel for doing it. He’s not going to take credit; he’s going to blame them.

“Verse 31: [31] And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.

“Jesus talked about that in Matthew 23: ‘Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.’ Right in the middle of all that deceptiveness where the Antichrist’s lying to them through his teeth, the people who know their God shall be strong and it says “they that understand shall instruct many.”

“There’s a Believing Remnant who’s going to know what’s going on because they read these prophecies and say, ‘There it is, here it is; here’s what God says that is!’ So they’re the ones who trust God’s Word; they’re the ones the Antichrist is trying to persecute, eliminate and destroy.”

(new article tomorrow)

What a friend did--suicide?!

Once New Year's Day puts an official end to the season’s hoopla people get depressed at the prospect of returning to work and starting another year of everyday life with all its hardships and uncertainty.

It is amazing how many great hymns from history were born of sad things and accompanying intense emotions—the death of a loved one, personal tragedy, ailments and impairments, tremendous physical and/or mental hardships, on and on.

I was quite surprised to learn that the author of a very favorite hymn of mine since childhood, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” is speculated to have actually committed suicide!

“There are conflicting reports about the death of Joseph Scriven,” writes Helen Salem Rizk in her 1964 book, “Stories of the Christian Hymns.” “Some authorities say he died of natural causes; others that he took his life in a fit of melancholia. However, they all agree as to the humility and kindness that ruled his days from the great tragedy on the eve of his marriage, when his bride-to-be accidentally drowned, to the day of his death in 1886.”

Considered one of the ten most popular Christian hymns ever published, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” was discovered “in a very dramatic manner,” says Rizk. “When Scriven, who lived an extremely tragic life, was in his last days, a friend who was sitting with him during a time of severe illness came upon the manuscript.

"The friend was very impressed and wondered why it never had been published. Scriven replied, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus has been written by God and me to comfort my mother during a time of great sorrow.’

“He explained that he never intended that it be used by anyone else. Strange are the ways of fate; a song written only for the life and need of one person became the inspiration of millions!”

*****

The classic hymns, “O For a Closer Walk with God,” and “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” were written by the son of a clergyman, William Cowper (born in England in 1731), who four times in his life was committed to insane asylums and many times attempted suicide, says Rizk.

“His sixty-nine years of life were physical torture and mental anguish,” she writes. “The burden of his mental affliction and at times partial insanity was lightened by his desire and ability to write . . . This suffering man was loved by many and known to be a true Christian. He was able to produce some of our sweetest and most spiritual hymns.

Of “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood,” she noted, “People have sung this grand old favorite through the years. Probably unaware of the struggle Cowper had in his life, they see only the beauty and feeling reflected in this hymn.”

*****

For George Matheson’s “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go,” Rizk summarizes, “This great hymn of courage and faith was written, strangely enough, under circumstances of tragic inner conflict and severe mental suffering as a release from personal tragedy . . .

"The courage and fortitude of Dr. Matheson (1842-1906) was evidenced by the dramatic fact that from this deep sorrow and heartache he could write: ‘O love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.’ ”

*****

The classic of classics, “Sweet By and By,” is written by Sanford Filmore Bennett (1836-1898).  “It is said that this entire hymn, including words by S.F. Bennett and music by J.P. Webster, was written and composed in less than 30 minutes,” Rizk’s book confirms. “Webster, who was subject to moods of melancholy and depression, once visited his friend Bennett who was writing at his desk.

“Walking to the fire, Webster turned his back to his friend without a word. When Bennett asked him what the matter was, he received the curt reply that ‘it would be alright, by and by.’ Seizing upon the last three words, Bennett exclaimed, ‘The sweet by and by! That would make a good title for a hymn!’

“Whereupon, he wrote without stopping, covering the paper as fast as his pen could go. When he finished he handed the manuscript to Webster, who immediately sat down and composed a melody to fit the stirring words. From this union in the village of Elkhorn, Wisconsin, the gospel hymn was born: ‘There’s a land that is fairer than day, And by faith we can see it afar, For the Father waits, over the way, To prepare us a dwelling-place there.’ ”

*****

“We instinctively withdraw our hand if it’s getting burned, right? But when it comes to tribulation, God’s attitude and perspective is, ‘No, I don’t want you to behave like that,’ ” explains my pastor Alex Kurz.

“There’s a direct correlation with the activity of godliness and the sanctifying effect that tribulations now have in life.

"It isn’t something that we dread. It isn’t something we run away from. It’s something we cannot only welcome but recognize in it that we’re 'more than conquerors.'

"God says there is a specific provision He gives to us so we can triumph in life. Instead of looking at tribulation as something to avoid, we’re to see its value. It’s no longer an enemy. I don’t have to fear or dread. I now can welcome those tribulations.

*****

“Hebrews 5:7 is a powerful, powerful verse of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.’

“He was a man of sorrows. Jesus was acquainted with grief. You don’t think He was touched by the effects of living in a sin-cursed world, or the emotional and psychological trauma; the rejection and alienation? He knows--He feels hurt. He feels pain.

“Verse 5:8 says, ‘Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.’

“He didn’t succumb. While He’s in pain, while He’s in anguish, while He’s experiencing the trauma, you know what He chooses to do? ‘I’m going to learn.’ It’s a learning experience! When tribulations come our way, what a learning experience!

*****

“The theme of II Corinthians actually has to do with sufferings, tribulations and infirmities. It’s probably the darkest epistle the Apostle Paul wrote.

“He starts chapter 1 with, ‘Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and 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.’

“Drop down to verse 9: ‘But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:

[10] Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.’

*****

“We’re going to learn to trust what God has to say about tribulations. Our flesh and our emotions, which are committed to avoiding all that . . . we now can tackle it with this renewed understanding; this renewed knowledge about it. Don’t fear it; don’t dread it.

“Paul says, ‘I’m now going to trust what God says.’ If He says tribulation is ordained to be a spiritual benefit and blessing, are we going to believe what He says about it? We have to readjust the way we think about the problems of life.

“God will not remove your affliction. That’s why when Paul said three times, ‘Lord Jesus, please,’ He responded, ‘Paul, you aren’t thinking about what’s happening in your life,’ and Christ reminds Paul about the available inner man capacity that he already had.

"Jesus didn’t say ‘no’ and He didn’t say ‘yes,’ He just said, ‘Paul, you’ve already got something. I don’t need to do any more.’

“God will not miraculously reach down into your life and remove your problem or shield you from the problem. He doesn’t give us immunity or a hedge of protection. God said, ‘It’s a blessing.’

“What do we KNOW? ‘Hey, it’s going to work something!’ When bad things happen in your life, it has absolutely nothing to do with God’s displeasure. It has everything to do with God’s delight in producing something in the core of your inner man.

“ ‘If I’m going to glory,’ Paul says, ‘I’m going to glory in the things concerning my infirmities. God’s not angry with me; He’s not angry with you.’

‘So wait a minute, Paul, why do you look like a physical mess?!’ Paul’s going to say, ‘You know what, that’s my certificate!’

“Acts 14:22 says, ‘Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.’

“It says, ‘We must.’ Is that optional? It’s a reality. The sooner we accept the fact that tribulation is part and parcel of our experience and edification, the sooner we can employ the very doctrines God says we need in order to glory in and see the value, worth, profit and advantage in it.”

*****

Proverbs 23 says, ‘For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.’

“Your heart has a mind to it. It has a capacity to think. Paul says in Romans 10:10: ‘For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,’ " explains Richard Jordan/

“So a part of your heart is the fact you have a will. You’re able to choose. You can will. Believing is to choose to accept and trust something. Your heart is where your will is, but your heart also has emotions. You can be 'exceedingly sorrowful.' Those three components make up your soul.

“Your constitution when God made you—the way He designed you, you have a spirit, soul and body. Your will takes the things in your mind and believes it, trusts it and depends on it.

"Your will, making a choice to depend on something, gives that thing you’re trusting control of your life. When your will makes the choice, your emotions can respond to your will and the action comes out of there.

“Take the 'E' off of emotion and what do you have? Motion. The connecting point between your soul, your mind, your inner man and your body, it’s sort of like the connection is involved in your emotions.

"What happens is your emotions are a function of your soul that can reach into your physical frame and stimulate it. It can shoot the adrenalin. You know, all the different emotions.

*****

“Love and fear are the two ultimate emotions. Every other emotion you have is a gradation of those two, and for some, a combination of them.

"Your emotions are designed to make you move, get you acting, because there’s something inside of you that’s working OUT of you.

“Your emotions are absolutely dumb. They have no intellect at all. The facts of life, of a situation, do not determine your experience. It’s how you THINK about those facts that determine your experience.

“If you were to get news that your family had been in a horrific accident and killed, how would you feel? You’d feel devastated because you believed a report.

"You have no factual evidence; all you’re doing is believing what someone told you. The facts may be entirely different. Somebody might be lying to you.

“When your mind is programmed by truth, then your will can take an action based on faith and truth. And when you trust God’s Word, what does it do? It works effectually in you that believe; having truth be what programs your mind …

“When your mind is programmed by error, what happens is it produces some predictable emotional responses because error always does that. And those predictable emotional responses and desires that error produce result in erroneous behavior.

*****

“Take Romans 7. We talk about addicts. They want that feeling so they depend on that pill (or whatever it is) to give it to them. The dependence on that pill is controlling them. You see, anything you depend on will control your life, so if you depend on truth, truth will control your life.

“When you sin, you’re going to respond to that sin in one of two ways. Your response to it is going to be based upon your flesh, your own resources. And that’s what you find in Romans—a law response. The law is simply a performance-based acceptance mentality: ‘I’ll be accepted based on my performance.’

“The law, the standard you’re performing by, might be God’s law, might be your wife’s law, might be your law, might be your company’s . . . It’s just, ‘I can live up to whatever it is.’

“The other way to respond is to respond in your identity in Christ. Respond in your spirit and on the basis of grace. Grace is all that God is free to do through the finished work of Jesus Christ. Grace is who I am in Christ, who He is and who God’s made me in Him.

“So when I sin I have a choice. I look at what’s happened and I say, ‘I can go into 'Operation Cover-up' or I can go into 'Operation Let’s- fix-this-thing.’ Every time sin is in your life, that’s the choice.”

Toddler living in house, not manger

(sorry for delay in new article. We lost power last night and I couldn't sleep as a result but still had to get up at usual time to go to work. Power was restored at 1:30 a.m. thankfully! I admit my heart was pounding for 10 minutes straight after it first went out, thinking how bad it would be if it was for a prolonged time. My mind tends to go to the worst-case scenario and last night lying in bed, with the darkness and wind howling, it was running like a broken toilet. Sure makes you appreciate how important electricity is for all aspects of life.)

The power to destroy Satan comes from the birth of a child, the seed of the woman.

Isaiah 9:6: [6] For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

“That verse is on all kind of Christmas cards," says Richard Jordan. "A child is born (the first coming), unto us a son is given (Second Coming). You can’t have the Second Coming without the first, so there’s going to be a child, but He isn’t going to stay a baby.

“Everybody loves a baby but people don’t necessarily like adults. That’s why Christmas is so popular; it’s a little teeny baby. But the baby’s a big boy now and He went to Calvary and He died and He rose again.

*****

"When the wise men (the Magi) come on the scene in Matthew 2, Jesus Christ is NOT a babe in the manger—He’s a toddler living in a house in Nazareth!

“He’s not a baby in the sense of a newborn infant; He’s as much as two years old and living in a house. When Herod wants to go find Jesus, he says, ‘Go out and have every male baby two years and younger killed.' Why? He’d looked for the timing when the star appeared because he wanted to know how old the baby was.

“He’s called a ‘young child’ over and over in Matthew 2. No longer the infant baby, but the little toddler now, and yet He’s still God in our humanity.

 
*****

Matthew 2: ‘[2] Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[3] When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
[4] And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
[6] And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’

“Herod went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ And they answered, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Judah.’

“Now that’s just like a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there! Look at what it says: ‘And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Juda.’

“Micah said you are ‘the least.’ These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little insignificant po-dunk place out yonder. They said, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.

*****

“You better watch so-called ‘religious scholars’ because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself.

“Don’t let somebody take the thing out of its context, stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did! You have to be careful letting people mess around with your Bible.

*****

“Now why did he get the town right? Because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem. Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify Him! Away with Him! We will not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspecting, unknowing, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is.

“Micah 5:1-2 says, ‘Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’

“Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. That’s seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence. Micah prophesies to the nation Israel about facing enemies coming in and invading their land, economic collapse and political upheaval and political corruption.

“You talk about a Middle East problem! The Middle East has been in turmoil for millenniums. You go 2,500 years ago in Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then! And the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel was to destroy Israel. 

*****

“Bethlehem was a small, itty-bitty little insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time and that’s why Micah says ‘Bethlehem Ephratah.’ That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which Christ resides.

“The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy, you remember, became king.

“It says, ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ In Galatians when Paul said, ‘God send forth His Son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse where Micah says, ‘Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall come forth.’

*****

“When it says, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old,’ you see how ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. Now if you’re old, you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you’ve been around. That’s a reference to time.

“You can go back to a place where time began. In the beginning of what? Time and creation. In the beginning of that continuum in which we live—time and space.

“But this one that’s going to come forth in time, comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human person; this is God stepping out of eternity into time in the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His deity--that He was who He said He was--by fulfilling that verse.

“Seven hundred years after Micah, the wise men come to Jerusalem ‘seeking him born king of the Jews.’ They know the time! How did a bunch of Gentiles over in the east know? They had some books that told them the time when He was going to be born. God had identified a time and apostate Israel, who had no care for their Bible, laid it aside, but some other people took it up and knew WHEN to be looking.

*****

“They saw His star. They saw exactly what Jacob told Israel to be looking for in Genesis 49. Just what Balaam, in Numbers 23, said would happen. Just exactly the timeline Daniel told Israel it would be.

“Where would you go to look for the king of Israel? Well, Jerusalem’s the ‘city of the great king,’ so they go there.

“In Luke, you go to the nativity and you see the shepherds and they’re biding in the field in that night and they go and worship the babe and then they find Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger.”