Dagon, the god of evolution, and the Little Mermaid

(RNS) — "On Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, the United Arab Emirates officially opened the Abrahamic Family House, consisting of a mosque, church and synagogue that face one another on the same square in Abu Dhabi. Beside each one stands a tall pillar illuminating an Islamic crescent, Christian cross and a Jewish menorah, respectively, shining a hopeful light for interfaith tolerance and understanding. Something good is happening in the desert — but will it make a lasting difference?"

******

I Samuel 5:1: [1] And the Philistines took the ark of God, and brought it from Eben-ezer unto Ashdod.

"They took it from a place where God's blessing resided to Ashdod. Why there?

[2] When the Philistines took the ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon.

"Dagon was the fish god. You ever see the pope when he comes in with that hat where the part looks like a fish mouth? Go in the bookstore and get Alexander Hislop's book 'Two Babylons' and he's got wood carvings and pictures of it from 1,000 B.C.

"When Rome would take over a country, they would do what Israel did. They would assimilate all of their gods, and all their paraphernalia INTO the worship of Christ," explains Richard Jordan.

"They take the ark of God and place it before Dagon. By the way, when they put it BY Dagon, they're adding them together. They're ecumenicalists. They're going to put Israel's ark in with their god and we're all going to be together.

"Nebuchadnezzar did that; he'd take the things out of the temple of God and put them into his temple. Any time you see the ecumenicalists all get together, that's what you're dealing with: 'Let's mix truth and error; let's put God and the gods together because they're all equal.' Egh, it doesn't work.

"Watch what happens: [3] And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again.

"Dagon has hit the ground and he's bowed down to the earth before the ark of God. I don't know about you, but if I had sent my god in front of the ark and now he's bowing down to Him, I might have got the idea that my god thinks that's who I should be worshipping!

"Well, they set him up in his place again. He can't even get up himself. That's what Isaiah says about how stupid it is to worship false gods. If my god couldn't get up himself, wouldn't you get the idea that maybe you're on the wrong team?

"But if you live in darkness and that's who you love, because you love what he lets you do, you make excuses for him.

Verse 4: [4] And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him. 

"Only the stump of Dagon was left after that. I mean, the dude's done come to pieces. The guy's fallen apart; his head, his hands. They love, they serve, they worship--they took his advice, his counsel, his thinking and they did what he said and he's gone to pieces.

"You know what happens when you follow Dagon? Everything's going to go to pieces for you before the ark of God. Now, while you're all by yourself and don't have the truth of God around, it might be okay. That's why men love darkness rather than light.

"The title for today's message is Dagon and the Little Mermaid because Dagon was the Babylonian god of fertility and nature. He was the son of Baal. He was the personification of the primordial waters that man evolved out of; emerged out of.

"That's why he's represented in idolatry as half-human, half-fish. Disney animates it as the Little Mermaid. You know what they're doing? They're inculcating into the minds of children and adults--you have this lovable little half-woman, half-fish and you don't know where it came from.

"Listen to me, Dagon was the god of evolution. Dagon was the god teaching the idea; behind Dagon was the religion of evolutionism that's taught in the government schools and in religion all over the world.

"When you hear atheists crying about Jesus Christ being taught in the government schools, they're literally pulling their tongue out of their own mouth because what they want taught as fact is the 'theory of evolution', which is really a religion.

"You understand, folks, the Babylonian doctrine teaching the religion of evolution demonstrated by Dagon--that was picked up by the Greek philosophers. The religion of evolution didn't begin with Charles Darwin. Google it. It made its appearance in early Greek philosophy. They used the term 'emanation,' asserting that all things originated from water."

(new article tomorrow)

This stuff's hotter than blue blazes

"The Little Mermaid movie, just re-released by Disney, is pretty much about a little mermaid, Ariel, who dreams of falling in love with a human being and then she is in an underwater kingdom ruled by her father who prohibits contact with humans. She makes a deal with this witch and this witch trades her voice for human legs and one thing leads to another," explains a YouTuber.

"The idea of an underwater kingdom and mermaids in the spirit realm is not just a depiction of some author's fantasy.

"In ancient Greece, the god Triton was actually a merman and the sirens were sea creatures with the upper body of a woman and then the tail of a bird.

"In Norse mythology they had mermaid-like creatures known as Merrow and they were said to inhabit the waters off the coast of Ireland.

"In West Africa, they would have a goddess associated with the ocean and fertility and would be depicted as a beautiful woman with flowing hair and is said to have abundance and prosperity and exhibit that for those who worship her.

"In Chinese mythology they would have Mazu, a goddess who's associated with the sea and the protection. She's said to be a mortal woman who became deified after saving her family from a storm at sea.

"In Africa, they would have this Mami Wata, who is a water spirit revered in many of the African regions, including voodoo and Santeria, and she's often depicted as a beautiful woman with the long hair associated with prosperity, healing and protection."

*****

Here is an old article and will have a new piece tomorrow:

I was checking headlines on a favorite news site and clicked on a pop-up blurb about “the accidental discovery of a new shade of blue.”

“So what makes this new blue pigment so special?” read the Forbes Magazine article. “To find out we need to once again consult the spectral profile of the pigment, and also at the crystal structure of the compound. The intense blue color of the pigment is a result of the strong reflection of blue light, and blue light alone. It absorbs green and blue light, making the blue color incredibly vibrant.”

Working on my computer inside a Starbucks I became distracted by the sound of a young woman giggling loudly as she waited with a friend for their drink orders. When 

I glanced up she was flipping her long hair, even twirling her body around to make the hair fly. She could not have been more delighted with her brunette tresses, dyed a very unnatural blue!

Later that same day, waiting in the checkout line at my neighborhood grocery store, I suddenly noticed that a cashier who I sometimes encounter there had dyed the front section of his curly brown locks with an alien-shade blue similar to a Blue Man Group performer!

I then thought about how U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte had just dyed his hair an “ice blue,” as it was reported, to greet the Rio Summer Games.

This all led me to go home and type into Google something like “blue hair craze.” Among the articles was one from the London Daily Mail about--get this-- mermaid and “merman” hair!  

“Men are joining in with a bold new trend of their own which is seeing more than a few fellas adding bright blue hues to their locks in a new trend being dubbed 'merman hair,' ” revealed the lifestyle piece. “The half human creatures of the sea may be more commonly associated with women in bikini tops and long, flowing, brightly-colored locks, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of men from hopping on board with the trend. From turquoise mohawks to teal-hued pompadours, there is plenty of inspiration for this vibrant look all over Instagram and Twitter.”

*****

Predictably, blue is a very important color to the secret societies. Just look at this entry from Masondictionary.com:

“Blue is the supreme color of Masonry. First, because it is that color which . . . among all those used in Masonry, is acknowledged by every Mason to belong to us all and no Mason, whatever his degree, questions the Master Mason's ownership of blue. Second, blue is the supreme color because it has, coupled with its universality, a place in symbolism which, both as regards importance of lessons taught and as regards legitimacy as a symbol, is second to that of no Masonic color.

“The use of blue in religious ceremonials, and as a symbol, comes to Masonry from many of the different peoples of antiquity. Among the Hebrews various articles of the high priest's clothing were blue. one of the veils of the tabernacle was blue. In his initiation into the Druidical Mysteries the candidate was invested with a robe one of whose colors was blue. The Babylonians clothed their idols in blue. The Hindoo god Vishnu was represented as blue. And among the medieval Christians blue was considered a peculiarly important color."

From the website Masonicworld.com is this definition of blue:

“Blue, then, is the Craft colour par excellence, used in aprons, collars, and elsewhere. Let us quote Bro. Chetwode Crawley. 'The ordinary prosaic enquirer will see in the selection of blue as the distinctive colour of Freemasonry only the natural sequence of the legend of King Solomon's Temple. For the Jews had been Divinely commanded to wear...a 'riband of blue' (Numbers 15:38).' A modern translation of that verse in Numbers is: 'You are to take tassels on the comers of your garments with a blue cord on each tassel.' The biblical text, then, refers to blue cords to be incorporated in the tassels worn by pious Jews, while Bro. Chetwode Crawley is speaking of blue ribbons which somehow became the embellishments of aprons, sashes and collars.”

******

Novelist-poet philosopher Aldous Huxley, a tremendously influential figure in the 1960s-drug-culture-rock-and-roll hippie scene, was among the Beatles’ heroes splashed across the cover of their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In his ever-popular book, “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell,” which inspired the name of the rock band The Doors, Huxley gives a personal account on what he experienced taking the psychedelic drug mescaline, famously regarded as a "chemical means of inducing a state akin to religious enlightenment."

Huxley writes, “From the French window I walked out under a kind of pergola covered in part by a climbing rose tree, in part by laths, one inch wide with half an inch of space between them. The sun was shining and the shadows of the laths made a zebra-like pattern on the ground and across the seat and back of a garden chair, which was standing at this end of the pergola.

“That chair--shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of an incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade.

“Today the percept had swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow--these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalizations, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event.

“The event was this succession of azure furnace doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying. And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must feel like to be mad.

“ . . . Confronted by a chair which looked like the Last Judgment--or, to be more accurate, by a Last Judgment which, after a long time and with considerable difficulty, I recognized as a chair--I found myself all at once on the brink of panic. This, I suddenly felt, was going too far. Too far, even though the going was into intenser beauty, deeper significance.

“The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect, was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrat- ing under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear.

“The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the Mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in- compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.

“Following Boehme and William Law, we may say that, by unregenerate souls, the divine Light at its full blaze can be apprehended only as a burning, purgatorial fire. An almost identical doctrine is to be found in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the 'Pure Light of the Void,' and even from the lesser, tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as a beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of un- mitigated Reality--anything!"

Chief complaint about Satan

YouTube interview with author of book Return of the gods:

"There's another side to this Ashtoreth/Ishtar/Aphrodite and it comes from the sexual revolution. If you look at her ancient inscriptions, it says, 'I am a woman, I am a man.' It says, 'You, goddess, have the power to turn man into a woman and turn a woman into a man.' This is the goddess, the principality of the destruction of gender. Androgyny, merging male and female, blurring female and male. Merging them and that's why we are all watching this in our culture right now. It is a spirit; it's not natural. It is this exact principality that is affecting everything.

"It couldn't happen earlier; it was too radical. The 1960s America--it was too radical for that. But as this goddess of sexual immorality gets entrenched in the culture, her darker works start coming out and we are now in the next phase. That's why it's literally affecting everything now.

"Look at what's happening in our culture. There is actually a war on men. She seeks to take men away from manhood, away from fatherhood, away from marriage, away from providing--AWAY FROM WOMEN!

"She was actually the goddess who hated the patriarch. She hated any kind of authority from men. This is so thick in our culture you could cut it with a knife. If a man acts masculine they'll say that's toxic. If a woman acts masculine, they'll say, 'Bravo! That's wonderful!' What is that? That's this spirit.

"It also says she de-feminizes women, so her job is also to take women away from womanhood; away from motherhood. She was a goddess who was female but she had masculine qualities, so she's seeking now to make women into her own image.

"She had an ancient priesthood where men who walked around her temples dressed up as women. Acting as women, talking as women, appearing as women in drag. You know what stopped this? The gospel. When you take God out, it's inevitable this is coming back. We could have predicted this.

"When you see this returning to the culture, and when you see the culture celebrating it, you know the gods are back and you are in very dramatic times. The thing is, you know, Jesus said they come back worse.

"In ancient times she possessed her priesthood, but now she's seeking to possess an entire generation of children. She is using the very school system that once led them in the Lord's Prayer to transition them.

"The month of Tammuz is named after her lover, which is June in English. One month where she especially possesses the culture. I looked at the writings of St. Jerome and he identifies her--he says it's the month of Iunium, or in English, the month of June. June has gone back to its old form.

"Not only that, she was the goddess of parades. She caused men to parade through the city streets dressed up as women. The other thing is there was a sign associated with her. You know what it was? The sign of the rainbow. The rainbow belongs to God, but as part of her myth it says that she steals what belongs to other gods for herself."

*****

"Now we've moved into a real sense that the country is falling and what we're watching is the disintegration of a culture that's been here for several hundred years," says Richard Jordan.

"It goes back 500 years to the Protestant Reformation and when you hear all this stuff about 'white privilege,' etc., those are code words/buzz words for being anti-European, and being anti-European is being anti-Christian.

"America is a modern-day manifestation of the political, social, economic impact of Protestant Christianity for good or bad. Our country has never been a Christian country, but as it has applied the understanding from Protestant Christianity to the social issues of the day, there's the issues of freedom and so forth that America has had.

"The pendulum goes one way and then it swings itself back and we're on the back swing of the thing. When the pendulum goes over sometimes you get your head cut off and that's where we are.

Isaiah 14:12 is Satan fixing to be cast down into hell: [12] How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! 

"When they watch Satan cast into the bottomless pit the thing they say about him, the thing they've been observing about him is something we don't generally think about.

"Of all the things they say about him, the headline is that this is the character who weakened the nations. That's their chief complaint about him.

"That's a fascinating complaint. You would have thought he would have said a whole lot of other things about Satan but when the one chief headline is, 'There goes the guy,' and what's he done? He weakened, not just the nation Israel, but all the nations of the earth.

Deuteronomy 20 begins:

[1] When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
[2] And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people,
[3] And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them;
[4] For the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

"Don't be afraid because you understand who you are and what God created you for. If you've got some sound doctrine resident in your soul you understand what it takes to be courageous.

"Listen, warfare, the successful defense of the people in a nation, requires moral and spiritual courage. It requires something in the heart of the citizenry that understands something bigger than just that imaginary boundary out there being the issue.

"The course of a nation will be determined by the amount of sound doctrine resident in the mind and heart of the citizenry.

"How do you weaken a nation? You don't first go after its economy, its politics and social structure. You go after the HEART of its people. Because it starts with volition, marriage, family--then nationalism.

Now here's a verse I love. Proverbs 15:4: [4] A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.

"The Lord Jesus Christ had a wholesome tongue. He had a pure tongue. His tongue was so pure He could pick up a piece of dirt, spit on it and take it and rub it on a guy's eyes and the guy could see. Man, that's some powerful spit. Well, it's more than that. No corruption in anything He ever said.

'But perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.' You want to put a hole in the wall for the counsel of the Adversary to come in, it's perverseness in words.

"You don't have your faith resting in that sound doctrine out of that pure book about the issue you're facing. There's all kind of counsel out there about how to handle an issue and that counsel will vex you and pound on you, looking for a breach so that it can say it's king in your life and run your life.

"He says, 'You know what, righteousness exalts a nation and sin is a reproach to any people.' Way before it becomes true for any nation, it starts over here with the individual."

(new article tomorrow)

Pre-flood pride parades, post-flood Ham?

“Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people,” warns Solomon in Proverbs 14:34.

“When sin becomes a lifestyle for a person or a nation, it all comes out in the open, and when it does, it requires that the institutions that would check it and stop it, or limit it, be overturned,” says Richard Jordan. “There will always be a consistent social struggle with the sins of the flesh when God’s Word is not honored—that’s true anywhere you look in the Bible.

“When a culture despises God’s Word and says, ‘We'll do it our way; we know better,' you’re inviting, and you’re putting yourself on a flight headed toward the destination of destruction.

“Today Satan is weakening the nations through homosexuality, the sin that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,” writes Bible scholar Dr. Noah Hutchings in his 1998 book, God Divided the Nations. “He is weakening the nations to prepare the way for the rise of a world government over which his own king, the Antichrist, will reign.”

The reference to “weakening the nations” comes from Isaiah 14:12, which reads, “How are thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How are thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

What’s often forgotten is homosexuality dates back to the pre-Flood era.

“Before the Flood, sexual perversion was rampant,” says Hutchings, quoting terminology from Genesis 6:5-6, 12. “In all probability the Apostle Paul was referring to the destruction of the pre-Flood Antediluvians when he wrote Romans 1:26-27.

“...It would appear from the entire text of the Scripture that (sexual perversion) resulted from the union of fallen angels with women. We read of the fallen angels and their associations with sexual perversion in Jude 6-7:

‘And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.’ ”

Fallen angels aligned with Satan fornicated with females on the earth in the years preceding the Flood and the result of their sexual union was children who possessed unusual strength and grew to be giants. First Century historian Flavius Josephus says “these men did what resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants.” 

*****

“What the people in Sodom and Gomorrah did was like what the (fallen) angels of Genesis 6 did—they went after ‘strange flesh,’ living contrary to their nature,” explains Jordan.

In the account about Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction by fire and brimstone in Genesis 19, we’re told that when two angels (both male, as were all angels described in the Bible) entered Sodom just prior to its demise, Lot had to protect them from the lustful men in town who were adamant to have sex with them.

These Sodomites, in fact, were so determined to fornicate with these male angels being safe-guarded in Lot’s house that they were about ready to pounce on Lot and knock down his front door when the angels interceded and “smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.”

*****

Hutchings is among Bible scholars through the ages who've speculated homosexuality first recurred after the Flood with Noah’s son Ham, who found his father unclothed and passed out from drunkenness (Genesis 9).

“As Noah lay naked in his tent, the Scripture declares that Ham saw him,” writes Hutchings. “The terminology used may imply more than just seeing with the eyes. For example, the Bible uses the verb ‘knew’ to explain the act of conception. . . We note the specific wording of Genesis 9:24: ‘And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.’

“It would certainly appear that there was more involved here than Ham just stumbling by chance upon the drunken body of his father. We read in Genesis 6:9 that Noah was ‘perfect in his generations.’ Noah was not perfect in that he was sinless; he was perfect in that he escaped the corruption that had affected 'all flesh.' However, nothing is said about Noah’s wife, or the wives of Ham, Shem, or Japeth, so a genetic flaw may have passed on to Ham and Canaan through Mrs. Noah.”

The Genesis 9 account, says Hutchings, seems to suggest Canaan, the son of Ham who received Noah’s curse and fathered the descendants who later settled Sodom and Gomorrah, was also involved in the sin of Ham.

“He could have been with his father and a participant in the deed, or while Ham was gone to tell his brothers about their father’s condition, Canaan could have become equally guilty,” writes Hutchings. “We readily admit that our explanation of what possibly happened is conjecture; however, God would not have extended the curse to Canaan had he been only an innocent bystander. It is no wonder that Noah was upset because one of the sins that brought about the judgment of the pre-Flood society had now appeared in his own household.”

*****

Today, homosexuality proponents will incorrectly tell you the Bible either doesn’t have anything to say against homosexuality or it’s condemnation is limited to one verse in Leviticus 18: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Negative references to the sin can be found scattered throughout the Old and  New Testaments—Deuteronomy 23, I Kings 14 and 15, II Kings 23, I Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5.

“Paul lists homosexuality as part of the sins of the flesh, but can I remind you it’s not listed as any worse than drunkenness or adultery or anger and wrath,” says Jordan. “Sometimes people tend to think of homosexuality as the most evil sin, but when God lists it, He just puts it in the garden variety of sins.

"God looks at all sin the same. It’s all sin. It doesn’t mean it’s not serious or bad, it just means that sometimes we get fixated on one as opposed to another—usually we’re fixated on the ones we don’t care for and the rest of them we like to leave alone.”

“It doesn’t make any difference whether you’ve been associated with the homosexual lifestyle or you’ve been a pristine, virginal clean religious nut. Outside of Christ, one is just as far from God as the other.

"God doesn’t save people because they go to church, and He doesn’t send them to hell because of the way they have sex. He saves people because they’re in His Son, and He sends them to hell because they’re not—because they’ve chosen to go to hell in spite of His love and grace for them.”

(new article tomorrow)

Inner appetites behind tattoos

From today's Sun news out of London:

"MS-13 cronies have regularly been recruited as young as their early teens and get inked with gang emblems soon after. Brandishing body art is nothing new for its members, showing gang loyalty and helping shape status within the group. Many of their designs are rooted in satanism, with members choosing to plaster skulls and devil horns across their bodies."

“Moses writes the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in order to explain to Israel what they experienced in Egypt and what they’re to face in Canaan.

"It’s not just that they were in slavery; they were enslaved to satanic captivity. That’s what those plagues were telling them. It wasn’t just that Pharaoh was a (slave ruler); there was a satanic force behind him. They wouldn’t have known that if God hadn’t told them and demonstrated it to them," explains Richard Jordan.

“In fact, when it says in Exodus 1 a Pharaoh came on the throne that didn’t know Joseph, Isaiah 52 calls that Pharaoh an Assyrian. The Assyrian in the Bible is one of those little tag words, or identifiers, of the Antichrist.

*****

“In Numbers 33, Moses instructs the children of Israel that when they go into Canaan, [52] Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
[53] And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therein: for I have given you the land to possess it.

“So they’re first to go in and ‘dispossess’ the inhabitants, throwing them out. Then they can possess the land. They were to get rid of them and destroy all their pictures and molten images and pluck down all their high places.

“Immediately when you read this you think of the Tower of Babel, where they went out and worshipped on the high places, saying, ‘We’re going to go up here on this high place above everybody and do some things that will get us to God!’

“Pictures and images are representations of the spiritual forces that are behind those things. It was pornography and that kind of stuff and it wasn’t just pictures on the walls; we looked at passages where they painted pictures on their bodies. We call them TATTOOS. They carried around SIGNS of these gods. They are all physical manifestations of the life.

“He’s talking about, ‘Don’t get involved in idolatry that’s used to represent the forces that are back behind all that stuff!’

“You wind up trying to worship in connection with the invisible powers of darkness those (images) are used to represent. And you serve it because there are acts of service in connection with any kind of worship that produces a culture and a lifestyle; the inner appetites.

“When Moses says, ‘Lest thou be driven to worship them,’ he’s talking about that stuff putting an internal compulsion in you; an appetite. It sears your conscience and puts an appetite in you to go after it, not just in you, but in the culture.

“What God’s telling them is, ‘Go destroy all this physical and philosophical filthiness associated with Beelzebub.’ You remember that title of Satan? The ‘sons of Belial,’ the sons of Beelzebub, the ‘lord of filth.’ It’s the unclean spirits that produce that kind of stuff and He’s warning them about the seduction of their hearts: ‘Don’t adapt to the worldview that produces that kind of stuff! Get rid of it! Drive it out! Destroy it!’

“You see, that satanic darkness--the philosophy, or the thinking that produces a bunch of images and lifestyles that are based on a worldview, on an ideology, a culture; that’s the expression of the extension of the worship of your heart and these things come from the darkness."

(new article tomorrow)

Hardened in pride, down to a perfection

(new article tomorrow)

"In the Bible we learn the entire world is saturated with pride and we know why and we know why it hardens.

"The mind becomes implacable and it's hardened in pride. It's difficult to penetrate it with light and truth and understanding; they have no means of access," explains Richard Jordan.

"Satan is a king over all 'the children of pride,' says the Bible. The unsaved humanity is a mirror image of their father the devil and he is the reigning authority over all his children. Pride courses through their veins and because of that pride, there is this ungrateful response to the things of God. They're not thankful.

"Satan has this proudful ambition to usurp what is rightfully God's; what belongs rightfully to the Creator, and ever since Genesis 3, unsaved humanity falls right into the lap of that prideful desire to achieve, to ascend, to make a name for one's self.

"Did he not offer to Eve, 'Ye shall be as gods'? He's saying to her, 'You see, you don't have to be inferior, you don't have to play second fiddle; you deserve better.' 

"The same individuals who are lifted up in self-adoration, self-love (Paul says they are lovers of their own selves), they're boasters, a bunch of braggarts. They're haughty, and not only that, they're proud.

"When you study what pride is, and surely we could go to a dictionary, pride simply is a preoccupation with self. There is this excessive desire to be the attention, to be appreciated and adored. There's this unhealthy desire to be admired by others.

"When you find pride in the Bible, you find this lustful desire to be the center of attention. What often happens as a result is you will see a proudful person begin to look at others with contempt. That haughty spirit of puffed up arrogance will lead one to begin to look down on others. There is this false sense of conceited superiority that leads toward looking at others as being inferior.

"Pride, by Bible definition, is extremely deadly, extremely dangerous, and there is this link between pride and unthankfulness.

"In Romans 1, right off the bat, as the Apostle Paul indicts humanity, [21] Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. [22] Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, when they knew god they glorified him not as God.

"In their attitude of unthankfulness and ingratitude they rely upon their haughty sense of professing wisdom. Notice, neither were they thankful, but they became vain in their imaginations. They replaced that spirit of thankfulness. They displaced any gratitude that should have been expressed because of the creative power and wisdom of Almighty God, and what they did is they suppressed any attitude of thanksgiving with vain imaginations.

"II Corinthians 10:5 says, [5] Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

"The idea here is that humanity--they presume, they assume they know what's happening. They assume they know what's going on. They assume they know how man came into existence. They assume they know how God thinks in some ways as well.

"Paul says meekness is the capacity to bring into subjection every thought to the obedience of Christ. It's not so much bringing my thoughts so that I'm always obeying Christ, but rather, just like Jesus Christ in meekness chose to obey His Father. Meekness is not weakness. Rather, it's the ability to restrain power, ability, strength. To restrain one's prerogatives. He chose not to exercise His royal rights and prerogatives as an equal co-member of the godhead. He chose to restrict His divine abilities.

"Jeremiah 49:16: [16] Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill: though thou shouldest make thy nest as high as the eagle, I will bring thee down from thence, saith the LORD.

"Pride deceives and convinces you of something that just simply isn't true. It distorts reality. By the way, the idea of vain imaginations--again, Paul, when he talks about the imagination and every high thing, it's talking about prideful understanding and wisdom. So when you think about the deception, it's all imaginary! A proudful person convinces themselves, 'I am right; you're wrong.' Pride convinces that person of things that just simply are not true.

"Psalm 73:6 says, 'Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.' Pride is bondage; it makes you a slave. it's like a chain of enslavement.

Proverbs 13:10: [10] Only by pride cometh contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.

Proverbs 16:[5] Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD: though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

[6] By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.
[7] When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.
[8] Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right.
[9] A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.

"Proverbs 6:16-17: [16] These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: [17] A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

"By the way, that's No. 1 on the list. The No. 1 abomination is a proud look. When it says a proud look, it's not suggesting that somebody looks proud, or has the appearance of pride. It's talking about a pride-filled person who evaluates and sees everything or everyone as being beneath them, as being inferior; as being unworthy.

"It's not a, 'Look, man, he dresses proudly,' or, 'He looks proud,' but rather it's the way he evaluates, the way he perceives. The proud look is the way he interprets his surroundings. Again, there is that twisted sense of superiority of the one who has the proud look. He views things through the lens of that empty, vain, imaginative, haughty pride that would lift himself in exaltation against the knowledge of God; against what God is saying and against all that God is doing."

*****

II Peter 2: [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:

[10] But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

"All of chapter 2 is about describing these false prophets and the kind of sin they'll be involved in," explains Richard Jordan. "They despise dignities; they throw them aside, they want no part of them. They have this covetous life that's focused on nothing but the sins of the flesh and when authority comes in . . . you see the self-life wants to do its own thing.

"It's when someone who's self-absorbed, self-willed and self-centered is opposed by authority that comes along and says, 'Don't do that.'

"You remember in Isaiah 3 where it says children are going to reign over you, and the reason you discovered is the people who are charged with the responsibility of passing on the traditions of society and the principals of a culture . . . 

Isaiah 3:[1] For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,

[2] The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,
[3] The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counseller, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.
[4] And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.
[5] And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.

"When nobody is there who will say to the kid, 'No, you can't do that; that's wrong and not in your best interest,' then they just go out willy-nilly and do whatever they want and they get addicted to that and that's what they want all the time.

"Well, these people in II Peter 2 are way down the road in self-will. We see them back in the first three verses: [1] But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

[2] And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.
[3] And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.

"They completely throw off the things of God and want nothing to do with what God's doing and they just want to go out in that self-life that says, 'Just do your own thing.'

"In the Bible, when you lust after something that means you have a strong passion for it, and this is a lust of uncleanness; it's not a lust and passion for good things.

"It's that autonomous, 'I'm going to be my God and I'll be your God if you sit still long enough and I can get you in shackles.'

"These people in II Peter have that down to a perfection. This issue is really the ultimate goal of the satanic policy of evil and the course of sin he set for himself and for man.

Romans 1:22-24: [22] Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

[23] And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
[24] Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

"They've turned their back on God and His Word and His authority and who He was and they decided they were going to strike out on their own and do their own thing.

Verse 25: [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

"That verse crystallizes the whole lie program. It's the issue of idolatry, but it's more than just bowing down to an idol of wood or stone; it's the issue of taking the creature and making the creature God. The deification of the creature; making the creature equal or superior to the Creator."

Someone else writing down Amos' words

(here is continuation of the Amos entry from May 18. I have had an emotionally challenging week already. The worst of all my unexpected upsets was in coming home from work and learning my mom had two sudden dizzy spells that left her on the ground. The first one happened when she came out of a hair appointment and reached into her purse for her car FOB and went down on the pavement, scraping her elbows and knees and giving her an abrasion on her head that steadily dripped blood down her face, neck, shirt and slacks. She was able to drive home but it took hours for the bleeding to stop, ruining her newly coifed hair and making her wonder if she shouldn't go to one of those emergency clinics. Then she told me that only hours later, when she was pouring seeds into the bird feeder in our backyard, it happened again. She said there was spinning in her head and she went down on the grass like a sack of potatoes. After each incident (lasting no more than 30 seconds) she was fine and has been fine since. She has severe osteoporosis so it is all very concerning and all we know so far is she will be tested for, among other things, Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo.)

Amos 4:1: [1] Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

"With these 'sermon notes' of Amos, this one is sort of like scalding acid blasted out like a blow torch on people. Down South a farmer I knew who killed hogs would say, 'I'm going to skin your hide, tack you up on a wall and pack you down with salt.' That's exactly what Amos is going to do here; this chapter takes no prisoners," explains Richard Jordan.

Verse 13: [13] For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name.

"The One who created everything is coming and you're not right with Him and He's going to fix you good.

"With that word 'kine' he uses a refined, kind of hoity-toity, sophisticated term to talk about a female cow instead of heifer. You guys remember Darryl Mefford from down in Tennessee. Years ago, back in the '90s, we're at a Bible conference and they gave him a passage from Proverbs to preach on--something about women. And he kept talking about heifers. He'd say things like, 'The old heifer went here,' and about the time he was through, I bet 30 women were ready to just put him on a rail and do the tar-and-feathers thing. Darryl never thought anything of it because where he came from that's just the way they talked.

Isaiah and Amos were contemporaries. Isaiah writes in Isaiah 3:

[14] The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
[15] What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the LORD GOD of hosts.
[16] Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:

"I get a kick out of that 'stretched forth necks.' They're trying to look dignified. Years ago, I saw Oprah Winfrey on her talk show where she was going on about people taking pictures of her all the time and how she learned that 'if you just crane your neck,' you get rid of the double chin. You're trying to look slim and young and that kind of thing, and when Oprah said that I thought of that verse.

*****

"The idea of mechanical dictation, dismissing the character and the style of the author, never made any sense to me. God reaches into your vocabulary and pulls out the words. That's what He did with Amos. He literally takes a herdsman and farmer and says, 'He's got the vocabulary I want to use,' and He pulls out Amos' vocabulary words that are plain in speech and sends them to Israel. It's an illustration of the way inspiration works.

The Book of Amos begins: [1] The words of Amos, who was among the herdman of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

Notice verse 1, how he doesn't say, 'I said.' He doesn't say, 'The Lord said.' Whoever wrote the Book of Amos--the idea is Amos didn't actually write the book. Someone else is writing down the words that came out of Amos' mouth.

"If you go to Joel, it's obvious Joel wrote the book. 'The words of the Lord came to Joel. Most of the writers are that way, but that's exactly what inspiration is really all about.

"If you look at the word inspiration, the word spirit is right in the middle of it. God took His Spirit and put it in some w-o-r-d-s and then causes them to be written down.

Romans 16: [22] I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.

"Now, I thought Paul wrote Romans? Who's this dude Tertius who said he wrote it? You see how that verse can be a problem for you if you don't understand? Paul spoke the words and Tertius preserved the words by writing them down. In the very act of creating the Scripture, inspiration and preservation were both involved. I've had people tell me, 'That idea about preservation is something you just made up.' I didn't make that verse up.

"Paul is the author of Romans and these are the words of God to you and me through the Apostle Paul. Paul spoke the words and then Tertius wrote them down. What did he do? He preserved what was written.

"The 30th book in the Bible is Amos, so come to Isaiah 30. It's fascinating, the first chapter of Amos goes back to Isaiah 30 at least 4-5 times.

Isaiah 30: [8] Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever:

[9] That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD:

"Why do you write it down? That it may be for the time to come forever and ever. Paul spoke it, Tertius wrote it down. Why? Because God wanted what Paul said preserved.

Amos 5:26: [26] But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves.

"You see the names of those gods Israel was worshipping in the wilderness? They're not back in Exodus. You don't read these names until you come to Amos. These names of the gods are fascinating."

(new article tomorrow)

So spake that a great multitude believed

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

"Starting in Hebrews, the kingdom writers of the tribulation epistles placed emphasis on their readers  reading the book," explains Michigan preacher Tom Bruscha. "They're going to be left with a Bible in the last days.

"In Exodus when God is telling Moses to write a Book that's the beginning of the Bible. Moses began to write God's Word about 1,500 B.C. That's actually 2,500 years after Creation. That's 2,500 years after Adam and Eve, so that's a long period of time.

"The first 2,500 years man had God's Word passed down verbally. Noah's Flood came about 1,500 years after Creation. By the way, I'm talking in generalities, plus or minus 60 years, just to make things simple.

"Prior to the Flood, man lived up to 969 years. Genesis 5:5 tells us Adam lived 939 years. That's 570 years before the Flood. You find out Noah's father, Lamech, knew Adam for 56 years. He knew Adam's son, Seth, for 168 years. Noah was born just 14 years after Seth's death.

"What does that mean? Verbal communication, passing down God's Word, was first, second and, at worst, third-hand revelation. These men, because man lived so long, were passing down the Word of God.

"For those first 2,500 years there was also another revelation they had. Psalm 19: [1] The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

[2] Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
[3] There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
[4] Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun

"They're learning something as they look up in the clouds at night. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. They're line--you know, someone says, 'That's a good line,' meaning a statement is being made. Their line has gone out through all the earth.

"They were able at that time to look up and read God's Word in the stars. The next 500 years after the Flood is when the Gentiles changed the truth of God into a lie and the message that was in those stars was then lost. That revelation early man had, they changed that into a lie. Romans 1 declares that for us. The 'they' in the passage is early man.

"Verse 25 says, [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

"Romans 3 begins, [1] What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? [2] Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.

"God took His truth that man's perverted, raised up Abraham and then, in that next 500 years, the oracles of God were given to the nation of Israel. By the time you come to Moses, God is now telling Moses to write these things in a book. Over the next 1,100 years God gave man the Old Testament."

*****

I Thessalonians 2:13 says, [13] For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

"You see how important it is to have that attitude about the Book you're holding in your hand?" says Richard Jordan. "By the way, that is a great verse about where they got God's Word. When you hear the Scripture, there's the idea of a 'received text.'

"That term didn't just come out of the air. The Elzevir brothers didn't just invent that term in 1624 when they published their Greek text. That was a term that came out of the Scripture. That was a Bible term about people's attitudes about the Word they had.

"They didn't receive it as the word of men; they knew it was God's Word. When you think about how God's Word was passed down to you, you're not thinking about it being preserved through history the way men preserved Shakespeare or Homer.

*****

"As a young preacher there's a verse that meant an awful lot to me and has all through the years. I worked in the Mobile Rescue Mission back in the mid- to late-'60s and that's where I started preaching.

"The first five years I preached was in the mission and I was privileged to preach anywhere from 10-15 times a week. When I was at Mobile College in the ministerial association with all the preacher boys (60-70 guys studying for the ministry) some of these guys were just dying to preach and I'd say, 'Well, come on down to the mission and I'll let you preach anytime,' but I couldn't get them to come. They wanted to go preach in a church.

"I was preaching so often that it was not a startling thing for me to preach. But one of the things  you'd do in the mission is preach the gospel to lost people primarily, and I noticed that Brother Reynolds, when he would preach, he'd preach maybe only 15-17 minutes. He was ill and not in good health and he had to sit on a stool and hold onto the pulpit. But he would preach and this verse was the verse that described his preaching to me:

Acts 14:1 says, [1] And it came to pass in Iconium, that they went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed.

"When it says they 'so spake,' Paul says in I Corinthians 2, '[1] And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

"Paul's saying, 'I didn't come in with good words and fair speeches. I didn't use my education.' Paul was a advanced-degree rabbinical scholar. He knew all the 75-cent words. He said, 'I didn't come with all the big talk. I didn't come blowing smoke down your pipe. I came doing one thing, determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I just wanted to preach the gospel of the grace of God to you and nothing else mattered.'

"I used to watch people come to the mission and I'd watch Brother Reynolds get up in front of a group of 50-60 men, most of whom we'd never seen before, and in his physical infirmity, he'd preach to them and see 8, 10, 12 guys trust Christ.

"When I say that, I don't just mean walk an aisle and shake a preacher's hand; I'm talking about men that I would deal with and sit down and talk to them about what they understood and what they were doing and see them really, genuinely get saved.

"Then I'd watch in the evening meetings after Brother Reynolds had gone home and we'd have churches come, and they'd use all the techniques and all the psychology and all the other stuff, and maybe one or two would respond out of a group of 100.

"I used to ask myself, 'How can Brother Reynolds preach to the smaller group of 50-60 guys just there for lunch and see a harvest, and these other guys preach and have all the bells and whistles and entertainment, and just see a little handful?'

"That verse right there in Acts 14, I'd say, 'You know, I got to figure that one out,' and I studied Brother Reynolds for all those years and got to know him, and what I wanted to learn from him was, 'They so spake that a great multitude believed . . . '

"You know what I discovered? When Brother Reynolds would preach, he'd have something of a little outline. One of my favorite messages that he would preach, one that I used to preach on the street, had three points. No. 1 was 'heaven's greatest testimony': 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.' No. 2 was 'the first greatest tragedy': They rejected Him and took Him out and crucified Him. No. 3 was 'man's greatest trust': 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.'

"Now, that's pretty much the gospel, isn't it? And in between there, Brother Reynolds would quote about 15-20 verses from memory; he'd just look at you and give you the verses one right after another.

"A lot of times you'll hear me preach and I'll string verses together. I learned to do that watching Clyde Reynolds do that.

"I learned that when he preached, all he was using was the power of God's Word and it would penetrate dark, hardened hearts in a way that all the other stuff never did.

*****

"Paul 'so spake.' He took that Word and made it the issue. And when he praised the Thessalonians, he said, 'Pray that my ministry of preaching the Word wouldn't be the object of all this interference and that the Word of God may be glorified; that we could so speak that a great multitude would believe.'

"The hindrance to the free course of the Word was going to come from unreasonable and wicked men. He was in Acts 18 when he wrote that from Corinth; he'd already had some experiences the Thessalonians knew about.

"When Paul goes into Thessalonica and some people get saved, Acts 17:5 says, [5] But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.

"You see that? It says they 'moved with envy.' There's a spiritual, sinful, wicked motivation. It says they 'took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort.' They reached out to a bunch of characters of ill-repute; they literally reached into the criminal underworld and gathered a company and 'set all the city on an uproar . . .'

"When he says they were unreasonable, that means they weren't people you could sit down and reason with. They were not people who were going to think the thing through with you. They were wicked. Their unreasonableness came from their wickedness.

"Through the years that verse has proved itself over and over, because you'll discover that people are out to resist the ministry and it will make no sense to you. When you find people being unreasonable, you'll find there's something sticking them and it's going to be some sin. The wickedness, the envy, causes the unreasonableness.

"When God tells Israel, 'Come now, let us reason together,' Paul says '[1] I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

"There is a reasonableness to God's grace, to the gospel, and when people are unreasonable, what you have to learn is that reasoning with their unreasonableness isn't going to get you anywhere. That's why arguing the science, or the philosophy, to people--arguing on their terms of unreasonableness never gets you anywhere. There's a wickedness in the heart that has concluded . . .

*****

"When I graduated from high school I was working at the mission and I actually wanted to go to Moody Bible Institute. Brother Reynolds was a graduate of Moody, the secretary of the mission was a graduate of Moody.

"I would have come to Chicago and gone to Moody in the late '60s had I been able to but my dad was ill. He had a rare blood disease and I couldn't go up there and leave him in the sick condition he was in with only my mother to tend to him, and so I didn't have the opportunity to leave.

"So I went to Mobile College (now Mobile University), which was only 3-4 years old (Southern Baptists started it) and it was a good school. Brother Reynolds sat me down after I was accepted and said, 'I want to give you two verses for you not to forget while you're at college.'

"They were Proverbs 18:1-2: [1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.
[2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

"It's through desire, so that you might discover what you want. A man 'having separated himself,' means,  'I'm going to get a higher quality of life. I'm going to be one of the elite.'

"He 'seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.' Is that a good thing to do? All wisdom? A fool does that. You remember that verse in Romans 1: 'Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.'

" 'The fool hath said in his heart there's no God.' A fool, someone who professes himself to be wise, hath no delight in understanding but that his heart may discover itself. He studies and tries to get wisdom and understanding for one thing; he wants an alibi to do what he wants to do.

"I remember reading that verse and thinking, 'Wow! I got to be careful.' Can I tell you that people don't reject God's Word out of intellectual honesty. They reject God's Word out of moral corruption. They become fools because they think they should be God.

"Paul says, 'I want you to pray for me because the people I'm dealing with out here are unreasonable and wicked.' And then he says, 'For all men have not faith.' Duh! That's sort of like a sarcastic backhand.

"You read the commentaries and they do all kind of stuff about that phrase. You know, when you just read that, that's just plain sarcasm. Paul says, 'They're unreasonable and wicked because they don't have any faith!' "

Single, totally devoted to His mission

(new article tomorrow)

Through the ages, people have enthusiastically employed heretical old Gnostic documents to say there was a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Feminists purport the Gnostic gospels uniformly teach the “sacred feminine,” but conveniently leave out any mention of the infamous final verse in the “Gospel of Thomas,” in which Peter sneers that “women are not worthy of life,” and Christ responds, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male. . . For every woman who will make herself male will enter the Kingdom.”

  

False revelation from the fake “Gospel of Philip” about how “Jesus often kissed Mary on the lips,” and considered her his “companion,” is used as supposed evidence of a divine marriage. In Dan Brown’s bestseller book The Da Vinci Code, character Leigh Teabing argues that any Hebrew scholar would tell you the Aramaic name for “companion” means “spouse.”

The big problem with this is the “Gospel of Philip” was written in Coptic, not Aramaic. The word “companion” in Coptic is actually the Greek word “koinonia,” which means “fellowship,” as in guys in a ship.

“This word was used of all the disciples, and when it says He kissed Mary on the lips, the same passage says He kissed His disciples on the lips. This was the custom.

“The word ‘fellowship’ means ‘to share in common.’ ‘Koinonia’ is the Greek. It means a partnership; a sharing together, a communion. ‘Fellows in a ship’ is exactly what the English word means; it’s exactly what the Greek word means. It’s exactly what the concept is.

*****

The Bible tells us Jesus Christ, in His earthly ministry, led a nomadic lifestyle and didn’t have a home.

On the other hand, in Matthew 8:14, we’re informed Peter had a wife (which, by the way, shoots down any case for him as Pope) and that his wife’s mother actually lived in their home with them.

“You see when you’ve got a wife, you wind up with a mother-in-law, and she winds up living with you in your house,” explains Richard Jordan. “In other words, there is baggage that comes along with married life.”

“In Mark 6:3, a complete list of the family members of Christ is given and no wife is among them. Do you think if He had a wife, it might have been good to have listed her?

“From John 19:25, we’re told both Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ mother stood around Him at the Cross, but Jesus, in addressing His disciple John, only makes mention of His mother’s care following His death.

“If your wife is standing there, and He says, ‘John, take care of my mom,’ what would you expect Him to do for His wife? Especially if they’ve got a kid! Maybe she was pregnant and didn’t know it—all the more to take care of them.

“For the people who wonder, ‘Would it have been any big deal if Jesus Christ did have a wife?’ I point them to the Apostle Paul’s wisdom, taken by revelation from the risen Christ, in which he reasons in I Corinthians 32-33, ‘He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord:

But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.’

“The Lord Jesus Christ had sort of a unique mission. He’s the God-Man and the obvious reason He remains single is so He could be totally devoted to the mission He had.”

“What needs to be emphasized is that everywhere the Word of God’s ever gone, it has elevated the role of women in culture. The unique thing about the women in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ is He didn’t treat them the way the culture of His day did. He elevated them. He included them in His public ministry. He welcomed them into discussions. He allowed them to engage in public discourse. . .

“Everywhere the Gospel has ever gone it brings women out of the boot of dominion because what does the Word of God say? It makes every soul valuable to God. That’s why Paul tells husbands, ‘Love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.’ (Ephesians 5:25-26) That’s how Christ loved the church.”

*****

"As with the crucifixion and resurrection, the Old Testament presents Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only in veiled phraseology and in types," writes C.R. Stam. "The Trinity is only hinted at. This is one reason why the Jew insists that there is but one God and that He did not, and will not, have a Son.

"True, Psalm 40:7 says: 'In the volume of a book it is written of Me,' but again, who is the 'ME'? We do not find out until some time after the Son of God has appeared incarnate.

"The glory of His person is not revealed even in His ministry on earth, for from birth to death He suffers humiliation. The stable, the swaddling bands, the weariness, the hunger and thirst. He has no place to lay His head, the multitude throng Him, the leaders plot against Him, Martha rebukes Him, Peter denies Him, Judas betrays Him. His deity is veiled by His humanity; His glory is buried under poverty and shame.

"After His baptism by water He spoke of another baptism; that of the Cross: 'But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!' (Luke 12:50).

"Thank God we 'know Him no longer after the flesh' (II Cor. 5:16) for, as one has said, how could a Christ in straitened circumstances mean so much to us as the Lord of glory dispensing the riches of His grace and the merits of Calvary?

"Even in resurrection His glory was still veiled, else His disciples could not have beheld Him. Probably the greatest display of His glory, while on earth, took place at the transfiguration when, appearing with Moses and Elias, His face shone as the sun and His raiment was white as the light. Yet Peter could say: 'It is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias' (Matthew 17:4).

"Compare this with that light above the brightness of the noonday sun, which blinded Paul, as the glorified Lord appeared to him (Acts 26: 13-16).

"Once more it is Paul--and no one until Paul--who says: 'Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more' (II Cor. 5:16).

"In his one letter to the Colossians alone he presents Christ in His glory as all the other Bible writers together do not present Him.

"There he presents Christ as the Head of all creation--not just the material creation alone, but also things invisible. 'Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:
[16] For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him' (Col. 1:15-16).

"There he presents Him also as the Sustainer of all, for 'by Him all things consist [i.e., cling together]' (1:17)

"There he presents Him as the Head of the Body and the Master of death. (1:18).

"There he declares that 'in all things Christ must have the pre-eminence and that it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell;' that He should be the Fount of every blessing, the Source of all supply (1:18-19).

"There he presents Christ as the sole Medium of reconciliation to God (1:20) and unfolds 'the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory' (1:27)

"There he shows Him as the One (2:3) in whom dwells 'all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power' (2:9-10).

"Little wonder he warns us lest any man 'rob' us, 'judge' us, or 'beguile' us (2:8, 16, 18) of the appropriation and enjoyment of our position and blessings in Christ!"

Amos: 'Hey, you cows up there in Samaria'

Chapters 3-5 in Amos all begin with the expression, "Hear this word . . . "

"What these are are sermon notes of messages Amos is delivering in the northern kingdom and this is the gist and summary of his message," explains Richard Jordan.

Amos 4 begins, [1] Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

[2] The Lord GOD hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

"Chapter 4 takes no prisoners and if you go to verse 12, everybody who's around my age or older, you've heard some evangelistic message somewhere along the way on this verse:

[12] Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

"When I worked in the rescue mission back in the '60s, in a month that verse got preached . . . there were about three passages that got preached over and over in the evening evangelistic meetings (when guys would come in from local churches) and that was one of them. Another was Hebrews 2:3:

[3] How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;

"I always thought if I was going to preach a verse over and over and over I'd use Romans 5:8 or Colossians 1:14.

"The issue is that the judgment of God is on the way. Verse 13: [13] For, lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The LORD, The God of hosts, is his name.

"Amos 4 is going to talk about, 'Here comes the judge!' 

"He starts out rude. 'Ye kine of Bashan.' Kine is a fancy word for a female cow. In the original Hebrew language the word is heifer. That's not a real polite way to talk about ladies. He's saying, 'Hey, you cows up there in Samaria . . .'

Verse 3: [3] And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the LORD.

"When it says 'kine,' Amos is using this more sophisticated term and it's still talking about a female cow, but he's doing it in a little more refined way and there's a reason for that.

Amos 3: [9] Publish in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great tumults in the midst thereof, and the oppressed in the midst thereof.

[10] For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces.

"What's happening in Samaria is they've just gone out and through hook and crook, and through sophisticated governmental scams, have robbed people and made themselves riches and they sit on beds and couches of ease.

"You'll see them described in Isaiah 3. Isaiah was a contemporary of Amos and he describes them.

"This is one of those passages people read sometime and they try and make fun of.

Isaiah 3: [16] Moreover the LORD saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet:

[17] Therefore the LORD will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will discover their secret parts.
[18] In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
[19] The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers,
[20] The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings,
[21] The rings, and nose jewels,
[22] The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins,
[23] The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails.
[24] And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of well set hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty.
[25] Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.
[26] And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate shall sit upon the ground.

"They're trying to look dignified. They've got bells on their toes. They've got their hair all set up high and He's going to scald them bald and put a scab up there."

(to be continued. this is the piece I was working on last night when my computer troubles started. what is so amazing is the machine started taking a charge again today after it was dead as a door knob last night!!! I didn't actually find this out until after I went on a preliminary computer shopping expedition to Best Buy and Office Depot. both shops were loaded down with Lenovos. needless to say, I am very happy to have my laptop back, even as mysterious as it all has been, leaving me very skeptical.)