Reason to believe God's reason

(new article tomorrow)

In Scripture, the great demonstration, and the objective proof, that the Bible is exactly what it says it is, and truly is God’s Word, is fulfilled prophecy.

God guarantees in Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I change not.” That verse is echoed in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

 “I know people use that verse and say, ‘See, God never changes and therefore anything He did in the past He’ll do in the future,’ ” said Jordan in his Christmas eve study. “That verse is not designed to teach you that the Bible is not to be studied dispensationally.

“Paul says, ‘And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.’ The idea in Malachi is God’s saying, ‘If I told you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it! You can count on it! I’m not going to change. If I’ve given you my word about something, I’ll do it; you don’t have to worry about it.’

*****

“That issue of the preservation of the nation Israel is really, in the Bible, the issue of God telling you He’s going to do something and then doing it.

“Some 100 years ago a mathematician wrote a book about statistical probability and said, ‘If you had eight specific things that identified someone and those eight things, independently given, came to pass, you would have a probability of 10 to the 28^th power.’

“The idea is that is a statistical certainty that we use to prove that people are guilty in a court of law by DNA and fingerprints. The probability gets to be so large that it’s conclusive and doesn’t make a lot of sense not to believe it.

“He said that if you had eight specific identifiers independently given that were authenticated to take place in one person’s life, that would be a probability of 10 to the 28^th power. If you had 16, it was like 10 to the 149^th power. Anything beyond that it was absolutely foolish and illogical not to believe it was true.

“This is exactly the kind of apologetic that God uses. If you go to theology school and read the books about apologetics, there are all kind of different ways to prove that there’s a God and all that kind of stuff, and there’s like six or seven different philosophical ways (ontology) where you’re demonstrating it, but when God wants to demonstrate you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, ‘I am God,’ He uses fulfilled prophecy.

“In the Book of Isaiah, chapters 40-48, you have a description (it’s really a polemic) by God against the false religions Israel has gotten involved in and He’s arguing to Israel how foolish it is to believe in the false religion and not to believe Him.

“He just sort of gets in the face of the false religions in Isaiah 41: [21] Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
[22] Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
[23] Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.

*****

“Never think that God doesn’t want you to reason. In the first chapter of Isaiah He says, ‘Come now and let us reason together.’

“Just recently I had someone say to me, ‘Well, you know, you’re a man of faith and I’m a man of reason.’ I laughed at him and he said, ‘What are you laughing about?’ and I said, ‘That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If you think you’re a person of reason and you think I’m a person of faith, really you’re the guy who’s taking a blind leap in the dark. I don’t take a blind leap in the dark. I have mathematical, statistical, scientific evidence that what I believe is true. What have you got? You got opinions, which are like two arm pits. Everybody’s got them, and they’re not very attractive at that.’

“What God says is, ‘I want you to sit down and think, and when you do, here’s what you find out.’ Here’s what He says to them in verse 24: ‘Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.’

“That’s a pretty strong statement but it’s true. That’s the verdict. It’s the verdict on them (‘ye are of nothing’), on their work (it’s ‘of naught’) and on the worshippers that follow them (they are ‘an abomination’). So it’s the whole bunch of you who are zippo.

*****

“The next verse says, ‘I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.’

“Isaiah 42:9 says, ‘Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.’  Chapter 43:9 says, ‘Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth.’

“You see, God says, ‘I can tell you what’s going to happen. Can anybody else?’ Now, there are a lot of people who try. Everybody used to know who Nostradamus was and the lady in the tabloids, Jeanne Dixon. Then you’ve got the Psychic Network and Madame Blavatsky and all that.

“The problem is there are no specifics involved in any of that stuff. When you think about the idea of fulfilled prophecy, the great thing in the Scripture, and that’s what Joel’s talking about, is God is going to do exactly what He said He was going to do and that’s bring the nation Israel back.

“One of the great things that demonstrates the validity even of that truth is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing in all of history is as clear as a demonstrable proof of the truthfulness of God’s Word as the coming of the Messiah.

*****

“I have a little book in my library from the 1930s about ‘333 prophecies fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah.’ Now, any time someone gives you a number like 333, my first question is, ‘Well, why wasn’t it 331 or 337?’

“Somebody picked a number and listed it. You don’t need that many but it is fascinating how many there actually are. In that book the author makes the point, ‘How do you take one piece of mail and get it to come to the specific house?’

“The way you do it is you have some eliminators where you eliminate a lot of options. First, you get the right country, so when you pick the U.S. you’ve eliminated about 181 other countries in the world. Then you get the right state, right city, right street, right housing unit number, and then you need to get the right person.

“You can narrow the thing down to the place where you know exactly who it is. Well, God does that with the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Think of what He does. In Genesis, He says the Messiah’s going to be ‘the seed of the woman.’ Right there He eliminated half of the human race because of male and female. Then He says He’s going to be the seed of Abraham. One nation out of all the nations in the earth. See how He narrows it?

“But then when He says it’s going to be the seed of Abraham, it’s not going to be just any seed of Abraham. Abraham had a whole bunch of kids. Remember that? First he had Ismael, then Isaac. After Sarah died he got married again and had a bunch more kids. A lot of folks forget that.

“Well, God said it’s not going to Ismael and that other clan; it’s going to be Isaac. He narrowed it down again. Isaac’s got two kids, Esau and Jacob. He said of those two it will only be Jacob’s. Then Jacob has 12 tribes that come out of him, and God said of those 12 it’s only going to be the tribe of Judah.

“Then He says out of that tribe of Judah, it’s not going to be just anybody. As Isaiah 11:1 says, ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.’

“Jesse is a descendant of Judah but now it’s going to be not just anybody out of Judah, it’s going to have to be somebody who descends from the family of Jesse. Jesse had a whole bunch of boys and it was only David who got chosen out of them.

“That’s why Matthew 1:1 says, ‘The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.’

“If you look at Psalm 132:11, it says, ‘The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.’

“The messiah is going to sit upon the throne, but when He does, it’s going to be the fruit of David’s body that He sits in. That’s why He’s called ‘the lion of the tribe of Judah,’ because that’s what David is.”

Catching up on headlines

Barron's headline today: "Swedes Stock Up on Food as Fears of War Deepens." First paragraph: "Swedes are stocking up on food items in case of war, as more conflict in Europe no longer feels like a distant possibility and authorities encourage measures to boost readiness."

From September 30th's "unprecedented military meeting" of around 800 generals and admirals, per Yahoo News:

"At a rare gathering of top generals and admirals in Quantico, Va., President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled a sweeping — and highly political — plan to reshape the U.S. military.

" . . . Hegseth also delivered a warning for adversaries: 'To our enemies: FAFO,' he said, using an acronym that translates to 'F*** around and find out.' 'If necessary, our troops can translate that for you,' he said.

"But if they were expecting applause, they didn’t get it. Hundreds of officers, summoned from around the world, sat mostly stone-faced — a stark contrast to the raucous cheers Trump drew from rank-and-file soldiers at Fort Bragg this summer. At one point, Trump even broke the silence: 'If you want to applaud, you can applaud. ' ”

Democracy Docket on this meeting:

"President Donald Trump, in an address to the U.S.’ top military officials Tuesday, stressed that after decades of military campaigns abroad, it was time to turn the armed forces inwards against an unspecified 'enemy from within.'

“ 'Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within,' the president said. 

“ 'We’re under invasion from within,' Trump repeated. 'No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.' "

Analysis of this meeting by a YouTuber:

"I call it the Merkel (as in Germany's Angela Merkel), but Hegseth did the Masonic pyramid hand sign at least 100 times. I was taking screen shots of all the different times he did it and I was starting to get like carpal tunnel it was just so many times he did this sign. There's been a lot of big Christian nationalist rallies, so it's hard to keep up with all the propaganda."

*****

From Catholic News Agency headline on September 14: "Pope Leo XIV on Saturday morning (Sep. 13) received Brian Burch, the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace for the formal presentation of his letters of credence.

"According to a U.S. embassy statement, the two men discussed the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as “protecting religious freedom, the Vatican’s relationship with China, and the AI revolution.”

"Regarding this week’s assassination of conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, 'Pope Leo underscored that our political differences can never be resolved with violence and told Ambassador Burch that he was praying for the widow of Mr. Kirk and his children,' the embassy said."

Analysis: "Why would a pope tell a U.S. Ambassador who he's praying for? Oh, in case you haven't heard, we just got a new ambassador of the United States to the Holy See, incumbent since September 13, 2025. It's kind of interesting that we even have an ambassador to the Vatican. Shouldn't we recognize the Vatican as a legitimate nation?"

*****

From Vatican Jubilee official website: "In 2025, the Vatican Jubilee will mark the centenary of the Reformation and will be a monumental event for the Catholic Church, with the theme 'Pilgrims of Hope.' Part of a tradition that dates back to the 14th century, this special Holy Year will begin on Christmas Eve 2024 and will end on January 6, 2026. This is a great opportunity for travelers to experience the rich spiritual and cultural heritage of the Vatican and Rome during this period of time . . . 

"The term 'Jubilee' comes from the Hebrew term 'yobel,' which means 'ram’s horn.' In Jewish tradition, the sound of the horn marked the beginning of a particular year of remission and forgiveness. The Catholic Church adopted this tradition and made it a year of pilgrimage, prayer, and reconciliation.

"The first Jubilee of the Catholic Church was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300. Since then, the Church has celebrated a Jubilee every 25 years unless the Pope decides to call an extraordinary Jubilee, as Pope Francis did in 2015."

*****

What has now made the rounds is the resurfaced Charlie Kirk X Tweet from May 8, 2025 in which he wrote: "We talk about a Golden Age in America . . . I am an Evangelical Christian, but I pray the new pope will help usher in a new Golden Age of Christianity. If the new pope defends the faith, defends the West, defends biology and eternal truths, I will be his biggest fan."

Analysis from a YouTuber:

"What does Kirk mean by, 'I pray the new pope will help usher in a new Golden Age of Christianity'? 'Usher in' is often used with the Antichrist. Do we need a new golden age of Christianity? When was the old golden age? What are you even talking about?!

"This sounds kind of like Christian nationalism, which is kind of a nightmare. You can't force people to become Christian. That's not how it works. There's going to be plenty of lost people at the end of the age. There never will be a golden age on earth until Jesus Christ returns. He will usher in a new golden age. We don't need the pope's help. The pope cannot possibly usher in anything . . . 

"Kirk says he hopes the pope 'defends biology.' Didn't the pope just have a transgender summit at the Vatican? Looks like he's not defending biology. But I guess it's illegal to say anything contrary to the great Messiah, the alleged martyr."

From September 1: "Outreach, a ministry promoting LGBTQ acceptance, will participate in a big Holy Year pilgrimage Friday and Saturday sponsored by Italian LGBTQ Catholic group 'Jonathan’s Tent.' Significantly, the pilgrimage of about 1,200 people includes a Mass at the Jesuit church in Rome celebrated by the second-highest member of the Italian bishop’s conference . . . 

"The message received from Leo was 'that if people were happy with Pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with Pope Leo’s approach.' " 

*****

Here is an event scheduled this coming week on the National Mall called "Awaken the Dawn," as described by the organizers on their official website Communion America:

"We are calling the nation to gather in Washington DC on the national mall on October 9-12, 2025.

"We are not gathering around celebrity personalities. We are gathering around the presence of Jesus at the center of our nation’s capital. This is a festival around the presence of God and the gospel for a new generation because his presence changes everything!

"We will gather in 50 state tents filled with thousands of musicians, worshiping and praying day and night in public. We will gather every evening together for gospel proclamation and commissioning.

"On the final day, we will come to an unprecedented communion table the length of the entire national mall to declare Jesus’ reality, and our love for one another to the nation.

"This is not just an event. It is a commissioning of a generation to host God’s presence in their region and campus!"

Dead church with name, reputation

(new article this evening for certain)

Revelation 3 begins, [1] And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.

That goes back to Revelation 1:4 and 1:16 where Christ is seen as the Son of Man and He has the seven spirits of God and He’s got these seven stars.

Verse 4: [4] John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;

Verse 16: [16] And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

He’s seen in Revelation 3 in that capacity because of the problem at Sardis. The problem at Sardis, Christ says, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”

They have a reputation and a name for living, because they’ve got all these works in their midst, but He says, “Thou art dead.”

According to a website article: History tells us that the city of Sardis was about thirty miles southeast of Thyatira and about fifty miles northeast of Smyrna. Sardis was on a major commercial trade route and also on an important military road.

The acropolis of Sardis was large and lay on a ridge of the Tmolus mountain range, forming a natural fortress which was extremely difficult for an invading army to penetrate. Today, there are very few ruins left.

One of the outstanding ruins is that of the temple of the goddess Artemis. It lay in the Hermus Valley about 800 feet below the Acropolis. The columns of the temple were so large that four men, holding each other’s hands, are needed to surround the entire columns. That helps us understand the size of the temple. The gymnasium in the ancient city was enormous.

Herodotus, the 5th century B.C. historian, tells us sarcastically that Sardis was a city of “tender-footed” people who could only play on the cithara, strike the guitar, and sell by retail. William Barclay adds that Sardis was a city of peace, where a “man whose dreams are dead and whose mind is asleep, the peace of lethargy and evasion.” In short, the people in the city were given to pleasure and leisure.

******

The problem the church at Sardis has is that they’re dead and yet they look like they’re alive. How can you be alive and yet dead? It’s talking about spiritual death, not physical death.

You remember the story of the prodigal son. In Luke 15 there’s a place where he uses the word dead and death in the context just like what’s in Revelation.

The prodigal’s gone off, he’s wasted all his substance in riotous living, but he came to himself and returned to the father.

Luke 15: [21] And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
[22] But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
[23] And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
[24] For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

Now tell me, was the boy dead physically? No. Was he resurrected physically? No. He was separated from the father and now he’s been reunited with the father and so the father says, “My son was dead; he was gone and it was as though he were dead; he was just completely separated from me, I had no contact with him, but he’s come back and now he’s alive again.”

It's not physical death in Revelation 3:1. This church isn’t dead in the sense they don’t have any activity involved in their midst. The problem is they don’t have any spiritual life in their midst.

They’ve got the works. They have the form of godliness but they’re spiritually dead. The problem there is formalism. Dead religion. They’ve got the activity. They’ve got the name. They’ve got all the form, but they don’t have the life. It’s not the Spirit of God working in their midst.

That’s why Christ’s referred to as "him that have the seven spirits of God.” The Holy Spirit of God is the one who gives life. The Spirit of God is the one who gives life to the church and is the one who imparts spiritual life.

This Sardis church doesn’t have the real life of God. The works they have are not being produced by God; they’re being produced by their own activity.

Revelation 3:2: [2] Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

Notice he doesn’t say, “Strengthen the people that remain.” He says strengthen the things; the works that remain. There’s some good works being done in their midst, but the works aren’t being done because God’s generating them; they’re being done out of formal activity.

Forgive and forget = God's freedom

(new article tomorrow)

When Paul writes in Philippians 3:12, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” he’s saying, “I’m not where I want to be yet but I follow after that I may seize it.”

“Apprehend means to take hold of,” explains Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid. “In other words, Christ Jesus had taken hold of Paul and Paul wanted to take hold of that life he knew he could walk in. He says in the next verse, [13] Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, [14] I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

“He’s saying, ‘I don’t count myself to have apprehended; I’m not there yet. But this one thing I do, ‘Forgetting those things which are behind.’ The message is we need to forget the past.

“As we go through life there’s lots of things we can ponder on, and our minds can go in a million different directions. Have you ever said anything you wish you hadn’t said?

“I’ve done that a lot and there’s times after I do something that I think, ‘Well, I wish I could hit Control Z.’ You know what that is? That’s after you mess up the document and you don’t know what you did, you just hit Control Z and undo it. It’s one of my favorite functions because it just lets you get back to where you were.

“But you can’t get back the words you just spoke. You wish, ‘Why didn’t I handle this differently?!’ and if you dwell on those things, they’ll mess you up. You can spend all of your present—all this emotion and unending guilt because of that stuff in the past.

“Think about Paul for a moment. When Paul says he was the chief of sinners, he doesn’t mean he committed more crimes or had a bigger crime organization than anyone else. He’s saying he’s the leader of the persecution of the church. When you think about Romans 10: ‘How shall they hear without a preacher?’ . . .

“I will tell you this, what I think is the most wicked thing that can be done on the earth today doesn’t involve drugs or any of the fleshly sins we think of. The most evil thing that can be done today is to inhibit the proclamation of the gospel. The gospel’s the thing that delivers people from an eternal hell. So anything that’s done to inhibit that is the most wicked thing there is. That’s why Paul says he was the ‘chiefest of sinners.’

“Do you think Paul had some guilt issues? While he’s giving his voice, consenting unto people’s deaths, persecuting them even unto strange cities . . . In other words, he’s not just mad enough that, ‘Hey, the guys in my neighborhood preaching this false gospel need to be dealt with.’ He goes to the chief priest and says, ‘Hey, give me some letters because there’s people far away I’ve got to go find and persecute.’ Paul would look back at that and have guilt.

“We have our own things in our lives that we regret and you just have to let those things go. Life is full of spilled milk. What’s the saying? ‘Don’t cry over spilled milk.’ The point is, you’ve got to let it go. I think that’s incredibly liberating because you can rehearse that stuff in your mind forever and ever and ever.

“Now, when Paul says ‘forgetting the past,’ is that just the 'Power of Positive Thinking' or is it something greater than that? Look at Colossians 2:13: [13] And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.

“If God the Father considers all of our trespasses forgiven, we need to agree with Him about that. We need to not let the past mess up the present. One of the things a lot of athletic coaches say is, ‘Get ready for the next play.’ If you play any sort of sports, you learn you can’t stew on whatever bad happens. If you sit and stew and mope, you know what? You’re going to miss the next play.

“When Paul says, ‘I press toward the mark,’ the issue is, ‘Where are you going?’ When Paul says this, he’s not talking about, ‘I’m doing this now so I can get all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in the future.’ Paul already has them and he can’t lose them. What he’s talking about is his experience of those blessings in THIS life.

*****

Micah 7:19 says, [19] He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “I love that statement, ‘He will subdue our iniquities.’ He literally will subdue. He’ll take care of your sin when you can’t. He’ll lick it. He’ll beat it for you. We sing that song ‘Glorious Freedom.’

“You couldn’t get freedom from your sin no matter how hard you tried, but God Himself promises to take care of it for us. When He says He casts it into the depths of the sea, that means never to be remembered. The extent of forgiveness in this regard is total. God doesn’t forgive piecemeal and He doesn’t forgive on probation. Forgiveness is an absolute thing. The sin is gone.

“Psalm 103:12 says, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.’ That’s total removal. If you said, ‘As far as the north is from the south,’ if you go far enough north, your compass will tell you that now you’re going south because of the way magnetic field in the earth is. But if you get in an airplane and you start going east, your compass will never tell you that you’re going west because east and west never meet.

“By the way, this is one of the verses that proves the earth is round. I can’t figure out the east and west, where they never meet, if the earth’s flat.

“When He talks about forgiveness, He’s saying, ‘I’m going to separate your sin from you so far away that you never meet them again.’ That’s what that word ‘remember’ means. Something that is a member of something is a part of it. If it’s sent away, it’s not part of you anymore. He’s saying, ‘I’ll never take your sins and make them part of your account again.’

“Isaiah 38:17 is another verse to help you. King Hezekiah is sick and recovering and says, [17] Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

“If something’s behind you, you can’t see it and when it says God ‘cast all my sins behind thy back,’ that means He’s going to take the sins and put them out of His sight where they don’t remind Him of anything. They’re not seen and they’re not things He’s going to bring up again. That’s just another way to describe the completeness of the forgiveness God provides.

“Isaiah 43:25 says, [25] I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. That’s what Acts 3:19 said: [19] Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

“He’s literally going to remove the transgressions from the record. When you blot something out, you cover it over, you erase it, you make it like it wasn’t there anymore. That’s what the issue of forgiveness is.

“Paul uses the term ‘remission.’ I’ve heard people say remission isn’t permanent, but if I remit a check to someone to pay a bill that’s pretty permanent. They say, ‘Well, you can have cancer and it not go into remission.’ These are not medical terms in the New Testament and it’s not the same idea. The word ‘remission’ is an accounting term where a payment is made and it completely satisfies the debt and now the debt doesn’t exist anymore.

“Colossians 2:13 says He’s ‘forgiven you ALL trespasses.’ How many is ALL? That would be all of the past, present and future. Your forgiveness in Christ is total and complete.

*****

“I John 1 is a verse people like to use to tell you what you need to do is practice confession every day and keep short accounts with God, because every time you sin God watches and puts a mark on the board, and if you don’t confess it, then He comes down with a Coke bottle and bops you in the head and gets even with you and gets your attention. But when you then confess, He erases it. That’s exactly the opposite of all the verses we just went through.

“I John 1:9 says, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Tell me something, how many times can you be forgiven all of your sins? Once, or it wasn’t ALL of them. How many times can you be cleansed from ALL unrighteousness? Only once!

“By the way, he’s writing this thing to Israel. This is a circumcision epistle. It’s not for you anyway. This is no more about you and me as members of the Body of Christ then Genesis 6-7 is with its instructions for Noah to build an ark. That verse is a statement about how in Israel’s program they can have ALL their sins forgiven. That’s a salvation verse, folks.

“Romans 5:10 says, [10] For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

“To be reconciled is to be brought back, to have your status changed from being an enemy to being a friend. Reconciliation and atonement are synonyms.

"I Corinthians 7 says that if a man leaves his wife the two should be reconciled. They’ve got a split between them and then they’re brought back together. They’re put at-one together and in the English language the suffix ‘ment’ is the idea of permanence. They’re put back as one permanently. There’s a permanent rejoining, a permanent at-one-ment.

“That word ‘covered,’ if you go back in the Old Testament, is the idea of atoning. It’s the word ‘covering.’ It blotted out the sins and allowed God not to remember them anymore. When Noah covered the ark of with pitch, anybody who’s ever worked with creosote knows that that’s not temporary; it’s a permanent covering.

“That word ‘atonement’ occurs many times in the Old Testament to describe what the blood of bulls and goats did for them in type and picture. A propitiation is a sacrifice that settles the debt so people can be reconciled; they can be at one.

“Really, in the final analysis, forgiveness is the issue of freedom; the glorious liberty as we sing about, of sending the sin to the Cross and putting His life in its place.”

Christ 'writes' using Paul's heart as canvas

"Listen, when you sit and read that Book, that’s like God Almighty sitting across the table from you talking to you. Don't ever forget that when you read it! Now, if you won’t forget that, you’ll fall in love with that Book in a way you never did before. And it will consume you. It will pull and tug at you and you won’t ever want to get too far away from it."--Richard Jordan

Question: “Why are the words of Christ according to the Gospel records any more the words of the Lord Jesus than those recorded in Paul’s epistles?”

So asks Bible scholar C.R. Stam in his 1963 classic The Controversy. He answers, “Christ Himself left no writings behind. Does not Paul say again and again that his teachings are the words of Christ?"

Stam continues, “Our opponents’ quotation of I Timothy 6:3-5 to prove that we should put greater emphasis on the words of the Lord Jesus than on the words of Paul act as a boomerang for this passage is but another proof that the words of Paul were the words of the Lord Jesus. Referring to his own instructions to Timothy, the apostle says:

“ ‘If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing . . . ’

Stam laments, “. . . So deep is the antipathy of some religious leaders toward the Pauline message and those who proclaim it that they will simply lie low each time their falsehoods are exposed and await an opportunity to strike again. This is Satan’s strategy, for it is easier to believe a lie one has heard a thousand times than to believe a truth he has never heard before.”

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In II Corinthians, Paul is put in the position of having to defend himself when the Believers in Corinth conclude he’s an illegitimate fraud. He argues in II Corinthians 3:2, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men."

“The people are saying, ‘Prove it, prove it, prove it,’ and Paul says, ‘You’re it! You’re the letter of authenticity!’ ” explains Preacher Alex Kurz. “Verse 3:3 says, ‘Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’

“Paul is the canvas but who is the author of this particular letter? Jesus Christ, as the Author, has written something upon the canvas of Paul’s heart, which demonstrates the Corinthians are literally the letter of authenticity!

“Do you know when you write a letter, the author actually bears the character of the writer? Do you understand why Paul says Christ is the one who is manifestly declaring something? When Jesus Christ uses Paul’s heart, Christ is inscribing His own character upon the canvas of Paul’s heart.

“You know what Paul’s saying? ‘You read my life and my ministry and you will see the reflection of the character of Jesus Christ. You will see born upon my life the very thinking that Jesus Christ has toward you. That’s the letter of authenticity.’

“The issue isn’t the outward appearance. The issue is what Paul is doing and putting up with and sacrificing for a group of ungrateful Believers. The stamp of Christ’s hand, the finger prints of Christ’s ministry, the proof that Jesus Christ is working in Paul’s ministry is stamped on Paul’s heart.

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“God wrote on tablets, walls, in the ground--but did you know God also writes in the heart? There is a fascinating parallel in Jeremiah 17:1: ‘The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars.’

“What does it mean for God to inscribe? The point of a diamond can cut glass, but do you know what a pen of iron does? This is a description of God permanently inscribing and engraving the sins of a nation on their heart.

“Verse 13 says, ‘O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.’

“In John 8 we cannot say with absolute certainty what the Lord Jesus is writing on the ground, but if we look at the context in chapter 7, we know what the Lord Jesus is trying to do. He’s constantly looking for faith in His messiahship. In Jeremiah 17, this might be the clue that could shed light on what Jesus Christ is writing on the ground.”

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Stam writes, “Those who would join with the Modernists in following the earthly Jesus should listen to the inspired apostle when he 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 Corinthians 5:16)

“It is the message of the exalted Lord through Paul himself to which he refers when he says: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord (Colossians 3:16).' "