Pattern of order, disorder and re-order

From this evening's Bible study at my church:

Isaiah 46: [9] Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,

[10] Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Notice the issue. "I'm God and you know I am because I can tell you how it's going to wind up from the very beginning."

When He says to them in verse 9, "Remember the former things of old," He's saying, "Go back and look at what's happened in the past, because what I told you in the past is what's going to come to pass in the end. I'm telling you the end from the beginning.

"Look at the stuff I've done and said back here because that's what's over there." That's really what prophecy is about.

Mattthew 25:34: [34] Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 

That's Genesis 1. From the foundation of the world, God's prophetic purpose that He's declared is the establishment of the kingdom, so when Jesus Christ comes back and sets His kingdom up, He's setting up a kingdom that's been prepared (talked about, prophesied about) not just from Abraham, but from the time He put the earth in play.

Genesis 1 was not written to, as I've put it for years, "put the monkey on the run." What I mean by that is it's not written for the purpose of disproving evolution.

Back in the 1960s there was a movement started by conservative fundamentalists called "Creation Science," and Whitcomb and Morris wrote books about it. Today, probably the biggest proponent of it is if you go down to the Ark in Kentucky and those folks with the Creation Museum.

What "creation scientists" have done is they've convinced evangelicals and fundamentalists that Genesis 1 is written for the purpose of disproving evolution. Now, I don't believe in evolution. Why not? What does the first verse say? "In the beginning God created." You don't need anything else. But they're going to prove science demonstrates these things and so they develop a necessity to use these texts to do their anti-evolution program.

That's not what these texts were written for. They do do that, but that's not their purpose. Genesis 1 is written to show you the purpose God has in His creation and how He's going to work out His purpose in His creation. He says, "The model for how I'm going to work is in Genesis 1."

The methodology of specifics with regard to man is in chapter 2. That's why it seems like it repeats itself because it picks up the sixth day work of man. What He's doing is He's declaring the end from the beginning.

By the way, if you don't put the fall of Satan between these first two verses in Genesis, where do you put it? Because you've only got six days and Genesis 1 has for each one of the six days a morning and evening and that's a 24-hour day in the text.

You have all the things Satan does, for example, in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 4--all that planning that he does--and you've got to crunch that down into a very short time period.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." He sets the heaven and the earth in order. Creation.

"And the earth was without form, and void." It's in disorder; it's in chaos. It's without form. No shape and no occupants.

"And darkness was upon the face of the deep." God had withdrawn Himself from His creation. Shrouded it with darkness.

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

"And God said, Let there be light." What He does in the first three days of creation is He takes the earth that's without form and He puts form to it. He puts some order to it.

On the first day He separates light from darkness. He brings His presence back into creation. On the second day, He separates heaven from earth. So, He puts order back into it.

The next three days He takes care of the emptiness by putting creatures into it. He puts the sun and the stars and the heaven's up here, and He puts the birds in the open heavens and animals in the sea and then on the sixth day He makes man, another creature.

So the first three days He gets rid of the disorder and the second three days He gets rid of the emptiness. So what you have in the six-day creation is He's rectifying what's in verse 2. You have a pattern.

There's order (creation, life), then there's chaos (darkness, disorder), and then there's a re-ordering and a re-creation. There's life, there's death and then there's resurrection, and there's that pattern of order, disorder and re-order--structure, chaos, restructure. Design, entropy and re-design. That's God telling you as you read it, "Here's how you're going to watch creation." The pattern, even in salvation, is there. 

World teetering on the brink?

(I am experiencing anxiety related to knowing I am in the process of changing my whole life, job and all, to accommodate me finishing my book in the next six weeks. the heartburn problem I had on my birthday returned just today at work although it was much more manageable. At least I'm back on the board with this new post and will have another one for certain tomorrow evening. They have me working six days in a row this week at my job and so here I go in again tomorrow morning . . . hoping there's no more heartburn)

At our church's annual Sunday School graduation ceremony last week, Pastor Richard Jordan ended the awards presentation with, "I was thinking last night that 82 years ago yesterday, June 6, 1944, the Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from tyranny. These young people frankly are going to face a far more deadly spiritual battle in the days ahead and we want them to be equipped with the whole armor of God."

The Economist magazine's "World Ahead in 2026" edition shows a soccer player kicking off a big soccer ball (meant to represent the earth) with all kinds of chaos depicted in drawings inside the circle. (Go to end of this post for more information.)

YouTubers are busy commenting about the FIFA World Cup's opening ceremonies over the past few days. One said: "When you look at their map of the U.S. shown during the opening ceremony in Los Angeles (June 12), it actually looks almost identical to the American solar eclipse map (2017-2024).

"C'mon, that is too much of a coincidence right there. There's something more to all of this. Everything surrounding the World Cup 2026 has been off. All of these opening ceremonies (Olympics, etc.) have been very bizarre. You can't deny it. The question is what do they have planned?

"They showcase the Hollywood sign being split in half, so this is more puzzling imagery. Something else, they have all these skyscrapers (high-rise buildings) collapsing on the left and right side."

Here's another YouTuber: "Yo, did you see this FIFA World Cup Satanic ritual?! This was wild. The opening ceremony in Mexico City (June 11) showed an image of Tonatiuh, the Aztec sun god. That goes with the actual FIFA symbol; a clawed hand gripping a human heart!

He showed a summary from an art history website about this exact same image of Tonatiuh: "The face of Tonatiuh, the sun god (some scholars debate if it's the earth monster Tlaltecuhtli or a hybrid). The tongue is a sacrificial knife, and clawed hands grip human hearts. This represents the belief that human sacrifice was required to 'feed' the sun and keep it moving across the sky--otherwise the world would end."

*****

Here is a story from the website Mashable:

"A viral image circulating online has sparked a wave of reactions, with fans claiming that a World Cup stage setup looks eerily similar to a nuclear warning sign. The comparison has quickly taken over social media, turning a routine design moment into a full-blown internet debate. At first glance, the structure’s circular symmetry and bold geometric layout appear striking, but also strangely familiar. Many online users have pointed out that the design echoes the visual language of hazard symbols, particularly those associated with nuclear or biohazard warnings.

"While the resemblance might feel uncanny, there’s no official confirmation linking the stage design to any such symbolism. In fact, similar reactions have previously emerged when abstract visuals from major events accidentally mirror well-known icons.

"Adding to the chatter is the official branding of the 2026 tournament. The design prominently features the World Cup trophy layered over the number '26,' creating a bold, graphic look that leans heavily on geometry and contrast. For some viewers, this stylised approach may unintentionally resemble warning-style imagery, especially when seen from a distance or in certain lighting conditions."

*****

Here is an article I found online (ALOR website) written by Peter West:

"If one wants a window into the mindset of the global elite, few publications offer as clear a view as The Economist. For nearly two centuries, it has chronicled the interplay of finance, power, and geopolitics, often predicting trends before they fully materialise.

"Its annual 'World Ahead' issue is not mere speculation; it is a statement of intent, a coded signal of what those who shape global events believe will, or intend to, happen in the year to come. And the 2026 issue is perhaps the most ominous they have ever produced.

"The cover itself is a visual declaration of chaos. Twin red tanks face each other across the page, missiles loom above, and two swords cross in the centre, a universal emblem of conflict. Figures of global influence, Trump, Zelensky, Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, hover over the scene like puppeteers or pawns, depending on one's perspective.

"Beneath them, a chart of collapsing markets and a broken dollar sign hint at financial instability, while falling paper currency suggests a crisis that could touch every corner of the globe.

"Add to that the imagery of syringes and pills, floating like a threat in the air, and the message becomes clear: 2026 may be a year defined by war, economic collapse, pestilence, and civil unrest.

"War is the most immediate concern. From Ukraine to Israel and Iran, global hotspots are simmering, and The Economist seems to anticipate escalation. Even in the Americas, the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, Mexico, or Colombia, suggested by Trump's recent comments, illustrates that conflict is not confined to distant continents.

"These flashpoints could stretch military capacities and inflame international tensions, placing ordinary citizens at the mercy of decisions made in corridors of power.

"Economically, the magazine's imagery suggests a world teetering on the brink. Falling currencies, broken financial symbols, and scattered money indicate instability that is already visible in inflation, debt crises, and volatile markets.

"If elite projections are accurate, 2026 may not simply be a year of slow growth or market corrections, it may be the moment when accumulated systemic vulnerabilities manifest in tangible disruption for billions.

"Health crises also loom. The inclusion of syringes and pills on the cover evokes memories of recent pandemics, and the outbreak of the Marburg virus in Ethiopia underscores the ever-present risk of zoonotic disease spreading rapidly in a globally interconnected world.

"For those paying attention, it is a reminder that even in a modern civilisation, pestilence can reshape society, overwhelm healthcare systems, and exacerbate political and economic instability.

"But perhaps most unsettling is the symbol of the raised fist, hovering above the American flag. It is a declaration of dissent, resistance, and the intent to challenge established authority. When coupled with the magazine's broader themes, it suggests that civil unrest, mass protests, street violence, political instability, is no longer hypothetical.

"Far from being isolated events, such unrest could form part of a coordinated or at least highly visible global disruption, fuelled by elites who benefit from chaos, or who see it as a necessary pressure valve in a world teetering on the edge.

"Reading The Economist's 2026 forecast feels like witnessing the inversion of a familiar Beatles lyric: instead of 'the world getting better all the time,' it is getting worse, all the time. Wars multiply, economies wobble, disease spreads, and societies fracture.

"What is striking is not just the pessimism, it is the precision and symmetry of the warning. Every element of chaos, military, financial, health, civil, is visualised and symbolically connected.

"The message is unavoidable: the global elite are anticipating a year of immense instability, and by the very nature of their influence, much of what they anticipate may well come to pass.

"Yet for all their foresight, there is one variable they cannot control: human unpredictability. While The Economist's elite readership may plan for war, financial collapse, and pandemics, the actions of ordinary people, how populations respond to crises, resist chaos, or embrace reform, remain outside their grasp.

"In a way, this is the paradox of elite foresight: they can anticipate outcomes with alarming accuracy, but cannot fully control the chaos they foresee.

"2026, according to the magazine, is poised to be a year where the fragile structures of global stability are tested. Civilisations may be challenged, governments may falter, and the everyday lives of billions will be touched by forces beyond their control.

"Yet it also reminds us that preparation, awareness, and the will of people remain the only counterweight to the storms the elite predict. The world may be heading toward chaos, but chaos is never absolute; it can always be shaped by those who refuse to let it dominate.

"In the end, The Economist's vision is both warning and mirror. It reflects the fears and ambitions of the powerful, and it warns that 2026 may be the year when the inverse of progress, the unravelling of order, prosperity, and safety, arrives with a force that cannot be ignored.

"For those willing to read the signs, it is a call not to panic, but to prepare, to observe, and to act in ways that protect both personal and societal resilience in a world the elite already seem to expect will go very, very wrong."

Driving off in a new vehicle

(please forgive me for all these delays and will have new article tomorrow now)

 Just like God used His hands to form Adam out of the dust of the ground and “fashion” him with an intricate cardiovascular system, respiratory system, muscular system, nervous system, etc., He'll do the very same thing with our resurrection body!

“That body you now have is literally going be beyond comprehension then," says Richard Jordan. "If you think you’re fearfully and wonderfully made now, just wait ’til you see what’s coming—the systems of the new body will be SO far in advance beyond your ability to imagine it."

*****

In the Bible, the Old and New testaments are sprinkled with references to God’s own body features—His head with hair, His face, His eyes, His mouth, His lips, His voice, His nose and nostrils, His hands, His fingers and His feet.

The Apostle Paul tells us in II Corinthians 5 that “we know if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

That’s where you’re going to be for eternity and that’s why your body is important. Your earthly body is not just some cloth you exist in—some hapless prison, some meaningless abode that you live in—it has an integral purpose in the plan of God because it’s the vehicle in which He put you without which you’re not complete.

It’s a required part of your humanity and we’ll be a required part of your glorification in order for you to function in the purpose God has for you. It’s the vehicle of your inner man; the home for your soul and it’s necessary to your soul’s full action and function.

And that’s why in the intermediate state between death and the resurrection you’re found naked. That is, you’re not ready to go to work yet.”

*****

Paul tells us that what gave him a new perspective on what life was to be in his current body was the knowledge that the Lord will “change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.”

He writes in II Corinthians 5, “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.
[4] For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.
[5] Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.
[6] Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
[7] (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
[8] We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
[9] Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.
[10] For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

*****

Paul’s saying, "This hope I have out here, it’s not making me have suicidal kinds of ideas; it’s not making me where I’m discontent with down here and can’t stand to be here. I’ve got a new perspective on what life here is all about. And my living here— I live with eternity in view. I live with the perspective of what’s real, lasting and never-ending."

If this body is what you lived in and thought was all there was going to be, or that maybe after this body died you’d come back as a cow or a roach or whatever—you know, the reincarnation routine—you wouldn’t have much of a hope because even when you hope to do better . . .  I mean, (believers in reincarnation) don’t hope to get much higher on the ladder than what they are now and Paul’s talking about sharing God’s glory.

*****

A favorite story at my church about soul-winning efforts has to do with an aunt who approached her niece while manning the checkout counter at a grocery and said to her, in part, “We’re going to get new bodies and we’re getting out of here!”

The spur-of-the-moment encounter happened shortly after the 1997 Heaven’s Gate suicide scandal (in which cult followers planned their departure in conjunction with the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp), and the niece, who later got saved, admitted thinking to herself, “My aunt’s gone off her rocker! What’s happened to her!”

*****

Jordan tells the story of how when he was 19 and doing handyman work with a friend at a lady’s home, the friend began witnessing to her in the front yard about how he longed to go to heaven and be with the Lord.

“This friend of mine began to wax eloquent and, as I’ve told you before, when you hear Christians talk about, ‘Boy, I just wish the Lord would come today,’ that’s sort of a quasi-Christian suicide. They know you shouldn’t take a .38 and blow your brains out, so the way to practice escapism is, ‘Oh, Lord, please come today,’ and that’s the way this lady took it and she pulled me aside and said, ‘How well do you know him? He needs some help; he’s contemplating suicide.’

“She was just absolutely confident this guy was having mental problems and I said, ‘No, no, no, no,' and she said, ‘Oh, yes he is! He’s only 19 and talking about going NOW—that he hopes to be there today!’

“I got to thinking about that and I thought, ‘You know, lost people could get that idea about you.’ Sometimes we can come across that way.”

*****

When Paul talks about being “absent from the Lord,” and then about being “present with the Lord,” he’s making reference to eyesight absence and eyesight presence.

You are not in the presence of God as far as sight is concerned today. Peter talks about ‘whom having not seen yet have ye loved.’ When Thomas in John 20 said, ‘I have to put my hand in the place in His side and in the palms of His hand,’ Jesus responded, ‘Here touch me, see me and believe. Blessed are thee that don’t see me and believe.’

So there’s an issue of "walking by faith and not by sight." You’ve never seen God, never felt Him, never touched Him, and yet you believe in Him. What kind of a kook is that? Well, you’re not kooky. You’ve got evidence; you’ve got a Book and you believe Him and you bring into your experience by faith the reality of His truth, His Word.

But you still haven’t seen Him. Now, whatever it is you thought you saw that was Him, wasn’t Him. I know how people are. They say, "Well, if God just stood right here!" or, "I had this vision last night," and everything is based upon experience. Your faith is to be founded on what God says.

Physical, tangible, sitting across the table

(new article this evening)

Revelation 19:15 says, “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

“You see how it goes out of His mouth?" says Richard Jordan. "Folks, when you’re facing the Lord Jesus Christ, as these people are, you know what you’re facing? It’s just like facing the Book.

"Listen, when you sit and read that Book, that’s like God Almighty sitting across the table from you talking to you. And when you read it, don’t you ever forget that!

"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.

“But don’t you ever forget that when that Book begins to deal with you, that’s why it’s doing it. If God Almighty were to stand here tonight and say something to you and you’d do it because He stood here and said it to you, and you wouldn’t do it because that Book said it to you, there’s something wrong with you spiritually. It’s the same difference and that’s the design.”

*****

"Paul writes in Ephesians 4, [17] This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
[18] Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
[19] Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
[20] But ye have not so learned Christ;
[21] If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:

“The word 'but' is a disjointive conjunction meaning ‘stop.’ When Paul says, ‘But you have not so learned Christ,’ he's saying, 'What you learned from Christ is the reverse of all that other stuff.'

“Verse 21 is an interesting verse because Christ didn’t hear for you to hear. People say, ‘Well, the Lord spoke to me,’ and my first question is, 'What kind of accent did He have?'

“I mean, Isaiah said, ‘I heard Him in my ear.’ You say, ‘Well, He didn’t speak with an audible voice.’ How do you speak without an audible voice?! You say, ‘Well, it was in my head.’ Well, you had to hear it in your head . . .

“How did you hear Him? Well, He isn’t standing here. He’s not personally here but He’s given us His thinking. Paul says in I Corinthians, ‘That you may have the mind of Christ.’ In Col. 3:16 he talks about how ‘the word of Christ dwells in you richly.’

“In I Timothy 6, Paul talks about ‘consenting to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He’s talking about the epistle that he’s writing. You understand when you listen to Paul’s epistles, you’re listening to Jesus Christ tell you what His thinking is? You literally are hearing Him!

“That’s why, folks, if you don’t understand how to rightly divide the Scripture, you’re going to wind up absolutely out in left field in the dark.”

*****

"Prayer is constantly talking to God about everything going on in your life, applying what His Word says. All of a sudden you’re making all of your life under this wonderful, intimate communion with a heavenly Father who loves you and desires you more than anything else. He desires that fellowship and active communion with you taking what He says and bringing it into your experience by walking by faith.

"Paul writes in II Thessalonians 3:1: 'Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you.'

“Paul’s saying, ‘I want the Word of the Lord to be set free; run without obstacles. Run without needing to stop and be glorified.’

“When you glorify something you demonstrate how valuable it is; how much of a treasure it is. How important it is. How would you glorify the Lord Jesus Christ? How do you demonstrate in your life that you cherish Him more than anybody else; His wisdom, His thinking?

“When you make decisions in life, whose opinion is the most valuable? You’re choosing HIS thinking, HIS attitudes, having HIS actions. I can’t live the life, but He gave me His life and that’s the life that’s going to count.

*****

"I Thessalonians 1:5 says, 'For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.'

"The power is in the power of God. As chapter 2:13 says, '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.'

"Jesus says, 'The flesh profiteth nothing,' meaning all of our wisdom, our resources, aren’t the issue.

“You’re constantly learning, 'It isn’t me; it’s Him.' Jesus said, ‘The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life.' The objective measure of the working of the Spirit of God in your life is God’s Spirit wrote a Book and it’s a physical, tangible connection between Him and you.

"You never appropriate that into your experience until you need that. If you don't know it, you can't appropriate it. The need is, 'Not I but Christ.' You're constantly learning that, 'It isn't me.' You learn this at a different level; that's part of what maturity in the Word is all about.

"Jesus said, 'The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' The words on the pages are the words of the Spirit and when I believe that Word and put my faith in it it WORKS; it becomes energizing activity and life in him who believes."

What to wear? 'Clap on, clap off'?

(got delayed and will now have new article this evening for sure)

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jewish History and Culture, there are a total of 613 laws in the Old Testament meant to control the details of a devout Jew’s day-to-day life right down to their choice of underwear.

Of course, God set aside the Mosaic Law program of the Old Testament and Four Gospels with our current “dispensation of grace,” laid out by the Apostle Paul for the obedience of Jews and Gentiles alike, but since most Jews are unaware of this, they try in vain to keep the law, which is just how Satan likes it.

“If we were operating under the Jews’ law system tonight, a lot of you would have to take your clothes off,” says Richard Jordan. “That’s a pretty frightening thought for most of us. You see, you’re not allowed under the law to wear a garment that has two different kinds of material in it. Dacron and rayon—you couldn’t wear that.

“If you have a synthetic blouse or shirt and cotton pants, one of them has to go. Now, you do have some liberty—you can choose the color. Hot dog! In fact, you have the liberty to choose the material, just don’t mix any two.”

*****

Jordan recalled attending a Bible conference once in southern Florida held in the same hotel where a group of Hasidic Jews were meeting for their Friday night Sabbath observance.

“They all had their suits and hats on, you know, and as they began their meeting—the head guy’s got the Torah on his shoulders and he’s doing his prayers. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the rituals they do, but they do a lot of bobbing and that kind of weaving and stuff. They’re all walking around praying.

“They started at 6, and at about 9:30, when we were finished, there was a young man who came over to a man from our group standing around in the lobby and asked him if he’d be willing to come down to his room. What this young Jewish guy had done was left his motel room forgetting to keep the door unlocked.

“Now, he can’t work on the Sabbath. It’s considered work to take his key and put it in the door and unlock it. Had he left the door unlocked, it would have been okay to push it open. That wasn’t work supposedly. But unlocking the door was work.

“I thought about that. It seems to me to be more of an expenditure of energy to push the door open than to turn a key. How would you figure out which is which?!

“Well, the way he knew which was which is he went over and his Rabbi made a decree and told him which was which, and when the two men went into the room, the Jewish fellow asked, ‘Before you go, would you please turn on the light switch for me?’ That was work.

“And so our guy asked him, ‘What are you going to do to turn the light off when you want to go to bed?’ He answered, ‘Well, I’ll have to sleep with the light on tonight.’

“You think, ‘Isn’t that overdoing it just a little bit?!’ But here’s a guy in fear of his soul who’s intent on following the rules and regulations exactly.

“When I look at that, I think, ‘How do you figure out the rules and regulations?!’

“How do you figure out, ‘Can I turn the light on or not?!’ I mean, I would have stood there at the door and said, ‘I’m shot! I can’t get in because I didn’t put a book behind and leave it open before I left.’

“I would have figured in my mind it’s just as much work to open the door as it is to turn the key to unlock it.

“What the young guy did is he opened the door and took the clasp so when the door shut it didn’t latch and then he could open the door and go in.

“Now, I’m not talking about the foolishness of the regulation—any regulation can be foolish. The question in my mind would be, ‘If I was him, how would I decide what I should have done? What is a law? What is permissible and what isn’t permissible?’

“And that’s where ‘the tradition of the elders’ developed. Because when you have that kind of system of legalism you can easily get to be overbearing with it and it can easily become the doctrines of men taught as the commandments of God. And that’s what Israel did under the Mosaic Law. That’s what ‘the tradition of the elders’ became.”

*****

“Some of you (Gentile Christians) come from legalistic religious backgrounds. You got your own rules and lists of things.

“I’ve got a list of maybe 80 I’ve heard through the years: Can’t wear wire-rimmed glasses. Can’t wear bell-bottom pants. Oh, and heavens to murgatory, a woman better not wear pants!

“And you can’t go to the movies. Well, you couldn’t go to the movies until television came out. You know, that’s all just like the opening of the door for that young Jewish man. I understand why they let him open the door. What I don’t understand is why he couldn’t unlock the lock. Because, practically speaking, they didn’t want him sleeping in the hall all night.

“I mean, some things just have to give way to practicality. Something can be good and fine as a thing to do, but when you then take it and make a rule and regulation out of it, what you do is you confuse how to do it.”

Banded together against apostasy

(new article tomorrow morning)

"I Corinthians 11:1 is a verse of scripture I'm convinced most preachers don’t know is in their Bible. Paul writes, 'Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.'

“There’s not a hard word in that verse; it’s not hard to understand but it’s obviously hard to believe,” he reasons. “Paul is one of only three people in the Bible who said, ‘Follow me,' " explains Richard Jordan.

“Moses was one because God made him the law-giver to Israel. Jesus told the nation, ‘What Moses commanded you, go do that.’ Jesus Christ is Jehovah God the Son who stood on Mt. Sinai and gave Moses the law.

“Jesus, when He came to earth as God in human flesh, as ‘a minister of the circumcision to confirm the promises,’ said, ‘Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.’ The idea came out of Jeremiah and is talking about rescuing the Believing Remnant of Israel during the tribulation.

“If you’re going to follow Jesus Christ today, you have to follow Him the way He wants to be followed today, and He’s not being followed today as He was with Moses. The way you follow Him today is not as you did in His earthly ministry, either. The way you follow Him today is through the heavenly ministry He gave the Apostle Paul. It’s this new information that ‘in previous ages was not made known.’

*****

“When someone says to you that dispensational Bible study is new, you say, ‘No, it’s as old as Paul. It’s as old as Jesus. It’s as old as Moses.’

“The fact is it’s the divinely prescribed method of Bible study and it’s the only way to understand God’s Word. If nobody in history you ever know believed in it, it would still be God’s way to do it.

“A noun generally gets its meaning from its verb form, so the Bible word ‘dispensation’ means ‘to dispense, to give out.’ Another word for the same idea is ‘administration,’ used by Paul in I Corinthians 12: ‘There are many administrations but the same Lord.’

“A dispensation is not a time period; it’s what’s given for man’s obedience during a particular time. The issue is what He gave for man to know and to obey and to follow. Here’s this truth given to Paul and that issue of, ‘Have you heard it or not?’ is the key.

“People say what we teach started with John Nelson Darby and that kind of thing, but that’s nonsense. I like to quote a guy from the Protestant Reformation era who, when asked, ‘Where was your faith before Martin Luther?’ answered, ‘The same place your face is before you wash it; behind the dirt.’

“So, there’s just common-sense ways to understand things that don’t require . . . when people require you to be able to show them your history in history you know those are people who don’t really care about that Book sitting in front of you.

“Historic theology is where you study the development of history and the development of theology through history. The problem with this is it requires you to know everything there is to know about everything anybody’s ever thought, written or done in history for you to tell me everything that people knew in history. You understand how impossible that is, right? What about the stuff you didn’t find?

“People who calls themselves a historical theologian, a scholar, pretend to make you think they’ve already studied everything there is to study and know exactly when something started. When somebody tells you a particular thing began to be taught at such and such a point by this certain guy, just run up the flag because that assumes they know everything prior to that and they don’t.

*****

“When you study the history of dispensationalism what you’re studying is the history of Bible study. In the mid-1800s, the zenith point out of the Protestant Reformation for understanding and learning the Bible, there was what was called the Bible Prophecy Conference Movement in  America. The Scofield Reference Bible was published then.

“If you know the department store in Chicago, Carson Pirie Scott, Mr. John Pirie was a Bible Believer who helped finance the publishing of the Scofield Bible. In fact, it was his idea. He took Scofield aside and said, ‘I will raise the money to finance you getting the thing done.’

“So these were great days in the late 1800s, early 1900s, of people who studied the Scripture. Our understanding of Mid-Acts dispensationalism, Paul’s distinctive ministry, comes out of that study.

“If you look at Ephesians 3 in a Scofield the last thing the note at the bottom of the page says is that ‘in Paul’s writings alone are found the walk, the doctrine, the duty and destiny of the church.’ They knew Paul was our apostle and that’s where our doctrine comes from.

“I can draw a diagram on the chalkboard and go through all the names where you go from Darby and others like William Newell, H.A. Ironside, Donald Barnhouse. You go into the late 1800s and there’s James Coates, Fritz Ridenour, Howard Grant. They were the predecessors teaching a great host of people. J.C. O’Hair, who is more or less our ancestor, worked with those people (O’Hair’s North Shore Church on the North Side of Chicago is the church I’m pastoring now in its current incarnation).

“The Independent Fundamental Churches of America, which was founded in 1930 and is still in existence, represented a bunch of fundamentalist groups fighting the Fundamentalist-Modernism controversy; the modernism of the World Council and the National Council of Churches. (according to a website, "These churches banded together to forcefully stand for the major doctrines of the Bible in opposition to the apostasy of that time.")

“It started at the Cicero Bible Church (founded 1892), Billy McCarrell’s ministry on Laramie Avenue in Cicero, Ill. The next year it met at North Shore Church. J.C. O’Hair was in the founding group. The next year it met at Grand Rapids at Dr. M.R. DeHaan’s church. O’Hair spoke at the dedication of their church.”

Food to weep over vs. honey DEW list

A food article stated that the honey so often made mention of in the Bible was never honey made from bees. It was the honey of pomegranates and figs.

But then what about Judges 14? [8] And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion.

[9] And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion.

*****

From a story in the New York Post last week: "A righteous regimen, the Bible diet is a growing fad among several thousand religious and non-religious online, hoping to shred unwanted bulk for summer 2026 and beyond . . .  

"It’s a God-centered approach to eating that emphasizes whole, organic foods found in scripture such as fruits, vegetables, grains, 'clean' meats, raw dairy, healthy oils and legumes . . .  

"Nearly a perfect blend of the much-ballyhooed Mediterranean diet, which prioritizes 'healthy fats' and protein, and the DASH diet, a heart- and brain-healthy plan, the Bible diet is rising as the hottest weight-reduction program of the year thanks to society’s insatiable desire to look, well, hot."

*****

A famous food passage in the Old Testament is in Numbers 11 where the children of Israel weep to Moses about the manna, rattling off for him a grocery list of foods they miss, namely fish, cucumbers, melon, leeks, onions and garlic.

They bitterly complain that their “soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes,” causing Moses to just completely lose it. He prays to God, in essence, “JUST KILL ME NOW!”

The classic chapter reads in part, “And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it.
[10] Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent: and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.
[11] And Moses said unto the LORD, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? and wherefore have I not found favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me?
[12] Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?
[13] Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep unto me, saying, Give us flesh, that we may eat.
[14] I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.
[15] And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.”

*****

As Richard Jordan explains the scene, “Moses parts the Red Sea and God delivers Israel from a violent, terrible death. What He did for them is He literally delivered them from satanic activity. The reason there were 10 plagues is there were 10 false Gods that Egypt worshipped that held the (people) in captivity.

“So when they complain, ‘We had all that wonderful diet back there and now our soul’s dried away from all the manna,’ you see how this is a heart issue?

“They say they’re bored with the stuff. Well, the passage tells us ‘manna was as coriander seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium.’ It says, ‘And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it: and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.’

“Bdellium is a white crystal that really is translucent. It’s sort of like mother-of-pearl color and every way you look at it you can see another depth or dimension to it like it’s three-dimensional. Now is that boring?!

“It says they ground it and beat it. You see why it’s a type of Christ? Exodus says it was sweet. Oil is a type of the Holy Spirit. This was not a monotonous type of food. You could make lots of different (entrees) from it. Go to Deuteronomy 32 and you see they were able to make lots of different recipes. This was a wonderful stuff to eat.

“It says the manna fell upon the dew. It was so precious that God wouldn’t make it land on the earth. He made it land on the dew.

“From Psalm 133 we know dew is a symbol. It’s like the precious ointment. Verse 3 says, ‘As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.’

“Dew represents that blessing that God gave to Israel for the world. And the manna rested on God’s plan and purpose for the nation Israel. That’s why He gave the manna TO Israel. It was so the life could be given to Israel as a nation and they could then go be in the earth God’s nation and take His blessings to the world through them.”

*****

While manna is mentioned in nine different books in the Bible, there are two Old Testament chapters—Exodus 16 and Numbers 11--where manna is set forth for its enduring “bread of life” message, serving as both a picture and type of the Lord Jesus Christ in His incarnation and the Word of God.

In John 6, for example, when the skeptical Jews ask Christ to give them a sign that they might believe, reasoning that “our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat,” Jesus responds, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven . . . I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”

Jordan explains, “Just like they weren’t going to hunger back there (in Exodus) if they ate the manna, the message was whatever they needed, the provision was going to fulfill the need. Christ said, ‘I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never hunger, never thirst.’ It won’t be the temporary provision the manna was—this is going to be the power for them to become the sons of God . . .

“You see, what God’s telling them (in the wilderness) is, ‘Whatever you need, I’m going to provide it for you. I got this thing planned out ahead of time; you just trust me and go where I take you, and when you go where I take you, and do what I tell you to do, you’ll find that the provision for Israel, for you, is already there.’

“Now, had they learned that they would have been far better off. You get to Exodus 19, though, and you learn they didn’t learn anything about it! But what God’s demonstrating is His grace to them.”

*****

Exodus 16: 1-2 reports, “And they took their journey from Elim, and all the congregation of the children of Israel came unto the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness:”

“Notice they took their journey and all the congregation ‘came unto the wilderness of Sin.’ Now how about that for a name?! Does that sound like that’s going to be a good place to be?! Well, a wilderness is a homeless place and it’s a wilderness of sin.

“So, the setting in which God’s going to give the manna is a rather dark background of man’s rebellion. When God brings them out of Egypt, He provides the healing for the water at Marah, takes them to Elim where there’s all kind of special provisions for them and then when God picks them up and moves them what do you think faith should have said?

“ ‘Wherever He leads me I’ll go; wherever He wants me to go I can trust Him!’ Because why? ‘Because He can take care of me!’ He just took care of the thirst issue, the water issue, the healing issue.

“But they didn’t learn that. They murmured, and they said, ‘You brought us out here to starve us to death! We remember being in Egypt. Where we had the flesh pots. And we could eat ’til we were full!’ (Exodus 16:3)

“Now, when they were in Egypt they were slaves. So they had a slave’s diet. Well, maybe that’s better than having nothing to eat at all. That is what they’re saying. Right then the Lord could have smote them, but watch what God does: ‘Then said the LORD unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no.’ (Exodus 16:4)

“God’s saying, ‘Look what I’m going to do for you, Moses. I’m going to rain it down from heaven, but I’m not going to rain fire and brimstone and wrath and judgment.’ You remember Genesis 18 and 19? Sodom and Gomorrah? He rained fire and brimstone from heaven? He could do it—they knew He could do it—but he said, ‘I’m going to rain bread from heaven.’ He didn’t call it manna here.

“He said, ‘I’m going to send you some food that will satisfy your hunger that’s good for everybody, that anybody can eat, and you can go out and get it.’ When He says there that it’s food from heaven, that means it’s of divine origin: ‘God’s going to send this.’

“It’s not something man’s going to produce; God’s going to do it. And by the way, when He says it’s going to rain . . . When something rains, it rains on the just and the unjust alike. When something rains, it’s a visible thing and it’s abundant—everybody gets some of it.

“And boy, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen statistics but, in a good rain storm, there are literally millions of gallons of water that fall out of the sky. It’s staggering. There’s this abundance that’s going to be given Israel!

“You see in verse 5 where it says you can gather the manna at a certain rate? The rate you gather at is in verse 16: ‘According to the number of your persons . . .’

“In other words, they were to go out and whatever—one was how many ever people you had in your house and two was whatever your appetite was. Some people have big appetites; they need more. Some people have little appetites; they don’t need so much. No matter what your appetite was, or how many people you had, what you gathered was exactly what you needed to satisfy the appetite that you had. The rate was according to the eating.

“It says there was ‘an omer for every man’ and an omer is a tenth part of an ephod. The Scofield Reference Bible tells us an ephod is a bushel and three pints, and an omer is 6.7 pints.

“Now, the estimate here is there are about two million Israelis at this time. You get that because Numbers 1 says that when they numbered them, there were 600,000 men ready to go to war. So, if you’ve conservatively got 2 million people and they’re all going to pick up six pints, that’s 12 million pints, which would translate into 9 million pounds!

“Every day they went out and collected four and a half tons of this manna! Can you imagine how many box cars that is? How many 18-wheelers it would take to load that four and a half tons of stuff? I mean, this is a humongous supply and it showed up every day!

“And if they didn’t go out and get it, verse 20 says ‘it bred worms and stank.’ I mean, if you leave the stuff out and don’t pick it up, ‘P-U, what a mess!’ And, by the way, when it landed, wherever the people were they could just go outside of their house and there it was! They didn’t have to go to six blocks away to find it—it was there available for them immediately. The provision was there every morning.

“They went out in the morning to get it but it showed up at night. Again, they’re asleep; they’re not doing anything. God sends it. The end of verse 15 says, ‘This is the bread which the Lord hath given you.’ Manna was a gift from God. He rained it down from heaven. It’s everywhere and it was abundant. And it satisfied any of their needs.

“All they had to do was go out and gather it. By the way, they had to go out each person and gather it for themselves, but if it’s on the ground, what did they have to do to get it? You had to stoop over. You had to bow down. A stiff-necked person who wouldn’t bow down wound up hungry.”

When you stop correcting, doubting . . . BELIEF!

Going right along with what I posted last night about God's Word being preserved through time, here is an outtake from this morning's sermon by Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid:

If you read most doctrinal statements (by fundamentalist Protestant churches) today, they will say something along the following: "We believe the Word of God was inerrant in the original manuscripts."

In other words, the original autographs were perfect, but after that, "No guarantees." They were perfect but then, you know, there were copyists and errors and mistakes and "we have something that's pretty good and it is mostly reliable; it doesn't have serious error and you can find the truth somewhere in the Word of God."

The typical fundamentalist doctrinal statement today will restrict what it believes about the Word of God to inspiration and not preservation.

It makes NO sense for God to inspire His Word and then misplace it. Is that what happened? God inspired the original autographs, He cared about the originals, but He didn't care if they got misplaced over time and so He let errors creep in and, of course, man is fallible and he makes mistakes and so what we have today is pretty good but it's not really the inerrant authoritative Word of God? This is the conventional wisdom of fundamentalists who will not include a statement about preservation.

I Thessalonians 2:13: [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.

What is it that causes the Word of God to work effectually in your life? It's that you believe it. You see that?

The reality is that the Word of God is of little to no effect in many Believers' lives because they simply don't believe it.

Have you ever heard someone say, "Well, the original Greek says"? When they say the original Greek says, what are they implicitly saying? The English is wrong.

And so they're going to quote to you the original Greek because that's the one that's correct and what we have in English--"Well, it's just a translation and it doesn't get everything right and it has mistakes."

HOOEY! Think soberly for a moment. If God's preservation of His Word was limited to the original autographs, well those are LOST! You realize those don't exist? They're lost to history; you can't go find them ANYWHERE.

So some will say, "Well, it's not limited to the original manuscripts, but it's limited to the original languages, so therefore what you have to do is you have to really read the Word of God in Hebrew and Greek to really understand."

Well, think about that with me. The original autographs are actually written in three languages, not two. They're written in Hebrew and Aramaic. Now are you going to say that, "Well, to really understand the Word of God you have to have a command of all three of those languages"?

There's roughly 8 billion people on the earth. How many of those people on the entire earth are actually fluent in all three of biblical Greek, biblical Hebrew and Aramaic?

Maybe 5-6 billion. You realize that the number of people who can actually speak all of those languages fluently is next to nothing. And if that is true, then God's method of preserving His Word is He's made it available only to a few scholars.

How many people on the earth trying to eke out a living have the time to become experts in all three of those languages?! When they're just trying literally to get through the day and feed their family?

So is that the way God preserved His Word? He preserved it in these languages that next to no one knows, and then for you to actually interact with His Word you have to go find a scholar who will tell you what it means?!

Is that what God did? That's crazy! That's nonsensical. You can decide for yourself, but this is what I happen to believe. What happens in the last 500 years is England becomes "the empire in which the sun never sets." English becomes the first global language since what? Since before Tower of Babel. 

There was a global language at one point in Genesis, was there not? Before the Tower of Babel there was. But then God confounded the languages and it's never been quite the same. But the closest thing we've have to a global language is English.

What happened is that as the British Empire is becoming the empire in which the sun never sets, as English is becoming the trade language of the world, what then happens is the greatest missionary effort in the last thousand years and it's done with what? A King James Bible in the English language.

If you believe modern textual theory, what's happened in the last 150 years is that "we FINALLY found the right manuscripts. We found Sinaiticus in St. Catherine's monastery. We found Vaticanus."

Guess where Vaticanus was? The Vatican. "And we found the Dead Sea Scrolls, and all these happened in the 1800s to 1900s and now FINALLY we have the right manuscripts!"

That is a crazy, crazy thing to believe. Why do I say that? Get Psalm 12: [6] The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

[7] Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

What was God's promise with respect to preservation? Did He say, "Well, I might lose it for a thousand years or so, but I won't permanently lose it. I'll bring it back so you can see it later."

That's not what that verse says. "Thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever," which means the Word of God is always available. People act like the Word of God is misplaced and then "we find little clues here and little clues there and then we can reconstruct it."

If you believe that, then what you are saying is that the correct authoritative Word of God was not available for 1,500 years before then because what happens to those other manuscripts?

You see the point? It's crazy to think there's NEW manuscript evidence that is true, because if it is true, if it actually has the correct reading of the text, then it means we didn't have the correct reading for 1,000-plus years and God's promise to preserve it was wrong. I don't believe that for a second.

When I Thessalonians 2 says that the Word of God works effectually in you who believe, what I would suggest to you is the most spiritually healthy thing you can do is locate where the Word of God is and believe it.

When you're spending your time correcting it or doubting it, you're not BELIEVING it! And if you're not believing it, it's not working in you.