Sanctified common sense

As Acts 20:30 reports, “Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”

These apostates are going to arise from among the elders of the church and the way that’s going to happen is in warnings such as I Timothy 6, where Paul says, “Beware of science falsely so-called.” Paul says in Colossians, “Beware of philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world and not after Christ.” Clearly, there are things that are going to draw them away from Christ.

“The great enemy to the church was not paganism,” says Jordan. “Paul didn’t fear paganism for half a minute. The great enemy was the flood of heresy under the name of Christ; under the name of being ‘Bible-believers’.

“The pagans didn’t bother Paul; just go out and convert them--take the Word of God and preach the gospel to them and watch God save them. To depart from the faith, to be the real danger point, was the heresy that came in under the name and the banner of Christ.”

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II Cor. 2:17 says, “For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.”

Jordan explains, “This is not a little group of people; there’s a lot of people going to do this. There are people who are going to corrupt God’s Word. Come with me to II Thess. 2 and let me show you some of them: ‘Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
[2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.’

“Notice there are people who are going to try to deceive, shake and trouble the Believers and one of the means is they’re going to counterfeit a letter as if it’s from Paul, corrupting the written Word of God and attacking it.

“Now if you go back to Genesis 3, the first time Satan spoke, what did he say? ‘Yeah, hath God said.’ Satan’s attack, from the first time he opened his mouth to talk to a human being, was on the Word of God. ‘My word against God’s Word.’ So it shouldn’t surprise you there’s going to be an attack on God’s Word.

“In Amos 8, Amos, looking toward the future, says that in the Last Days over there, there’s going to be a famine for the word of God in the land. They’re going to go around looking for God’s Word and go ‘here there’ and not be able to find it. Now that happened back in Josiah’s day. He said it’s going to happen in the Last Day.

“The two big issues in the Last Day in prophecy is one, where is the Word of God, and the other is, where is the promise of His coming. II Peter 3. So understanding there’s going to be this attack on God’s Word is important.

“Come with me to Acts 11:26. Let’s get a little history about how to think about this. That city of Antioch in your Bible is very important. Antioch is a center in Scripture. The reason they were first called Christians there has to do with the ministry of the Apostle Paul brought there.

“Verse 26 says, ‘And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.’

“Antioch turns out to be the center from which Paul’s ministry expands. Its first real apostolic center is Antioch and Antioch, throughout the Scripture and throughout the first centuries of Christendom, was a great Bible-teaching center. It’s up in Turkey, the Byzantine Empire, and it was a center for Bible-believing, Bible-teaching Christianity.

“The location was a critical location for Christianity all through the Scripture. There’s another city called Alexandria, down in Egypt. That’s the other city that you have to watch out for.

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Acts 18:24 says, “And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.
[25] This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.”

Alexandria is the competing location. “Notice what it says about this man; do you think he was up to date scripturally?” asks Jordan. “Was he up-to-date dispensationally? He wasn’t even up-to-date historically. He didn’t even know Christ had come and died. But he’s an ‘eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures.’

“There’s a center down here of scriptural interest but it isn’t dispensationally up to date; it isn’t even historically and doctrinally up to date, but there’s a center of bible interest. You see Apollos.

“Those two cities, in studying your Bible and the transmission of the Bible through history, it’s really a study in a sense of Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, when you study manuscript evidence, you’ll find that manuscripts are divided into four, with one being the Egyptian text, or the Alexandrian text, and another being the Byzantine text, which is the Greek text. “Sometimes you’ll hear the Textus Receptus called the Byzantine text. That’s because the Greek Empire—where would you think Greek text would mostly be read?

“Don’t think about history; just think about what you know about the Bible? What is Egypt a type of in the Bible? The world. Just what you know common-sense wise, which one would you think would be the better place to start looking for your Bible?
There’s some working things that you come to the table with and the ability to have sanctified common sense, as Mr. O’Hair called it, is really something that’s going to stand you in good stead because you’re going to see when you look at a verse and say, ‘Well, this verse is obviously right and that verse is obviously wrong,’ but all the scholars say, ‘This wrong one is the way it ought to be!’

“But you’re going to look at it and say, ‘No, that don’t make any sense.’

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“Let me just show you one of them. This is not a biggie, but when you read it instantly you know which one’s right and which one’s wrong. This is not about doctrine, justification, virgin birth. It’s just a simple little passage.

John 7:8 says, ‘Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come.’

“Jesus is talking to His brethren and He told His brothers, ‘You guys go; I’m not going up yet.’ What does that mean? That means, ‘I’m not going right now.’ They went on and then He went. The new bibles, the critical Greek text, in verse 8, it leaves that word ‘yet’ out and it has Him saying, ‘Go ye up to the feast; I’m go not up to this feast. I ain’t going!’

“Now the NAS translates it that way; the NIV leaves the ‘yet’ in but they put a footnote in that it ought not be there. If it ought not be there, why’d you put it there?! Well, the reason is the passage doesn’t make any sense if you take the ‘yet’
out.

“I mean if you leave it out and it says ‘I’m not going,’ and then Jesus actually goes, what did He just do?! He deceived them, didn’t He? They’re begging Him to go and He says, ‘Nah, I ain’t goin', and then He goes. Then He goes secretly like so they don’t find Him. I mean, what is He? Speaking with a double tongue?

“But if you leave it like it is, He said, ‘I’m not going now.’ He qualifies it. And the reason is in text, if you study it, He doesn’t want to be associated with His brethren. Verse 5 says they don’t believe on Him. He’s separating Himself away from the unbelieving people in Israel and He’s going to go separately because it isn’t time. He doesn’t go to the Feast of Tabernacles first; He goes to the Feast of Passover first.

“Tabernacles is the Second Coming. It’s not the time. Six months later He goes to Jerusalem at the Passover and openly manifests Himself as the Passover lamb. He knows the timing isn’t right for Him to go up and they want Him to go up and manifest Himself. Verse 4 says ‘show yourself to the world.’ So He separates Himself but then He goes.

“Why does He go? Deuteronomy 16:16 says three times a year every man in Israel is to go. If He said, ‘I’m not going,’ He’d be saying, ‘I’m not going to obey Deuteronomy 16:16; I’m just not going to do what God said.’ Now does that sound like Jesus? No.

“Now, does that text make any sense if you leave the ‘yet’ out? Doesn’t make any sense at all! You’re faced with two different readings and your common sense tells you which one to use! You don’t need to know anything about manuscript evidence. Common sense helps you!

“So there’s a sanctified common sense that God has put into the Body of Christ--not the institution, but in the real church which has some understanding. You see, if you have an understanding of who Jesus Christ is—He’s God in human flesh; He was sinless, He isn’t going to lie—that tempers how I look at that and tells me what I will and won’t accept.

“You say, ‘Well, why would the new bible people take that?’ Because the guys who
translated the NAS, for the most part, believed Jesus was God in human flesh who didn’t lie, but they weren’t letting that understanding be what determined how they looked at the manuscript evidence. They we’re just looking at it from a humanist point of view.”