I left Clift’s apartment at 7:15 this morning, just like yesterday. There’s big-time construction going on outside his windows with men yelling incessantly at each other. Just glad I have great motivation for wanting to get up and going early since there’s so much territory to cover.
With my 7-day unlimited fare MTA pass, I decided to hop on the 6 train to the Upper East Side and then walk down to 57 and 5th before having my coffee inside one of my favorite Starbucks on the second floor of the Trump Plaza. The balcony seats overlook the bustling lobby as well as 5th Avenue and the famous Crown Building across the street with its ornate gold façade.
Crossing Park Avenue, I looked south at the MetLife Building, as I always used to do, and thought of Oscar Woodall. Being in NYC forever reminds me of him, not just because he was such a successful insurance man here, but because he’s the one who, through frequent and sometimes lengthy phone conversations, kept me going at a time (after I quit my job) when I didn’t have ANY connection with any other Grace believer and didn’t have access to any current studies, radio shows, etc. No one had ever clued me in about PalTalk!
So many visits to this particular Starbucks were spent sitting by myself reading books about the Bible, always listening to Alexander Scourby on the walks over and back. Today so far I’ve listened to I and II Kings on my same old Walkman I had when I lived here.
After I finish up here, I will walk to my park bench at the duck pond of the front yard of Central Park across the street from The Plaza and next to where the horses are lined up for carriage rides.
I call it my bench because it has a plaque with an engraved caricature of a blonde woman and says “For Lisa.” The woman actually kind of looks like me! I happened upon this bench one afternoon shortly after my dad died (Oct. 2001) and I was so filled with grief that I had called in sick from work to just wander around the city.
Yesterday, visiting my old address at 48th and 10th, I was filled with sentimentality, as well as grief. I passed the neighborhood fire station where my sister struck up a conversation with the firemen and got them to let my niece sit in the front of a truck with a fireman’s hat on as my sister took pictures.
Next door to my apartment is the old Salvation Army rehab center where my sister actually dropped in once on a very rainy evening, thinking they’d be willing to put her and her daughter up for the night after the two of us had a big blow-out argument.
On the same stretch of sidewalk only a block up from the fire station is where I, in January of 2002, slid on black ice as I was jogging after a snowstorm and majorly broke my wrist, requiring surgery and forcing me to cancel a much-anticipated business trip to London.
It was during my whole week home from work after the surgery, where I had to really baby my wrist and was in a lot of pain, that I first read Keith Blades’ “Satan and His Plan of Evil.” I remember how I was forever changed by that—it was like the skies opened!
So, so, so many memories here in this city, both good and bad. So many people I miss from here, especially the friends (and family) who have since died. It can be so lonely, especially when you don’t have a home to go home to and you know you’re just a weekend visitor with a lot of history in a place that, as you walk all the familiar streets by yourself, is only for you and the Lord to remember and process.
Last night, after treating my friend Clift to Japanese food in East Village, which was flooded with young people like I’ve never witnessed before, we decided to call a mutual friend who now lives in Minneapolis.
She asked me if I was still “re-writing the Bible.” I told her I was still working on my book. Hearing this in the background, Clift started laughing, and yelled for Joanie to hear over her end of the phone, “Lisa, FINISH that G-D book on the Bible already, would you!”
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Hall of heritage
Made it to NYC and having a really relaxing time so far. Didn’t even half-way realize how much I was in need of a New York fix! Just so grateful I have a friend who puts me up—and he’s got a great location at 4th and Bowery.
Plan to write more for tomorrow but for now, here’s a passage on the Moravians. I’ve written about them before but this is a different recap delivery that I couldn’t resist writing up:
*****
If you want to see if Bible prophecy is being fulfilled or is about to be fulfilled, or if you just want to understand Bible prophecy, there’s only one nation to watch and that’s the nation Israel. You don’t need to consider the U.S. or Europe. Russia doesn’t win place or show. Not an Issue. And forget China and the great kings of the East.
For his New Year’s studies, Jordan told of the former king of Saxony, Count von Zinzendorf, from three centuries ago, who was the leader of a Christian group in Europe called the Moravians. They were the modern-era precursor to missionaries. They were in a sense our predecessors spiritually.
Jordan started, “You go up into Door County today and there’s a Moravian church. The one time my wife and I were in the area we drove by it and saw on the sign out front that they had a lady preacher and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, they’re different now! They’re liberals now!’ but they weren’t in von Zinzendorf’s day.’
“They literally carried the gospel across the known world. There were Moravian missionaries that went down into Africa and were leading African tribes to Christ. Some of their converts became Moravians in faith and doctrine and then sold themselves into slavery to the Muslim slave-traders.
“Did you know that almost all of the African slave trades, when the Europeans went down and bought them, they were buying them from Muslims? The Africans who were selling other Africans into slavery were mainly Muslims.
“See, you don’t read that in the daily funny papers. But some of these Moravian African Believers literally sold themselves into slavery so they could go with their people to wherever they were going to take the gospel.
“And the gospel came to America—you know, the African-American community today is probably the country’s strongest religious community (and when I say religious I don’t mean Catholic and Lutheran) and the heritage they have, much of that comes from those Moravians.
“European Moravians came to America to evangelize the Indians and later the others. They were tremendous people with the gospel. Their first leader, Count von Zinzendorf of Saxony, was brought in one day by the king of Sweden, who said, ‘I know you’re a Bible-believer and I want to listen to why you believe the Bible. People love and respect you and I want to know why would an intelligent, educated, thoughtful, influential man like yourself believe in the Bible?’ As opposed to the pope and all that stuff—this is Reformation Era kind-of-thing, you know.
“And the king of Sweden said, ‘I’ll give you an audience of ten hours,’ which was a rare thing for a king to do). Von Zinzendorf replied, ‘I don’t need 10 hours; I can tell you in a moment, in two words.’ And the king of Sweden said kind of shocked, ‘What?’ He said, ‘The Jew.’
“You know what Malachi 3:6 says? ‘I am the Lord I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’ The Bible symbol for the nation Israel is not the Star of David. Amos 8 tells you the Star of David is really the Star of Molech, a false god. The Bible symbol for the nation Israel is the burning bush that Moses saw in Exodus 3. It burns but it’s not consumed. Why?
“ ‘Because I the Lord change not. If I’ve told you I’m going to do something, I’ll never go back on my word. Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.’
“And that tiny little beleaguered nation through the ages has been a nation that inexplicably, without any rational rhyme or reason, has endured. There have been many nations brought to extinction with far less thrown at them in every century of the past three millenniums than this little nation has.
“You come to our day and think of how the Christian church, from Augustine, has claimed to have replaced Israel. ‘They’re not God’s people.’ You go to the Reformation and read even what Luther would have said about the Jew and how he and the rest were anti-Semitic. They hated Israel. And they took Israel’s place and claimed their blessings. They even tried to take their Bible away from them. They go to eliminate them and yet there they are.
“God says in Jeremiah 33, ‘You know what it will take to get rid of the nation Israel? You’ll have to get rid of the ordinances of heaven. You’ll have to get rid of the laws that keep the earth functioning.’
“In other words, you’re going to have to get rid of the universe. Why? Because He created the nation Israel for a purpose related to what He’s doing in the universe, and to get rid of Israel He has to get rid of His whole purpose for creation. That’s the explanation for it. And that’s why Zinzendorf said, ‘I know the Bible’s true because I can just look right there and see God has kept His Word against impossible odds.’ ”
Plan to write more for tomorrow but for now, here’s a passage on the Moravians. I’ve written about them before but this is a different recap delivery that I couldn’t resist writing up:
*****
If you want to see if Bible prophecy is being fulfilled or is about to be fulfilled, or if you just want to understand Bible prophecy, there’s only one nation to watch and that’s the nation Israel. You don’t need to consider the U.S. or Europe. Russia doesn’t win place or show. Not an Issue. And forget China and the great kings of the East.
For his New Year’s studies, Jordan told of the former king of Saxony, Count von Zinzendorf, from three centuries ago, who was the leader of a Christian group in Europe called the Moravians. They were the modern-era precursor to missionaries. They were in a sense our predecessors spiritually.
Jordan started, “You go up into Door County today and there’s a Moravian church. The one time my wife and I were in the area we drove by it and saw on the sign out front that they had a lady preacher and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, they’re different now! They’re liberals now!’ but they weren’t in von Zinzendorf’s day.’
“They literally carried the gospel across the known world. There were Moravian missionaries that went down into Africa and were leading African tribes to Christ. Some of their converts became Moravians in faith and doctrine and then sold themselves into slavery to the Muslim slave-traders.
“Did you know that almost all of the African slave trades, when the Europeans went down and bought them, they were buying them from Muslims? The Africans who were selling other Africans into slavery were mainly Muslims.
“See, you don’t read that in the daily funny papers. But some of these Moravian African Believers literally sold themselves into slavery so they could go with their people to wherever they were going to take the gospel.
“And the gospel came to America—you know, the African-American community today is probably the country’s strongest religious community (and when I say religious I don’t mean Catholic and Lutheran) and the heritage they have, much of that comes from those Moravians.
“European Moravians came to America to evangelize the Indians and later the others. They were tremendous people with the gospel. Their first leader, Count von Zinzendorf of Saxony, was brought in one day by the king of Sweden, who said, ‘I know you’re a Bible-believer and I want to listen to why you believe the Bible. People love and respect you and I want to know why would an intelligent, educated, thoughtful, influential man like yourself believe in the Bible?’ As opposed to the pope and all that stuff—this is Reformation Era kind-of-thing, you know.
“And the king of Sweden said, ‘I’ll give you an audience of ten hours,’ which was a rare thing for a king to do). Von Zinzendorf replied, ‘I don’t need 10 hours; I can tell you in a moment, in two words.’ And the king of Sweden said kind of shocked, ‘What?’ He said, ‘The Jew.’
“You know what Malachi 3:6 says? ‘I am the Lord I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’ The Bible symbol for the nation Israel is not the Star of David. Amos 8 tells you the Star of David is really the Star of Molech, a false god. The Bible symbol for the nation Israel is the burning bush that Moses saw in Exodus 3. It burns but it’s not consumed. Why?
“ ‘Because I the Lord change not. If I’ve told you I’m going to do something, I’ll never go back on my word. Therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed.’
“And that tiny little beleaguered nation through the ages has been a nation that inexplicably, without any rational rhyme or reason, has endured. There have been many nations brought to extinction with far less thrown at them in every century of the past three millenniums than this little nation has.
“You come to our day and think of how the Christian church, from Augustine, has claimed to have replaced Israel. ‘They’re not God’s people.’ You go to the Reformation and read even what Luther would have said about the Jew and how he and the rest were anti-Semitic. They hated Israel. And they took Israel’s place and claimed their blessings. They even tried to take their Bible away from them. They go to eliminate them and yet there they are.
“God says in Jeremiah 33, ‘You know what it will take to get rid of the nation Israel? You’ll have to get rid of the ordinances of heaven. You’ll have to get rid of the laws that keep the earth functioning.’
“In other words, you’re going to have to get rid of the universe. Why? Because He created the nation Israel for a purpose related to what He’s doing in the universe, and to get rid of Israel He has to get rid of His whole purpose for creation. That’s the explanation for it. And that’s why Zinzendorf said, ‘I know the Bible’s true because I can just look right there and see God has kept His Word against impossible odds.’ ”
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Forward planning
There’s nothing like a good 8-inch snowstorm followed by a 40-mph wind storm to get you to appreciate a normal 20-plus degree winter day in Chicago. I had a very nice jog tonight on the lakefront, soaking in the crisp night air as if it was a soothing balm.
Of course, I have the adrenaline running in me now too, knowing I’m just a day away from my recently organized trip to New York to visit friends and catch up with all my old haunts. Got to remember to pack my tract specially written for Manhattanites.
Promise to write some travel notes here during my five-day visit.
*****
If you like to listen to Alexander Scourby read the Bible, there’s almost nothing better than when he reads passages where God’s laying out His plans for the demise of those who go against Israel. One classic chapter is Zechariah 12, which starts out:
“The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
[2] Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
[3] And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”
Jordan says, “Reading those verses quickly you might miss the point here. There are two different groups. There’s one to whom Israel will be a cup of trembling and the other to whom Israel will be a burdensome stone.
“One, there will be ‘all the people round about.’ That’s the countries right around Israel. When they think of Israel, Israel’s going to scare them to death.
“Then there’s verse 3. You see the difference there? One’s talking about everybody and one’s talking about those nations right around them. But notice they’re going to be ‘a cup of trembling.’ Israel’s going to rise to be the premier military power in the area. And when anybody messes with them, they spite them like an adder.
“Notice how there’s going to be a group of people who are going to be gathered together in unison against Israel. Now, historically, that’s interesting because that hasn’t yet ever happened.
"Historically, all the nations around Israel, whether it’s in this century or last century or before when there weren’t very many nations in that area . . . Those nations, you know, they don’t like each other.
“You have the Arab League over there right now gathered together only because of oil. They have OPEC. Inside of OPEC they fight one another. Now they’re going to be gathered together against Israel.
“Never has there been a time when all the little nations gathered around Israel have been united together like they are now. And the thing that unites them is Islam and the Muslim hatred, irrational as it is, of one little nation. And that nation that they hate so much that eventually they will siege and seek to destroy, they’re scared to death of!
“Jerusalem is a scary thing to the people right around them but it’s a burdensome stone to the world. All the nations of the earth look at Israel and what do we talk about? We talk about the Middle East problem. You’re not talking about the Arab states; you’re talking about Israel.
"But you know what, the problem comes as much from the Arab states as it does Israel. In fact, you could say if it weren’t for the Arab states’ hatred of Israel, the problem would go away.
“Any nation that can go into a little piece of barren land like Israel’s done and turn it into an agricultural hub for the region would be a nation I’d think you’d be good to be friends with so you can learn some things about from them. Maybe have a little of their prosperity: ‘Hey dude, come over and live on my farm and teach me how to do . . . ‘
“But they don’t do that. It’s that hatred of Israel that’s born in them through the Islamic traditions. But then there’s this nation that all the other nations of the earth . . . between 1967 and 1989 the United Nations passed 865 resolutions and 526 of them had to do with Israel.
“Now that’s getting a little hyperventilated! You pass 865 resolutions and 526 of them are about one little bitty place! You know what that is? That’s a burdensome stone! It’s a problem.
“At the end of verse 3 it says ‘all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.’ People say, ‘Where’s America in Bible prophecy?’ You just read it!
“You read on down through verses 4-7 about the deliverance He’s going to give to Judah. Verse 9 says, ‘And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.’ Why would God gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle?
“Zephaniah 3:8 says, ‘Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.’
“God Himself is going to unite the nations. He’s going to use that little thorn of a nation to be a burdensome stone and a cup of trembling, and the nations of the earth are going to be in unison crying, ‘We have to eliminate this nation!’
“And just as Christ said about Himself, ‘They’ve hated me without a cause.’ Why? Because He was who He was in God’s plan. He’ll use that little nation to gather all these nations together against Him and you know if you want to destroy somebody, isn’t it easier to get them all together in one place and then do it rather than have to hunt them down all over the creation?
“Zechariah 14 says He gathers all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the cities shall be taken. Verse 3 says, ‘Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.’ Verse 9 says the Lord shall be king over all the earth after all that battle.
“So here’s the context when the kings of this world become the kings of our Lord and His Christ. Here’s the events that lead to that climactic Armageddon moment with the great battle of God Almighty.
“Go back to Psalm 83 and read about all those nations and Palestine and that Middle East area that their determination is to get rid of the nation Israel. The text says there that they hate ‘em: ‘Let’s make them no more a nation in the earth.’ Why? Because they’re God’s nation. It isn’t Israel they hate; it’s God and God’s plan with Israel.
“It’s fascinating the name Israel occurs 2,565 times in the Bible. The ‘God of Israel,’ that phrase, occurs 203 times. You know who the God of the Bible is? He’s the God of Israel.
“Jeremiah 33 says, [25] Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth;
[26] Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.’
“You know that’s what every major Protestant and Catholic orthodox seminary teaches? They call it Replacement Theology. Covenant theology. That’s what R.C. Sproul teaches and D. James Kennedy. All the great heroes of Christendom.
“God says, ‘You know what they’re going to say: ‘He’s threw with Israel.’ You know where the United States is going to be in those days? That passage in Zechariah, they mean that the official foreign policy of the U.S. of America is going to be: ‘Get rid of them.’
“That’s why in spite of all the rhetoric you hear to the contrary, the record is that our State Department is always been very anti-Israel and that’s going to come to the front. You see what he says in Jeremiah? ‘If I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth then you can get rid of Israel.’
“Go to chapter 32 and He says, ‘You know how you get rid of Israel? You got to get rid of the heaven and the earth. You got to get rid of my purpose and my creation.’ You know how likely it is to do that? Forget it. How likely is it you’re going to get rid of Israel? Forget it.
“People say, ‘Well, Brother Rick, where is America in Bible prophecy?’ You’re reading it. We don’t like that; we think, ‘Pschaw.’ Well go all you want to; see where that gets you.”
Of course, I have the adrenaline running in me now too, knowing I’m just a day away from my recently organized trip to New York to visit friends and catch up with all my old haunts. Got to remember to pack my tract specially written for Manhattanites.
Promise to write some travel notes here during my five-day visit.
*****
If you like to listen to Alexander Scourby read the Bible, there’s almost nothing better than when he reads passages where God’s laying out His plans for the demise of those who go against Israel. One classic chapter is Zechariah 12, which starts out:
“The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
[2] Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
[3] And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.”
Jordan says, “Reading those verses quickly you might miss the point here. There are two different groups. There’s one to whom Israel will be a cup of trembling and the other to whom Israel will be a burdensome stone.
“One, there will be ‘all the people round about.’ That’s the countries right around Israel. When they think of Israel, Israel’s going to scare them to death.
“Then there’s verse 3. You see the difference there? One’s talking about everybody and one’s talking about those nations right around them. But notice they’re going to be ‘a cup of trembling.’ Israel’s going to rise to be the premier military power in the area. And when anybody messes with them, they spite them like an adder.
“Notice how there’s going to be a group of people who are going to be gathered together in unison against Israel. Now, historically, that’s interesting because that hasn’t yet ever happened.
"Historically, all the nations around Israel, whether it’s in this century or last century or before when there weren’t very many nations in that area . . . Those nations, you know, they don’t like each other.
“You have the Arab League over there right now gathered together only because of oil. They have OPEC. Inside of OPEC they fight one another. Now they’re going to be gathered together against Israel.
“Never has there been a time when all the little nations gathered around Israel have been united together like they are now. And the thing that unites them is Islam and the Muslim hatred, irrational as it is, of one little nation. And that nation that they hate so much that eventually they will siege and seek to destroy, they’re scared to death of!
“Jerusalem is a scary thing to the people right around them but it’s a burdensome stone to the world. All the nations of the earth look at Israel and what do we talk about? We talk about the Middle East problem. You’re not talking about the Arab states; you’re talking about Israel.
"But you know what, the problem comes as much from the Arab states as it does Israel. In fact, you could say if it weren’t for the Arab states’ hatred of Israel, the problem would go away.
“Any nation that can go into a little piece of barren land like Israel’s done and turn it into an agricultural hub for the region would be a nation I’d think you’d be good to be friends with so you can learn some things about from them. Maybe have a little of their prosperity: ‘Hey dude, come over and live on my farm and teach me how to do . . . ‘
“But they don’t do that. It’s that hatred of Israel that’s born in them through the Islamic traditions. But then there’s this nation that all the other nations of the earth . . . between 1967 and 1989 the United Nations passed 865 resolutions and 526 of them had to do with Israel.
“Now that’s getting a little hyperventilated! You pass 865 resolutions and 526 of them are about one little bitty place! You know what that is? That’s a burdensome stone! It’s a problem.
“At the end of verse 3 it says ‘all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.’ People say, ‘Where’s America in Bible prophecy?’ You just read it!
“You read on down through verses 4-7 about the deliverance He’s going to give to Judah. Verse 9 says, ‘And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.’ Why would God gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle?
“Zephaniah 3:8 says, ‘Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.’
“God Himself is going to unite the nations. He’s going to use that little thorn of a nation to be a burdensome stone and a cup of trembling, and the nations of the earth are going to be in unison crying, ‘We have to eliminate this nation!’
“And just as Christ said about Himself, ‘They’ve hated me without a cause.’ Why? Because He was who He was in God’s plan. He’ll use that little nation to gather all these nations together against Him and you know if you want to destroy somebody, isn’t it easier to get them all together in one place and then do it rather than have to hunt them down all over the creation?
“Zechariah 14 says He gathers all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the cities shall be taken. Verse 3 says, ‘Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.’ Verse 9 says the Lord shall be king over all the earth after all that battle.
“So here’s the context when the kings of this world become the kings of our Lord and His Christ. Here’s the events that lead to that climactic Armageddon moment with the great battle of God Almighty.
“Go back to Psalm 83 and read about all those nations and Palestine and that Middle East area that their determination is to get rid of the nation Israel. The text says there that they hate ‘em: ‘Let’s make them no more a nation in the earth.’ Why? Because they’re God’s nation. It isn’t Israel they hate; it’s God and God’s plan with Israel.
“It’s fascinating the name Israel occurs 2,565 times in the Bible. The ‘God of Israel,’ that phrase, occurs 203 times. You know who the God of the Bible is? He’s the God of Israel.
“Jeremiah 33 says, [25] Thus saith the LORD; If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth;
[26] Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their captivity to return, and have mercy on them.’
“You know that’s what every major Protestant and Catholic orthodox seminary teaches? They call it Replacement Theology. Covenant theology. That’s what R.C. Sproul teaches and D. James Kennedy. All the great heroes of Christendom.
“God says, ‘You know what they’re going to say: ‘He’s threw with Israel.’ You know where the United States is going to be in those days? That passage in Zechariah, they mean that the official foreign policy of the U.S. of America is going to be: ‘Get rid of them.’
“That’s why in spite of all the rhetoric you hear to the contrary, the record is that our State Department is always been very anti-Israel and that’s going to come to the front. You see what he says in Jeremiah? ‘If I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth then you can get rid of Israel.’
“Go to chapter 32 and He says, ‘You know how you get rid of Israel? You got to get rid of the heaven and the earth. You got to get rid of my purpose and my creation.’ You know how likely it is to do that? Forget it. How likely is it you’re going to get rid of Israel? Forget it.
“People say, ‘Well, Brother Rick, where is America in Bible prophecy?’ You’re reading it. We don’t like that; we think, ‘Pschaw.’ Well go all you want to; see where that gets you.”
Monday, January 23, 2012
'In that lovely land of unclouded day'
Jordan says, “The Lord Jesus Christ was great in the staging of what He would do. He used everything involved in His teachings to drive home the point. He began His ministry by what we call the Sermon on the Mount. He goes and sits on the mount and His disciples come. Mountains in Scripture are pictures of kingdoms and He sits there and gives the ‘constitution of his kingdom,’ as it’s been called.
“At the end of His ministry, two days before He dies, He takes His disciples again out on the Mount of Olives, a very important mountain in the Bible because in Acts 1, when Jesus Christ ascends up into heaven, He ascends up from this very mountain. The reason that’s significant is the angels look at His apostles and say, ‘Why stand ye here gazing into heaven. This same Jesus that you see go away, in like manner is going to come back.’
“Zechariah 14 says when He comes back His feet are going to first stand on the Mount of Olives. The very last place His feet touched the earth is the very first place His feet are going to retouch the earth. In Scripture, the Mount of Olives is inseparably united with the issue of His return and His coming—His Second Advent.
“So when Christ is going to gather His disciples together and talk to them about that future day of His return, and the events they’re going to go through before that, He takes them to that place. So the whole flavor of what’s going on here is looking forward to that day of His return and their question is, ‘When will this stuff be?’
*****
Jesus Christ promises in Matthew 24, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
[36] But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
Jordan says, “Trying to predict the timing of the end of the world isn’t anybody’s job. I preached a message on the day that preacher in California last year said the world was going to end that was entitled, ‘Why Jesus Can’t Come Today.’
“If God revealed to you the day and the hour Jesus is going to come, then the wrong god revealed it to you!”
*****
The end of “this present evil world,” as Paul calls it, is going to give way to a NEW world order. It won’t be one of man’s creating but it will be a God-ordained new arrangement politically, governmentally, economically, ecologically and socially.
Jordan says, “In every category of life, there will be a new world order. That’s what the Bible talks about when it means the end of the world. It’s the end of man’s rule; Satan’s rule.
“Rev. 11:15 says, 'And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.'
“You look at all the conflicts in the world today and you come to that verse and you say, ‘You know, there is an answer!’
“Now the great climactic event that moves us from the kingdoms of this world to becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, is Armageddon, which is a Bible event.
“It’s actually not as pervasive in Scripture as it is in discussions about it. There’s only one passage that uses the term and talks about it by name although there are many passages that describe events associated with it.
“The great climactic battle at the end of the 70th week of Daniel when Jesus Christ comes back in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, when the Son of Man shall come in His glory with all the angels with Him to sit upon the thrones of His glory, takes place around this event called Armageddon.
“Rev. 16:13 says, ‘And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.’
"Just put that picture in your mind. You got the dragon burping out three frogs. Frogs in the Bible are unclean. You remember God plagued Israel with frogs? So these are all connected with things in prophecy.
“You’ve got the unholy trinity in that verse. The dragon is Satan (the power behind the throne), the beast is the Antichrist (the political leader the world submits to) and the false prophet is the religious leader (who points people to the political leader). Oftentimes people say the pope is the Antichrist but he couldn’t be because the Antichrist is not a religious leader.
“Rev. 16:14 goes on, ‘For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.’ When you see something you think is a miracle, or you want God to work a miracle in your life, don’t forget that verse, will you?
“II Thessalonians 2, in talking about the Antichrist and his coming, says, ‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’ ”
“At the end of His ministry, two days before He dies, He takes His disciples again out on the Mount of Olives, a very important mountain in the Bible because in Acts 1, when Jesus Christ ascends up into heaven, He ascends up from this very mountain. The reason that’s significant is the angels look at His apostles and say, ‘Why stand ye here gazing into heaven. This same Jesus that you see go away, in like manner is going to come back.’
“Zechariah 14 says when He comes back His feet are going to first stand on the Mount of Olives. The very last place His feet touched the earth is the very first place His feet are going to retouch the earth. In Scripture, the Mount of Olives is inseparably united with the issue of His return and His coming—His Second Advent.
“So when Christ is going to gather His disciples together and talk to them about that future day of His return, and the events they’re going to go through before that, He takes them to that place. So the whole flavor of what’s going on here is looking forward to that day of His return and their question is, ‘When will this stuff be?’
*****
Jesus Christ promises in Matthew 24, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
[36] But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.”
Jordan says, “Trying to predict the timing of the end of the world isn’t anybody’s job. I preached a message on the day that preacher in California last year said the world was going to end that was entitled, ‘Why Jesus Can’t Come Today.’
“If God revealed to you the day and the hour Jesus is going to come, then the wrong god revealed it to you!”
*****
The end of “this present evil world,” as Paul calls it, is going to give way to a NEW world order. It won’t be one of man’s creating but it will be a God-ordained new arrangement politically, governmentally, economically, ecologically and socially.
Jordan says, “In every category of life, there will be a new world order. That’s what the Bible talks about when it means the end of the world. It’s the end of man’s rule; Satan’s rule.
“Rev. 11:15 says, 'And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.'
“You look at all the conflicts in the world today and you come to that verse and you say, ‘You know, there is an answer!’
“Now the great climactic event that moves us from the kingdoms of this world to becoming the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ, is Armageddon, which is a Bible event.
“It’s actually not as pervasive in Scripture as it is in discussions about it. There’s only one passage that uses the term and talks about it by name although there are many passages that describe events associated with it.
“The great climactic battle at the end of the 70th week of Daniel when Jesus Christ comes back in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, when the Son of Man shall come in His glory with all the angels with Him to sit upon the thrones of His glory, takes place around this event called Armageddon.
“Rev. 16:13 says, ‘And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.’
"Just put that picture in your mind. You got the dragon burping out three frogs. Frogs in the Bible are unclean. You remember God plagued Israel with frogs? So these are all connected with things in prophecy.
“You’ve got the unholy trinity in that verse. The dragon is Satan (the power behind the throne), the beast is the Antichrist (the political leader the world submits to) and the false prophet is the religious leader (who points people to the political leader). Oftentimes people say the pope is the Antichrist but he couldn’t be because the Antichrist is not a religious leader.
“Rev. 16:14 goes on, ‘For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.’ When you see something you think is a miracle, or you want God to work a miracle in your life, don’t forget that verse, will you?
“II Thessalonians 2, in talking about the Antichrist and his coming, says, ‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.’ ”
Saturday, January 21, 2012
My guide and stay
Outlining John 13, Jordan says, “Their clean but now Jesus Christ is going to wash their feet. That’s that experiential, continual kind of cleansing. That’s where people get the idea of keeping ‘short accounts’ and keep a right walk with Him all along the way.
“The Word is what’s going to cleanse them and it’s the Word that gives them the total permanent cleansing, and they take that cleansing that is theirs in totality and bring it into their experience. That’s why He says, ‘Abide in me.’
“Abiding is, ‘You’re in me, now remain in that position, identity, fellowship, understanding and truth. Don’t go out here and try to do it yourself.’ He’ll tell then in a minute that, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’
“Again, the old covenant is ‘you do it,’ and new covenant is ‘I’ll do it for you.’ It is the Word that cleanses us.
“In Psalm 119:9, David says, ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.’
“James 1:21 says, ‘Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.’
“Don’t you like the way the Bible talks? You might not understand what it says but it sounds good, doesn’t it? See the word ‘fluity’ in there? Superfluity is something that’s overflowing.
“Saying you’re naughty is sort of the British understatement way of saying things. The King’s English has a way of understating the obvious so that you don’t have to overstate it.
“That’s a great expression—‘the engrafted word.’ You have God’s work grafted into your soul, he tells these folks. A graft is a living kind of thing. In horticulture, you can make a graft, cut a slit into a trunk, graft in a cutting from another tree, bind it up and cause it to grow. It’s a thing about putting life into something.
“Hebrews 4 says, 1] Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
[2] For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
“Again, this is the same kind of context we’re going to find in John 15 where there’s this fruit you have to bear.
“If the Word’s going to profit you, you don’t just hear it and know it. It has to be mixed with faith. In other words, you have to believe it. And when you believe it, it gets engrafted by faith into your soul. There’s a spiritual transaction where that Word literally gets implanted into your inner man.
“So when he says ‘receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your soul,’ in James what it’s saving their soul from is the false religious system that’s come to deceive them.
“James 1 says, [22] But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
[23] For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
[24] For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
[25] But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
“If they are only hearers of the word, and no doers, one of the reason for that admonishment is the Word gives them something to do! If you don’t do what God’s Word says to do, then did you believe it? No. If you believed it, it became a part of your inner man and you’re naturally going to bear the fruit that it discusses.
“The mirror’s just a reflection of who you are and that’s just what the law was. It reflects back to you who you are and he that beholdeth himself and goeth his way, you look into the mirror, you see who you are and then you just go away and it doesn’t bother you at all. You forget what’s there.”
“The Word is what’s going to cleanse them and it’s the Word that gives them the total permanent cleansing, and they take that cleansing that is theirs in totality and bring it into their experience. That’s why He says, ‘Abide in me.’
“Abiding is, ‘You’re in me, now remain in that position, identity, fellowship, understanding and truth. Don’t go out here and try to do it yourself.’ He’ll tell then in a minute that, ‘Without me you can do nothing.’
“Again, the old covenant is ‘you do it,’ and new covenant is ‘I’ll do it for you.’ It is the Word that cleanses us.
“In Psalm 119:9, David says, ‘Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word.’
“James 1:21 says, ‘Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.’
“Don’t you like the way the Bible talks? You might not understand what it says but it sounds good, doesn’t it? See the word ‘fluity’ in there? Superfluity is something that’s overflowing.
“Saying you’re naughty is sort of the British understatement way of saying things. The King’s English has a way of understating the obvious so that you don’t have to overstate it.
“That’s a great expression—‘the engrafted word.’ You have God’s work grafted into your soul, he tells these folks. A graft is a living kind of thing. In horticulture, you can make a graft, cut a slit into a trunk, graft in a cutting from another tree, bind it up and cause it to grow. It’s a thing about putting life into something.
“Hebrews 4 says, 1] Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
[2] For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
“Again, this is the same kind of context we’re going to find in John 15 where there’s this fruit you have to bear.
“If the Word’s going to profit you, you don’t just hear it and know it. It has to be mixed with faith. In other words, you have to believe it. And when you believe it, it gets engrafted by faith into your soul. There’s a spiritual transaction where that Word literally gets implanted into your inner man.
“So when he says ‘receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your soul,’ in James what it’s saving their soul from is the false religious system that’s come to deceive them.
“James 1 says, [22] But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
[23] For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
[24] For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
[25] But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
“If they are only hearers of the word, and no doers, one of the reason for that admonishment is the Word gives them something to do! If you don’t do what God’s Word says to do, then did you believe it? No. If you believed it, it became a part of your inner man and you’re naturally going to bear the fruit that it discusses.
“The mirror’s just a reflection of who you are and that’s just what the law was. It reflects back to you who you are and he that beholdeth himself and goeth his way, you look into the mirror, you see who you are and then you just go away and it doesn’t bother you at all. You forget what’s there.”
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Glory to God!
Critics will argue, “He took His Son, put Him on a Cross, poured His wrath out on Him, and He’s abusing His Son! Why would God act less loving and kind than you and I would?!”
Jordan explains, “What that reasoning (you know, the ‘God-wouldn’t-bake-His-kid-in-an-oven’ kind of a thing), what that is, is it makes everything about YOU and ME: ‘God wouldn’t treat a person that way!’ It makes it all about how PEOPLE get treated.
“But you see, when you’re talking about ‘recompense’ and ‘vengeance,’ we’re not talking about how people are treated; we’re talking about how God’s been treated! Justice has to do not with whether you’re being treated fairly but is the CREATOR being treated fairly and righteously?!
“I think, ‘Wow, we get so self-oriented that everything is about us and, ‘Is it good for us and are we being treated kindly?’ Well, what about man’s treatment of God? The point is all of that is going to be set straight. And when that happens is when Christ comes back.”
*****
Paul writes in II Thess. 1: 10: “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.”
Jordan says, “It’s important to see this passage is not talking about OUR glorification. It’s not when He shall come to glorify His saints. It isn’t you that’s being glorified here; it’s Christ. Verse 10, that’s what to be glorified is. It’s to be honored and praised.
“I’ll give an illustration in Galatians 1. Here’s the Apostle Paul when he’s describing his gospel and how his message is unique and distinct from those who were there before him, and he gives as it were a certificate of apostleship.
“He writes in Gal. 1:11-12: [11] But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
[12] For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’
“He’s going to document and give proof that validates that statement. If you go down through the rest of chapter 1 and then chapter 2, there are at least 14 specific points Paul makes that demonstrate the distinctiveness of his ministry.
One of them, down in verse 21, after he’d been in Arabia and done these things in verses 18-20 (17] Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
[18] Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.
[19] But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.
[20] Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.
[21] Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia;
[22] And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ
[23] But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.
[24] And they glorified God in me.)
“Paul went out among the Gentiles where he’d lived and was unknown by face. They didn’t have enough contact with Paul to really know what was going on with him to know what he was preaching. They just had heard, ‘Well, he used to be persecuting the followers of Christ and now he’s preaching that Jesus is the Christ.’
“Now what did they do? ‘And they glorified God in Paul.’ Paul’s saying, ‘They saw God’s Word working in me and they said, ‘Woo-hoo! Praise the Lord! This is good!’ and they glorified God. They saw that God had changed things and they honored and praised the Lord.
“For God to be glorified in him, that is other people see God’s word working in Paul and that glorifies, or honors, the Lord. Well, that’s what’s going on in II Thess. 1:10.
“The Word of God working in people that believe produces the life of Christ, and the purpose and plan of God working out through them, and when He comes, He’s going to be glorified by being admired in the saints. So again, it isn’t OUR being glorified. It’s HIM being glorified!
“By the way, you notice the parenthesis in verse 10? If you read the verse without the parenthesis, it helps you get the timing of this. It’s not that you believed in that day, it’s that He’s going to be admired IN you in that day.
“In other words, we’re talking about the future exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he says ‘because our testimony among you was believed,’ you’re going to get to participate in the exaltation and the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ in the ages to come BECAUSE the testimony of Paul includes us and we believe what Christ through Paul has shown to us.
“Eph. 2:7. That’s how He’s going to be glorified in us and admired in us. We’re going to be set out (one preacher said, ‘We’ll be trophies of His grace’) and people will be able to look at the Body of Christ and be instructed.
“By the way, not just people but the angelic host. Look at Ephesians 3:9. We have a testimony to ‘the principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ about the wisdom of God and they’re going to be able to admire Him and glorify Him when they see the outworking of His wisdom through us. Now that’s a fantastic . . . that’s the issue of glorifying Him in that day!”
*****
“Ephesians 3:20 says, ‘Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.’ You see, that’s not just be glorified now but to be glorified in the Body of Christ through all ages, world without end.
"Not just that it happens now, but that it happens forever. And that’s brought fruition when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back, sweeps away His enemies, and establishes His reign in the universe.
“Eph. 1:15. When He’s going to be glorified in us, the glory that He gets is the glory that God the Father determined. There’s this plan that the Father has developed to honor and exalt His Son. When He’s exalted in us, it will be the outworking of the Father of Glories’ plan.
“It’s fascinating to see the titles of God as you go through these things. The God, the Creator, the Head, and the Father may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
“You see, learning what God’s doing is not an issue of just learning a
bunch of doctrine. Somebody told me the other day, ‘Well, were in this predicament and we’re just glad to have the doctrine work.’ Now that’s true, but it’s not just the doctrine working.
“In the Scripture it’s really the word working effectually in you, and when that happens, you know what’s really working in you? Christ is working in you. So when you talk about, ‘Well, it’s the doctrine working,’ remember it’s really the life of Jesus Christ working.
“There’s that personal intimate understanding, and when you come to Ephesians, you’ve come to the place where God says, ‘Come in and let me have access with you; let me bring you into access to understand.’ What’s going on here is the Triune God.”
Jordan explains, “What that reasoning (you know, the ‘God-wouldn’t-bake-His-kid-in-an-oven’ kind of a thing), what that is, is it makes everything about YOU and ME: ‘God wouldn’t treat a person that way!’ It makes it all about how PEOPLE get treated.
“But you see, when you’re talking about ‘recompense’ and ‘vengeance,’ we’re not talking about how people are treated; we’re talking about how God’s been treated! Justice has to do not with whether you’re being treated fairly but is the CREATOR being treated fairly and righteously?!
“I think, ‘Wow, we get so self-oriented that everything is about us and, ‘Is it good for us and are we being treated kindly?’ Well, what about man’s treatment of God? The point is all of that is going to be set straight. And when that happens is when Christ comes back.”
*****
Paul writes in II Thess. 1: 10: “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.”
Jordan says, “It’s important to see this passage is not talking about OUR glorification. It’s not when He shall come to glorify His saints. It isn’t you that’s being glorified here; it’s Christ. Verse 10, that’s what to be glorified is. It’s to be honored and praised.
“I’ll give an illustration in Galatians 1. Here’s the Apostle Paul when he’s describing his gospel and how his message is unique and distinct from those who were there before him, and he gives as it were a certificate of apostleship.
“He writes in Gal. 1:11-12: [11] But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
[12] For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’
“He’s going to document and give proof that validates that statement. If you go down through the rest of chapter 1 and then chapter 2, there are at least 14 specific points Paul makes that demonstrate the distinctiveness of his ministry.
One of them, down in verse 21, after he’d been in Arabia and done these things in verses 18-20 (17] Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus.
[18] Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.
[19] But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother.
[20] Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.
[21] Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia;
[22] And was unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ
[23] But they had heard only, That he which persecuted us in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed.
[24] And they glorified God in me.)
“Paul went out among the Gentiles where he’d lived and was unknown by face. They didn’t have enough contact with Paul to really know what was going on with him to know what he was preaching. They just had heard, ‘Well, he used to be persecuting the followers of Christ and now he’s preaching that Jesus is the Christ.’
“Now what did they do? ‘And they glorified God in Paul.’ Paul’s saying, ‘They saw God’s Word working in me and they said, ‘Woo-hoo! Praise the Lord! This is good!’ and they glorified God. They saw that God had changed things and they honored and praised the Lord.
“For God to be glorified in him, that is other people see God’s word working in Paul and that glorifies, or honors, the Lord. Well, that’s what’s going on in II Thess. 1:10.
“The Word of God working in people that believe produces the life of Christ, and the purpose and plan of God working out through them, and when He comes, He’s going to be glorified by being admired in the saints. So again, it isn’t OUR being glorified. It’s HIM being glorified!
“By the way, you notice the parenthesis in verse 10? If you read the verse without the parenthesis, it helps you get the timing of this. It’s not that you believed in that day, it’s that He’s going to be admired IN you in that day.
“In other words, we’re talking about the future exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he says ‘because our testimony among you was believed,’ you’re going to get to participate in the exaltation and the glorification of the Lord Jesus Christ in the ages to come BECAUSE the testimony of Paul includes us and we believe what Christ through Paul has shown to us.
“Eph. 2:7. That’s how He’s going to be glorified in us and admired in us. We’re going to be set out (one preacher said, ‘We’ll be trophies of His grace’) and people will be able to look at the Body of Christ and be instructed.
“By the way, not just people but the angelic host. Look at Ephesians 3:9. We have a testimony to ‘the principalities and powers in the heavenly places’ about the wisdom of God and they’re going to be able to admire Him and glorify Him when they see the outworking of His wisdom through us. Now that’s a fantastic . . . that’s the issue of glorifying Him in that day!”
*****
“Ephesians 3:20 says, ‘Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.’ You see, that’s not just be glorified now but to be glorified in the Body of Christ through all ages, world without end.
"Not just that it happens now, but that it happens forever. And that’s brought fruition when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back, sweeps away His enemies, and establishes His reign in the universe.
“Eph. 1:15. When He’s going to be glorified in us, the glory that He gets is the glory that God the Father determined. There’s this plan that the Father has developed to honor and exalt His Son. When He’s exalted in us, it will be the outworking of the Father of Glories’ plan.
“It’s fascinating to see the titles of God as you go through these things. The God, the Creator, the Head, and the Father may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
“You see, learning what God’s doing is not an issue of just learning a
bunch of doctrine. Somebody told me the other day, ‘Well, were in this predicament and we’re just glad to have the doctrine work.’ Now that’s true, but it’s not just the doctrine working.
“In the Scripture it’s really the word working effectually in you, and when that happens, you know what’s really working in you? Christ is working in you. So when you talk about, ‘Well, it’s the doctrine working,’ remember it’s really the life of Jesus Christ working.
“There’s that personal intimate understanding, and when you come to Ephesians, you’ve come to the place where God says, ‘Come in and let me have access with you; let me bring you into access to understand.’ What’s going on here is the Triune God.”
Monday, January 16, 2012
Pleading the pattern
The good thing is I don’t have to work today on account of it being Martin Luther King Day. The bad thing is I’m spending a precious day off of work suffering through a full-blown cold that came on me Saturday night and has progressively worsened. My head and ears are plugged but mucus is making its way out, causing lots of sneezing and grabbing of tissues, not to mention all the coughing. At least I’m not tempted to eat anything fattening since my taste buds are out.
So, I’ve got a bunch of different sermon passages I’m working on, but here’s a couple for now:
When the Bible talks about ‘the end of the world’ (Psalm 19:4 and Isaiah 62:11 for the earliest references), it’s not talking about the end of the planet, as some presume.
Isaiah 45:17 says, “But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.”
Jordan explains, “If you’re going to have a world without end, how can you have the end of the world?! Look at Isaiah 23:17: ‘And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth.’
“Let me suggest something to you. You’ve got the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. Can you see in that verse that word ‘world’ is not talking about the planet? The planet is the earth. The world in that verse is the organization of the affairs that are going on on the planet and we use the term world that way. We talk about ‘the wide world of sports,’ or ‘the world of politics.’ You know you’re not talking about the planet; you’re talking about an order and an arrangement.
“Sometimes we’ll talk about the word ‘world’ in the sense of an era. ‘The ancient world’ kind of a thing. The problem people have with the thing about the end of the world, and the world without end, is they think when He says ‘world without end,’ He’s talking about the destruction of the planet.
"No, what he’s really talking about is this present evil world. The arrangement of things that are under the control of Satan. The way the affairs of the things that take place on the planet are organized, rather than being under the control of Satan, they’re going to be taken and placed under the control of the Lord Jesus Christ and then you have the real new world order.”
*****
Jesus says in John 15:2: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”
So if the branch doesn’t bring forth good fruit, he prunes it; cuts it off. Verse 6 says, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. cast forward as a branch and is withered.”
Jordan explains, “That verse right there makes this a classic passage used by the Calvinists and the Armenians (they say they’re opposites but they turn out being practically the same) to say that in order to test whether you’re saved or not, the real test of your salvation is whether you bring forth fruit or not.
“Lordship salvation is one of three things. Either you have to work to get saved (you promise to make Jesus Lord of your life and turn from you sin), you have to work to stay saved (that’s the Armenian where if you don’t work you’re going to lose it) or you have to work to prove you are saved (that’s the Calvinist). If you don’t work, it means you didn’t have it to start with.
“One guy says, ‘If you want to get to heaven over there, you’ve got to work, because if you don’t work you’re not going to get there. That’s the Armenian. The Calvinist says ‘If you’re going to heaven, you’ll work, and if you don’t work it’s because you’re not going to heaven.’ What’s the difference?! Well there’s not any practical difference.
“Calvinism and Armenianism are simply philosophical syllogisms that are designed to support and prove a theological concept. In the Calvinistic system it’s ‘determinism, fatalism.’ You ever thought about how impossible it is to practically live with that kind of a thought in mind? ‘Everything that happens, God controls it. Nothing happens that God didn’t authorize.’
“So when you go out and fall in the mud, spiritually speaking, and go out and live in sin—get drunk, rob a bank go home and shoot your grandma—I mean, if God determined everything that’s going to happen, what would you say about doing that?
“They haul you down to the police station and you’re going to say what the Muslim says: ‘Will of God.’ If God determined everything that’s going to happen, and nothing happens except what He determines is going to happen, then that’s exactly what you’re saying. They just have sense enough not to say it, like a bunch of politicians—you know when you get to what they really think they don’t want to say it because they’re going to lose some votes over here. Practically speaking, you can’t live by that kind of thinking.
“What people use the passage to do is to say, ‘If you have a superficial relationship with Christ, which means that you don’t show fruit in your life, that proves that you’re not really a true believer and you’re going to perish in hell.’
“Whether you’re an Armenian or Calvinist, that’s the way they take this passage and the problem with that is manifold, but obviously right on the face of it, when somebody says, ‘You got to bring forth fruit,’ the first question you ought to ask is, ‘What fruit?’ What is the fruit I’m supposed to bring forth?
"Then they start giving you a long list of stuff: Can’t go to the movies (you guys think that’s nut but when I was raised you couldn’t go to the movies), can’t play cards and God forbid you go to a pool hall. They got their little religious rules. Can’t go into a Protestant church building. Then you need to know how much fruit you had to bear in order to prove you got some. The fruit is a visible measurable result of being in Christ, so you need to know how much is enough.
“But when you go back to the context here, it really isn’t that hard to
figure out what the fruit is. If you look down at verse 8, it says, ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
[9] As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
[10] If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.
[11] These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
[12] This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.’
“If you go back to Chapter 13, Jesus Christ says, ‘A new commandment I give
unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
[35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’
“The supreme fruit He’s pointing these guys toward is loving one another as He loved them. How did He love them? He loved them as the Father loved Him and He loved the Father: ‘You watch me (verse 9) and continue thee in my love. The way the Father loved me, I love you. Now you take the way I’ve loved you and go love each other. I set the pattern.’
“What the fruit is going to be is just the outworking of His life in them. That’s why He says to them in verse 5, ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’ It’s going to be the Holy Spirit writing His law in their heart and causing them.”
*****
Matthew 3 reads, 10] And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
[11] I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
[12] Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Jordan says, “Isn’t that what we just read about in John 15? If you don’t bear fruit what happens? You’re cast into the fire. What’s He talking about? ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.’ That’s what happened on the day of Pentecost; that’s the inauguration of the New Covenant that Christ has been detailing to them. But He isn’t just going to baptize them with the Holy Ghost; He’s going to baptize them with fire.
“Verse 12 is a reference to the tribulation. He’s going to take Israel through that tribulation, that time of Jacob’s trouble. . . God doesn’t need a seven-year period to destroy the Gentile world powers. He doesn’t need seven years to avenge Himself against the Gentiles. What He’s doing in the 70th week of Daniel, at the time of Jacob’s trouble, is purging the nation Israel of the unbelievers so that all that’s left to go into the kingdom is the wheat and the chaff is going to be destroyed.
“God pleads in Ezekiel 20, ‘33] As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you:
[34] And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out.
[35] And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face.
[36] Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord GOD.
[37] And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant:
[38] And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.’
“Think about all the things He’s saying there in ‘the last half of the week’ when He pleads with them and feeds them. We studied how He would feed them with the manna in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31 says it’s going to be in the wilderness that they’re going to find grace. And He’s going to plead with them face to face.
“Israel’s scattered among the Gentiles, just like they are now. The fifth course of judgment will still be going on in the tribulation but He says, ‘I’m going to bring you back into the land, and into the wilderness.’ You remember Revelation 12 where He takes them out in that wilderness and it says, ‘I will cause you to pass under the rod.’ That’s the Antichrist.
“In Isaiah 10 he’s called ‘the rod of my indignation.’ What that tribulation period does is it purges out the rebels and part of that has to do with the outpouring of His wrath.
“Deuteronomy talks about it ‘as an iron furnace of fire.’ You remember the three Hebrew children who were cast into the furnace of fire by Nebby? ‘Heated it seven times hotter.’ There’s seven years in the Trib and yet God preserved them through it and when He came out the other end, the only thing that was burned was the ropes that held them, and the text says they didn’t even have the smell of smoke on them. No harm! He’ll preserve that believing remnant right through that.
“There are three times where the wrath of God is poured out. One is hell, the lake of fire. One is the Cross and one is the tribulation period.”
Editor's note: Done a lot of internet reading this weekend as a result of my illness. Here's an interesting interview if you're a Simon & Garfunkel fan like me:
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/meaning-of-life-2012/art-garfunkel-quotes-0112?src=rss
So, I’ve got a bunch of different sermon passages I’m working on, but here’s a couple for now:
When the Bible talks about ‘the end of the world’ (Psalm 19:4 and Isaiah 62:11 for the earliest references), it’s not talking about the end of the planet, as some presume.
Isaiah 45:17 says, “But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end.”
Jordan explains, “If you’re going to have a world without end, how can you have the end of the world?! Look at Isaiah 23:17: ‘And it shall come to pass after the end of seventy years, that the LORD will visit Tyre, and she shall turn to her hire, and shall commit fornication with all the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth.’
“Let me suggest something to you. You’ve got the kingdoms of the world upon the face of the earth. Can you see in that verse that word ‘world’ is not talking about the planet? The planet is the earth. The world in that verse is the organization of the affairs that are going on on the planet and we use the term world that way. We talk about ‘the wide world of sports,’ or ‘the world of politics.’ You know you’re not talking about the planet; you’re talking about an order and an arrangement.
“Sometimes we’ll talk about the word ‘world’ in the sense of an era. ‘The ancient world’ kind of a thing. The problem people have with the thing about the end of the world, and the world without end, is they think when He says ‘world without end,’ He’s talking about the destruction of the planet.
"No, what he’s really talking about is this present evil world. The arrangement of things that are under the control of Satan. The way the affairs of the things that take place on the planet are organized, rather than being under the control of Satan, they’re going to be taken and placed under the control of the Lord Jesus Christ and then you have the real new world order.”
*****
Jesus says in John 15:2: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”
So if the branch doesn’t bring forth good fruit, he prunes it; cuts it off. Verse 6 says, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. cast forward as a branch and is withered.”
Jordan explains, “That verse right there makes this a classic passage used by the Calvinists and the Armenians (they say they’re opposites but they turn out being practically the same) to say that in order to test whether you’re saved or not, the real test of your salvation is whether you bring forth fruit or not.
“Lordship salvation is one of three things. Either you have to work to get saved (you promise to make Jesus Lord of your life and turn from you sin), you have to work to stay saved (that’s the Armenian where if you don’t work you’re going to lose it) or you have to work to prove you are saved (that’s the Calvinist). If you don’t work, it means you didn’t have it to start with.
“One guy says, ‘If you want to get to heaven over there, you’ve got to work, because if you don’t work you’re not going to get there. That’s the Armenian. The Calvinist says ‘If you’re going to heaven, you’ll work, and if you don’t work it’s because you’re not going to heaven.’ What’s the difference?! Well there’s not any practical difference.
“Calvinism and Armenianism are simply philosophical syllogisms that are designed to support and prove a theological concept. In the Calvinistic system it’s ‘determinism, fatalism.’ You ever thought about how impossible it is to practically live with that kind of a thought in mind? ‘Everything that happens, God controls it. Nothing happens that God didn’t authorize.’
“So when you go out and fall in the mud, spiritually speaking, and go out and live in sin—get drunk, rob a bank go home and shoot your grandma—I mean, if God determined everything that’s going to happen, what would you say about doing that?
“They haul you down to the police station and you’re going to say what the Muslim says: ‘Will of God.’ If God determined everything that’s going to happen, and nothing happens except what He determines is going to happen, then that’s exactly what you’re saying. They just have sense enough not to say it, like a bunch of politicians—you know when you get to what they really think they don’t want to say it because they’re going to lose some votes over here. Practically speaking, you can’t live by that kind of thinking.
“What people use the passage to do is to say, ‘If you have a superficial relationship with Christ, which means that you don’t show fruit in your life, that proves that you’re not really a true believer and you’re going to perish in hell.’
“Whether you’re an Armenian or Calvinist, that’s the way they take this passage and the problem with that is manifold, but obviously right on the face of it, when somebody says, ‘You got to bring forth fruit,’ the first question you ought to ask is, ‘What fruit?’ What is the fruit I’m supposed to bring forth?
"Then they start giving you a long list of stuff: Can’t go to the movies (you guys think that’s nut but when I was raised you couldn’t go to the movies), can’t play cards and God forbid you go to a pool hall. They got their little religious rules. Can’t go into a Protestant church building. Then you need to know how much fruit you had to bear in order to prove you got some. The fruit is a visible measurable result of being in Christ, so you need to know how much is enough.
“But when you go back to the context here, it really isn’t that hard to
figure out what the fruit is. If you look down at verse 8, it says, ‘Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
[9] As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.
[10] If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love.
[11] These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
[12] This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.’
“If you go back to Chapter 13, Jesus Christ says, ‘A new commandment I give
unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
[35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.’
“The supreme fruit He’s pointing these guys toward is loving one another as He loved them. How did He love them? He loved them as the Father loved Him and He loved the Father: ‘You watch me (verse 9) and continue thee in my love. The way the Father loved me, I love you. Now you take the way I’ve loved you and go love each other. I set the pattern.’
“What the fruit is going to be is just the outworking of His life in them. That’s why He says to them in verse 5, ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’ It’s going to be the Holy Spirit writing His law in their heart and causing them.”
*****
Matthew 3 reads, 10] And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
[11] I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
[12] Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Jordan says, “Isn’t that what we just read about in John 15? If you don’t bear fruit what happens? You’re cast into the fire. What’s He talking about? ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.’ That’s what happened on the day of Pentecost; that’s the inauguration of the New Covenant that Christ has been detailing to them. But He isn’t just going to baptize them with the Holy Ghost; He’s going to baptize them with fire.
“Verse 12 is a reference to the tribulation. He’s going to take Israel through that tribulation, that time of Jacob’s trouble. . . God doesn’t need a seven-year period to destroy the Gentile world powers. He doesn’t need seven years to avenge Himself against the Gentiles. What He’s doing in the 70th week of Daniel, at the time of Jacob’s trouble, is purging the nation Israel of the unbelievers so that all that’s left to go into the kingdom is the wheat and the chaff is going to be destroyed.
“God pleads in Ezekiel 20, ‘33] As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you:
[34] And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out.
[35] And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face.
[36] Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord GOD.
[37] And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant:
[38] And I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me: I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.’
“Think about all the things He’s saying there in ‘the last half of the week’ when He pleads with them and feeds them. We studied how He would feed them with the manna in the wilderness. Jeremiah 31 says it’s going to be in the wilderness that they’re going to find grace. And He’s going to plead with them face to face.
“Israel’s scattered among the Gentiles, just like they are now. The fifth course of judgment will still be going on in the tribulation but He says, ‘I’m going to bring you back into the land, and into the wilderness.’ You remember Revelation 12 where He takes them out in that wilderness and it says, ‘I will cause you to pass under the rod.’ That’s the Antichrist.
“In Isaiah 10 he’s called ‘the rod of my indignation.’ What that tribulation period does is it purges out the rebels and part of that has to do with the outpouring of His wrath.
“Deuteronomy talks about it ‘as an iron furnace of fire.’ You remember the three Hebrew children who were cast into the furnace of fire by Nebby? ‘Heated it seven times hotter.’ There’s seven years in the Trib and yet God preserved them through it and when He came out the other end, the only thing that was burned was the ropes that held them, and the text says they didn’t even have the smell of smoke on them. No harm! He’ll preserve that believing remnant right through that.
“There are three times where the wrath of God is poured out. One is hell, the lake of fire. One is the Cross and one is the tribulation period.”
Editor's note: Done a lot of internet reading this weekend as a result of my illness. Here's an interesting interview if you're a Simon & Garfunkel fan like me:
http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/meaning-of-life-2012/art-garfunkel-quotes-0112?src=rss
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Conclusion: He is who He said He was
I am home sick today with a blockbuster headache (I’ve had them on and off through this endless heat wave of a supposed winter) and other debilitating pains brought by Aunt Flo when she came roaring into town last night for her monthly visit. I’ll just say, “peri-menopause” is everything they warn you about and lots of it!
So rather than spend the whole day wallowing in my agony (with make-you-drowsy-and-useless Claritin-D coursing through my system), I decided to get up and finish that piece I was going to finish last night when all this malaise came on me.
Here’s the conclusion to the last post (Jordan’s Christmas day study):
“One of the great proofs that God’s Word is true and that Jesus Christ is exactly who He says He is, is the accurate, exact fulfillment of predictive prophecy. If you can predict something down to the exact place and the exact time, and seven hundred years later it takes place . . .
“You know what the world says? ‘Must have been written after the fact and just made to look like that.’ But you know you can have an absolute historic certainty that cannot be argued with successfully in that one verse right there.
“According to every historian—I don’t care if he’s a saved one or lost one; a Christian or atheist—the general understanding of all of history is that in about 250 B.C. the Jewish Bible was translated into the Greek language into a book called by people the Septuagint.
“The Greek translation of the Bible contained the Book of Micah and contained that verse exactly as it is I your Bible. Every historical source you could find to document the historicity of the Book of Micah guarantees you that at least 250 years before Christ (more probably 700).
“But let’s say you don’t want to take anything Christians say, so, okay, let’s take what the worlds says. What does the scholarship of the University of Chicago say? It says that 250 years before, minimum, the exact town . . . Now you know how improbable that was? Mary and Joseph didn’t live in Bethlehem; they lived in Nazareth almost 100 miles north.
“How in the world are you going to take a man and his pregnant . . . ‘she’s great with child,’ as the verse says and I love that expression. She’s ready to pop and be delivered. How’s he going to get her a hundred miles from up there to Bethlehem? God uses a pagan ruler to give the decree that all the world has to be taxed and you’ve got to go back to your hometown.
“What would have motivated Joseph to put his pregnant little wife on the back of a donkey, or in the back of a cart, and drag her a hundred miles in that condition? Because she had to go 100 miles for Him to be born where He’s supposed to be born.
“Everything about it is beyond human calculations. What that means is that based on the mathematical, statistical laws of probability, the very science that you use to demonstrate that DNA conclusively identifies someone as guilty or innocent (DNA is all based on statistical probability) on that science of statistical probability that one verse right there demonstrates.
“There are over 300 verses just like that. If you just took eight specific verses like that, and there are 300 of them, but if you just took eight markers like that, you’d have the ability to identify in a court of law a statistical absoluteness that this is true. That He is who He said He was.
“To me that’s a fascinating thing, because surrounding the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is the scientific, cultural, conclusive proof that He is who He said He was by the fulfilling exactly on time…how could a baby prearrange all that to happen? How did a baby pre-stage it?
“When He died on the Cross, and He’s dead, they take Him down off that Cross and bury Him in a rich man’s tomb like Isaiah 53 said they would. His body lays there and doesn’t see corruption like Psalm 16 said it would. He’s raised from the dead like Psalm 2 said He would be. He then ascends up into heaven like Psalm 110 said He would. When He’s stone cold dead on the market, how did He arrange to be buried where Isaiah said He would be buried? How do you arrange that for yourself?”
So rather than spend the whole day wallowing in my agony (with make-you-drowsy-and-useless Claritin-D coursing through my system), I decided to get up and finish that piece I was going to finish last night when all this malaise came on me.
Here’s the conclusion to the last post (Jordan’s Christmas day study):
“One of the great proofs that God’s Word is true and that Jesus Christ is exactly who He says He is, is the accurate, exact fulfillment of predictive prophecy. If you can predict something down to the exact place and the exact time, and seven hundred years later it takes place . . .
“You know what the world says? ‘Must have been written after the fact and just made to look like that.’ But you know you can have an absolute historic certainty that cannot be argued with successfully in that one verse right there.
“According to every historian—I don’t care if he’s a saved one or lost one; a Christian or atheist—the general understanding of all of history is that in about 250 B.C. the Jewish Bible was translated into the Greek language into a book called by people the Septuagint.
“The Greek translation of the Bible contained the Book of Micah and contained that verse exactly as it is I your Bible. Every historical source you could find to document the historicity of the Book of Micah guarantees you that at least 250 years before Christ (more probably 700).
“But let’s say you don’t want to take anything Christians say, so, okay, let’s take what the worlds says. What does the scholarship of the University of Chicago say? It says that 250 years before, minimum, the exact town . . . Now you know how improbable that was? Mary and Joseph didn’t live in Bethlehem; they lived in Nazareth almost 100 miles north.
“How in the world are you going to take a man and his pregnant . . . ‘she’s great with child,’ as the verse says and I love that expression. She’s ready to pop and be delivered. How’s he going to get her a hundred miles from up there to Bethlehem? God uses a pagan ruler to give the decree that all the world has to be taxed and you’ve got to go back to your hometown.
“What would have motivated Joseph to put his pregnant little wife on the back of a donkey, or in the back of a cart, and drag her a hundred miles in that condition? Because she had to go 100 miles for Him to be born where He’s supposed to be born.
“Everything about it is beyond human calculations. What that means is that based on the mathematical, statistical laws of probability, the very science that you use to demonstrate that DNA conclusively identifies someone as guilty or innocent (DNA is all based on statistical probability) on that science of statistical probability that one verse right there demonstrates.
“There are over 300 verses just like that. If you just took eight specific verses like that, and there are 300 of them, but if you just took eight markers like that, you’d have the ability to identify in a court of law a statistical absoluteness that this is true. That He is who He said He was.
“To me that’s a fascinating thing, because surrounding the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ is the scientific, cultural, conclusive proof that He is who He said He was by the fulfilling exactly on time…how could a baby prearrange all that to happen? How did a baby pre-stage it?
“When He died on the Cross, and He’s dead, they take Him down off that Cross and bury Him in a rich man’s tomb like Isaiah 53 said they would. His body lays there and doesn’t see corruption like Psalm 16 said it would. He’s raised from the dead like Psalm 2 said He would be. He then ascends up into heaven like Psalm 110 said He would. When He’s stone cold dead on the market, how did He arrange to be buried where Isaiah said He would be buried? How do you arrange that for yourself?”
Monday, January 9, 2012
Seven hundred years before . . .
In his Christmas day sermon, Jordan said, “Where Christ came from was He already was. He didn’t have to be created. In the womb of Mary, God created a body in which He placed the life of His Son. He was, ‘God sent forth His Son out of heaven, made of a woman, in the fullness of the time.’ At the exact moment—this is a preplanned event. Not something that just caught God by surprise; He got up one morning and decided to do it. It was a specifically specified time and, by the way, a specifically specified place for the event to take place.”
Micah 5:1-2 says, “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
Jordan says, “Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. That’s seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence. Micah prophesies to the nation Israel about her facing enemies coming in and invading their land, economic collapse and political upheaval and political corruption. You talk about a Middle East problem! The Middle East has been in turmoil for millenniums. This is not something that just began.
“You go 2,500 years ago in Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then! And the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel was to destroy Israel. In the face of that Micah prophesies to his people.
“Bethlehem was a small little insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time and that’s why he says Bethlehem Ephratah. That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which He resides. And what he picked out was the itty-bitty one. The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy, you remember, became king.
“It says, ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ You see in Galatians when Paul said, ‘God send forth His Son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse where Micah says, ‘Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall come forth.’ God sends forth His Son in the fullness of the time to be made of a woman, and when He’s made of the woman, His appearance is going to be in the city of Bethlehem.
“When it says, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old,’ you see how ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. Now if you’re old you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you been around. That’s a reference to time. Everlasting is not time because time doesn’t last forever. You can go back to a place where time began. In the beginning of what? Time and creation. In the beginning of that continuum in which we live—time and space.
“But this one that’s going to come forth in time, comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human person; this is God stepping out of eternity into time in the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His deity, that He was who He said He was, by fulfilling that verse.
“Seven hundred years after Micah, the wise men come to Jerusalem ‘seeking him born king of the Jews.’ They know the time! How did a bunch of Gentiles over in the east know? They had some books that told them the time when He was going to be born. God had identified a time and apostate Israel, who had no care for their Bible, laid it aside, and yet some other people had taken it up and knew WHEN to be looking.
“They saw His star. They saw exactly what Jacob told Israel to be looking for in Genesis 49. Just what Balaam, in Numbers 23, said would happen. Just exactly the timeline that Daniel told Israel it will be. Where would you go to look for the king of Israel? Well, Jerusalem’s the ‘city of the great king,’ so they go there.
“When they get there, by the way, in Matthew 2, He’s not a babe in the manger. No wise men came to the nativity scene. In Luke, you go to the nativity and you see the shepherds and they’re biding in the field in that night and they go and worship the babe and then they find Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger and they worship Him.
“But when you come to Matthew 2, when these wise men get to the place where He’s at, He’s not in the manger in Bethlehem; He’s living in Nazareth in a house! And He’s not a baby in the sense of a newborn infant; He’s as much as two years old in Matthew 2 because when Herod wants to go find Him and they give him the slip, he says go out and have every male baby two years and younger killed. Why? He’d looked for the timing when the star appeared because he wanted to know how old the baby was.
“In Matthew 2, the gospel of the kingdom, you don’t go to the nativity, you come to a picture or prologue of the king and He’s in the house! And He’s called a young child over and over in Matthew 2. No longer the infant baby but the little toddler now, and yet He’s still God in our humanity.
“Matthew 2 goes on, ‘[2] Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[3] When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
[4] And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
[6] And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’
“Herod went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ And they said to Him, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Judah.’
Now that’s just like a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there. Look at what it says: ‘And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Juda.’ Micah said you are ‘the least.’ These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little insignificant po-dunk place out yonder. They said, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.
“You better watch preachers. You better watch religious scholars because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself. Don’t let somebody take the thing out of its context, stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did. You have to be careful letting people mess around with your Bible.
“Now why did he get the town right? Because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem. Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify Him! Away with Him! We will not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspecting, unknowing, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is.”
(To be continued tomorrow)
Micah 5:1-2 says, “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”
Jordan says, “Micah lived 700 years before the birth of Christ. That’s seven centuries, longer than our country’s been in existence. Micah prophesies to the nation Israel about her facing enemies coming in and invading their land, economic collapse and political upheaval and political corruption. You talk about a Middle East problem! The Middle East has been in turmoil for millenniums. This is not something that just began.
“You go 2,500 years ago in Micah’s day and the same kind of conflict going on in the Middle East today was going on then! And the goal of all the Gentile nations around Israel was to destroy Israel. In the face of that Micah prophesies to his people.
“Bethlehem was a small little insignificant town. In fact, there were two Bethlehems in Israel at that time and that’s why he says Bethlehem Ephratah. That’s like saying the name of the city and the county in which He resides. And what he picked out was the itty-bitty one. The only claim to fame this town ever had was that a little shepherd boy named David was born there and that little shepherd boy, you remember, became king.
“It says, ‘yet out of thee shall he come forth.’ You see in Galatians when Paul said, ‘God send forth His Son,’ that’s a reference back to this verse where Micah says, ‘Out of thee, Bethlehem, shall come forth.’ God sends forth His Son in the fullness of the time to be made of a woman, and when He’s made of the woman, His appearance is going to be in the city of Bethlehem.
“When it says, ‘whose goings forth have been from of old,’ you see how ‘goings’ is plural? He had more than one going. Now if you’re old you’re ancient. That’s talking about how long you been around. That’s a reference to time. Everlasting is not time because time doesn’t last forever. You can go back to a place where time began. In the beginning of what? Time and creation. In the beginning of that continuum in which we live—time and space.
“But this one that’s going to come forth in time, comes out of eternity. This isn’t a human person; this is God stepping out of eternity into time in the clothing of our humanity. You see, that makes Him kind of unique. It makes Him a little different. The Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His deity, that He was who He said He was, by fulfilling that verse.
“Seven hundred years after Micah, the wise men come to Jerusalem ‘seeking him born king of the Jews.’ They know the time! How did a bunch of Gentiles over in the east know? They had some books that told them the time when He was going to be born. God had identified a time and apostate Israel, who had no care for their Bible, laid it aside, and yet some other people had taken it up and knew WHEN to be looking.
“They saw His star. They saw exactly what Jacob told Israel to be looking for in Genesis 49. Just what Balaam, in Numbers 23, said would happen. Just exactly the timeline that Daniel told Israel it will be. Where would you go to look for the king of Israel? Well, Jerusalem’s the ‘city of the great king,’ so they go there.
“When they get there, by the way, in Matthew 2, He’s not a babe in the manger. No wise men came to the nativity scene. In Luke, you go to the nativity and you see the shepherds and they’re biding in the field in that night and they go and worship the babe and then they find Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in the manger and they worship Him.
“But when you come to Matthew 2, when these wise men get to the place where He’s at, He’s not in the manger in Bethlehem; He’s living in Nazareth in a house! And He’s not a baby in the sense of a newborn infant; He’s as much as two years old in Matthew 2 because when Herod wants to go find Him and they give him the slip, he says go out and have every male baby two years and younger killed. Why? He’d looked for the timing when the star appeared because he wanted to know how old the baby was.
“In Matthew 2, the gospel of the kingdom, you don’t go to the nativity, you come to a picture or prologue of the king and He’s in the house! And He’s called a young child over and over in Matthew 2. No longer the infant baby but the little toddler now, and yet He’s still God in our humanity.
“Matthew 2 goes on, ‘[2] Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[3] When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
[4] And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
[5] And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet,
[6] And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.’
“Herod went out and got all the rabbinical scholars, brought them in and said, ‘Where’s the Messiah going to be born?’ And they said to Him, ‘That’s easy! In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Judah.’
Now that’s just like a bunch of religious tomfoolery right there. Look at what it says: ‘And thou Bethlehem in the land of Juda are not least of among the princes of Juda.’ Micah said you are ‘the least.’ These guys, they don’t want their king to be born in a little insignificant po-dunk place out yonder. They said, ‘You’re not!’ They actually changed God’s Word.
“You better watch preachers. You better watch religious scholars because they’ll take God’s Word and twist it to make themselves look like the winner. That’s why you better look at the verses yourself. Don’t let somebody take the thing out of its context, stick it on a wall, or stick it in a book, and then impose another meaning to it. That’s what these birds did. You have to be careful letting people mess around with your Bible.
“Now why did he get the town right? Because 700 years before, Micah had said it’s going to be Bethlehem. Think about what’s happening here. Here’s a bunch of rabbinical scholars who have no interest in Jesus Christ at all. When He shows up they’re going to hate Him and cry, ‘Crucify Him! Away with Him! We will not have this man reign over us.’ And yet here they are, unsuspecting, unknowing, being the No. 1 witness to the fact He is who He says He is.”
(To be continued tomorrow)
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Promoted over THAT tree
The first time the fig tree shows up in the Bible is in Genesis 3 and it sets up the pattern. It’s fig-tree religion, or “Operation Fig Leaf,” as Jordan likes to call it.
As he explains, “Adam and Eve have lost their covering. They had this (other-worldly) garment, this light of many colors, and now they realize their garment’s gone. They need a covering so they go out and get the fig leaves. Now I’ve thought about that many times, how of all the trees that they could have used, that was a kind of an odd one. It has big leaves but they are real prickly. They are not comfortable.
“Growing up my mom used to pick figs from our backyard but she always wore yellow rubber gloves up to her elbows, because if you just reach in there and pick a bunch of figs, they’ll just eat your arms to pieces, so I’m thinking Adam and Eve weren’t really the greatest designers at making clothes.
“The fig tree is a type of religion. Man’s attempt at covering himself. But there’s only one religion God ever gave and He gave to the nation Israel through Moses and it’s His religion.
“The fig tree represents the issue of the religious life, and for Israel and her religion, it was designed for them. . . ‘my sweetness and good fruit.’(Judges 9:11) What does it do? It nourishes you. It refreshes you.
“Now you will hear this stuff taught differently than the way I’m presenting it to you. If you read Clarence Larkin or Scofield, especially Larkin and people who follow him, they have a fig tree as a representative of the nation (the national life of Israel) and the vine tree representing the spiritual life.
“The fig tree does not represent the national life of Israel; it represents the religious life. You remember the parable Jesus told in Matthew 24 about ‘this generation that sees the budding of the fig tree’?
“Everybody wants the budding of the fig tree to be 1947 and 1948 when
Israel became a nation. Because then they can figure a generation from that, and figure when the rapture and tribulation are going to be and that kind of stuff. The date-setters want it to be Israel becoming a nation in 1947-48.
“So they say, ‘See, there’s the budding of the fig tree!’ The problem with that is if the fig tree is the national life of Israel, Jesus in Matthew 21 cursed the fig tree. Remember that? And He said, ‘You’ll never again bear fruit.’ If the fig tree represents the nation, then what Jesus did was curse the national life of Israel and the nation can never bear fruit with God again. Consequently God would have to be through with Israel and replace it with the church and you have the basis of Replacement Theology. Well that just won’t get it.
“That’s what years ago got me thinking, ‘Well, that can’t be what the fig tree represents.’ Genesis 3 pegs it as man’s attempt to cover up before God. There’s the religious life. By the way, that’s exactly what God did. He cursed the religious life of Israel and the Mosaic covenant and the religion that Israel got through it will never bear fruit. God set it aside.
“The budding of the fig tree DOES have to with the Judaic system, the sacrificial system, the temple worship, being reestablished. Well in II Thessalonians 2, what does it say the Antichrist is going to do? He’s going to rebuild the temple and sit in it, declaring himself to be God. Reinstitute the daily sacrifice (Daniel 9:27).
“So with the Antichrist they’re going to reinstitute the Mosaic system. When you see that temple rebuilt, and that system set back up, that generation is going to see the Second Advent of Christ. It’s got nothing to do with the national life of Israel. Israel as a nation, in the Bible, is represented by the vine tree.
****
Psalm 80, a psalm about the Lord coming again, says, in part, 8] Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.
[9] Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.
[10] The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.
[11] She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.
[12] Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?”
Isaiah 5:2 says, “And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.”
Jordan says, “Notice it says wild grapes. You plant a choice vine, what kind of grapes do you want to get off it? Choice grapes, premium grapes, A-grade. What happened? It brought forth sour grapes. It brought forth wild grapes. It acted like it never did anything for it after it did all that.
“The passage in Isaiah 5 goes on, ‘And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
[6] And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
[7] For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.’
“So what is the vineyard to the Lord? It’s a figure describing the nation Israel that He planted in the land and then blessed and did all these things for. The vine tree is looking at Israel in its life as a nation among the nations of the earth.
“And you see here in the passage God blessed them, put a hedge of protection around them out of the nations as a separate nation and then blessed them and then what’d they do? Instead of appreciating it and responding in faith, they corrupted it.
“Jeremiah 2:21 says, ‘Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?’
"You get the idea. They’ve become a degenerated plant of a strange vine. Now you’re back in Deut. 32 (‘Their vine’s not our vine, their rock’s not our rock). They failed spiritually, which corrupted them.
“I just want you to see this vine terminology is something that when Jesus said, ‘I’m the true vine,’ they knew exactly what He was talking about. This is not something He just sucked out of the end of His thumb. This is scriptural terminology that these apostles (in the gospel of John) would have understood instantly.
“Hosea 10:1: ‘Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images.’
“What’s happened? They’ve degenerated, they’ve failed; they’ve become empty. They have no fruit that God can accept.
“So when you come to John 15, Jesus, having brought them into an understanding of what’s coming for them, taught them in John 14 about the new covenant ministry they’re going to have when they’re in Him and the new relationship the Holy Spirit’s going to give them, He’s reminding them that, ‘When you’re in me and the Holy Spirit comes and the new covenant is inaugurated, I’m the true vine. The one you’re going to be in is the real true Israel.’ ”
As he explains, “Adam and Eve have lost their covering. They had this (other-worldly) garment, this light of many colors, and now they realize their garment’s gone. They need a covering so they go out and get the fig leaves. Now I’ve thought about that many times, how of all the trees that they could have used, that was a kind of an odd one. It has big leaves but they are real prickly. They are not comfortable.
“Growing up my mom used to pick figs from our backyard but she always wore yellow rubber gloves up to her elbows, because if you just reach in there and pick a bunch of figs, they’ll just eat your arms to pieces, so I’m thinking Adam and Eve weren’t really the greatest designers at making clothes.
“The fig tree is a type of religion. Man’s attempt at covering himself. But there’s only one religion God ever gave and He gave to the nation Israel through Moses and it’s His religion.
“The fig tree represents the issue of the religious life, and for Israel and her religion, it was designed for them. . . ‘my sweetness and good fruit.’(Judges 9:11) What does it do? It nourishes you. It refreshes you.
“Now you will hear this stuff taught differently than the way I’m presenting it to you. If you read Clarence Larkin or Scofield, especially Larkin and people who follow him, they have a fig tree as a representative of the nation (the national life of Israel) and the vine tree representing the spiritual life.
“The fig tree does not represent the national life of Israel; it represents the religious life. You remember the parable Jesus told in Matthew 24 about ‘this generation that sees the budding of the fig tree’?
“Everybody wants the budding of the fig tree to be 1947 and 1948 when
Israel became a nation. Because then they can figure a generation from that, and figure when the rapture and tribulation are going to be and that kind of stuff. The date-setters want it to be Israel becoming a nation in 1947-48.
“So they say, ‘See, there’s the budding of the fig tree!’ The problem with that is if the fig tree is the national life of Israel, Jesus in Matthew 21 cursed the fig tree. Remember that? And He said, ‘You’ll never again bear fruit.’ If the fig tree represents the nation, then what Jesus did was curse the national life of Israel and the nation can never bear fruit with God again. Consequently God would have to be through with Israel and replace it with the church and you have the basis of Replacement Theology. Well that just won’t get it.
“That’s what years ago got me thinking, ‘Well, that can’t be what the fig tree represents.’ Genesis 3 pegs it as man’s attempt to cover up before God. There’s the religious life. By the way, that’s exactly what God did. He cursed the religious life of Israel and the Mosaic covenant and the religion that Israel got through it will never bear fruit. God set it aside.
“The budding of the fig tree DOES have to with the Judaic system, the sacrificial system, the temple worship, being reestablished. Well in II Thessalonians 2, what does it say the Antichrist is going to do? He’s going to rebuild the temple and sit in it, declaring himself to be God. Reinstitute the daily sacrifice (Daniel 9:27).
“So with the Antichrist they’re going to reinstitute the Mosaic system. When you see that temple rebuilt, and that system set back up, that generation is going to see the Second Advent of Christ. It’s got nothing to do with the national life of Israel. Israel as a nation, in the Bible, is represented by the vine tree.
****
Psalm 80, a psalm about the Lord coming again, says, in part, 8] Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it.
[9] Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land.
[10] The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.
[11] She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.
[12] Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?”
Isaiah 5:2 says, “And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.”
Jordan says, “Notice it says wild grapes. You plant a choice vine, what kind of grapes do you want to get off it? Choice grapes, premium grapes, A-grade. What happened? It brought forth sour grapes. It brought forth wild grapes. It acted like it never did anything for it after it did all that.
“The passage in Isaiah 5 goes on, ‘And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
[6] And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.
[7] For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry.’
“So what is the vineyard to the Lord? It’s a figure describing the nation Israel that He planted in the land and then blessed and did all these things for. The vine tree is looking at Israel in its life as a nation among the nations of the earth.
“And you see here in the passage God blessed them, put a hedge of protection around them out of the nations as a separate nation and then blessed them and then what’d they do? Instead of appreciating it and responding in faith, they corrupted it.
“Jeremiah 2:21 says, ‘Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?’
"You get the idea. They’ve become a degenerated plant of a strange vine. Now you’re back in Deut. 32 (‘Their vine’s not our vine, their rock’s not our rock). They failed spiritually, which corrupted them.
“I just want you to see this vine terminology is something that when Jesus said, ‘I’m the true vine,’ they knew exactly what He was talking about. This is not something He just sucked out of the end of His thumb. This is scriptural terminology that these apostles (in the gospel of John) would have understood instantly.
“Hosea 10:1: ‘Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: according to the multitude of his fruit he hath increased the altars; according to the goodness of his land they have made goodly images.’
“What’s happened? They’ve degenerated, they’ve failed; they’ve become empty. They have no fruit that God can accept.
“So when you come to John 15, Jesus, having brought them into an understanding of what’s coming for them, taught them in John 14 about the new covenant ministry they’re going to have when they’re in Him and the new relationship the Holy Spirit’s going to give them, He’s reminding them that, ‘When you’re in me and the Holy Spirit comes and the new covenant is inaugurated, I’m the true vine. The one you’re going to be in is the real true Israel.’ ”
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Opportunity lost
If it ain’t one thing it’s another. Over the holiday in Ohio my car was diagnosed with a warped head gasket. Now a big decision must be made—trade it in and lose a ton on it, sell it privately or get it fixed.
For the time being I have decided to get the catalytic converter replaced so that I can pass the emissions test and not stick out like a sore thumb in this new year with a license-plate sticker now expired and not even the same color as this year's.
Fortunately I’ve got an appointment with a trustworthy garage tomorrow here in my neighborhood, but with my car in the shop, I’m stuck here at the elderly house once again on a church night.
At least when I’m legal again I won’t have to dodge Chicago cops (which seem to come out of the woodwork when you’re trying to avoid them), stressed out that they’re suddenly going to wind up directly behind me at a stop light and immediately see my sticker is 2011’s green and not 2012’s yellow.
*****
Here’s the rest of that passage from Jordan’s New Year’s Day evening service focused on the punishment awaiting lost people:
“The passage (in II Thess. 2) says, ‘In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
[9] Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
[10] When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.’
“You’re going to have complete total ruin and you’re going to be separated from the Lord. We talk about the ‘lake of fire’ and how God’s got a place for the darkness and He’s already got it all pre-planned, but the real horror is that any possibility of having a relationship with the Creator is completely gone.
“That’s why he says ‘from the presence of the Lord.’ That’s the actual person of God. Any relationship is completely severed. When he says ‘the glory of his power,’ he’s talking about this glorious display of all that God’s doing. That’s what’s going to be taking place in the universe out of which a person has been cast into the lake of fire. And that’s what he’s going to go on to describe in verse 10.
“They’re going to be able to look at His saints, and that’s whether it’s Israel or the Body of Christ, and they’re going to see the glorious manifestation of His ultimate wisdom and admire. When you admire somebody you just look at the them and say, ‘Wow!’ and you just marvel at them.
“That verse we use on Christmas cards: ‘His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor.’ I’ve often thought about that word ‘wonderful.’ A wonder is just something that you marvel at. It’s spectacular. Marvelous. Stupendous. It’s WONDERFUL!
“Now you can read that verse two ways. You can says He’s going to be admired in all them that believe BECAUSE you believe God’s Word and God’s Word working in you is going to be admired, or you can say He’s going to be admired in all them that believe and that’s going to include you because you believe too.”
“When Christ comes He’s going to put down the enemy, get rid of everything that offends, and then He’s going to be the one who’s exalted and He’s going to fill this universe with His glory and we’re going to be a part of that, and that’s what lost people are going to be separated from. Never have the opportunity to have a relationship with the God of creation, the Creator, and never be able to marvel in the riches of His glory that He manifests in His redemption and His reconciliation of all things back to Himself in the universe.
“That’s what the people who get destroyed, the lost people, lose out on being a part of.”
For the time being I have decided to get the catalytic converter replaced so that I can pass the emissions test and not stick out like a sore thumb in this new year with a license-plate sticker now expired and not even the same color as this year's.
Fortunately I’ve got an appointment with a trustworthy garage tomorrow here in my neighborhood, but with my car in the shop, I’m stuck here at the elderly house once again on a church night.
At least when I’m legal again I won’t have to dodge Chicago cops (which seem to come out of the woodwork when you’re trying to avoid them), stressed out that they’re suddenly going to wind up directly behind me at a stop light and immediately see my sticker is 2011’s green and not 2012’s yellow.
*****
Here’s the rest of that passage from Jordan’s New Year’s Day evening service focused on the punishment awaiting lost people:
“The passage (in II Thess. 2) says, ‘In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
[9] Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
[10] When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.’
“You’re going to have complete total ruin and you’re going to be separated from the Lord. We talk about the ‘lake of fire’ and how God’s got a place for the darkness and He’s already got it all pre-planned, but the real horror is that any possibility of having a relationship with the Creator is completely gone.
“That’s why he says ‘from the presence of the Lord.’ That’s the actual person of God. Any relationship is completely severed. When he says ‘the glory of his power,’ he’s talking about this glorious display of all that God’s doing. That’s what’s going to be taking place in the universe out of which a person has been cast into the lake of fire. And that’s what he’s going to go on to describe in verse 10.
“They’re going to be able to look at His saints, and that’s whether it’s Israel or the Body of Christ, and they’re going to see the glorious manifestation of His ultimate wisdom and admire. When you admire somebody you just look at the them and say, ‘Wow!’ and you just marvel at them.
“That verse we use on Christmas cards: ‘His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor.’ I’ve often thought about that word ‘wonderful.’ A wonder is just something that you marvel at. It’s spectacular. Marvelous. Stupendous. It’s WONDERFUL!
“Now you can read that verse two ways. You can says He’s going to be admired in all them that believe BECAUSE you believe God’s Word and God’s Word working in you is going to be admired, or you can say He’s going to be admired in all them that believe and that’s going to include you because you believe too.”
“When Christ comes He’s going to put down the enemy, get rid of everything that offends, and then He’s going to be the one who’s exalted and He’s going to fill this universe with His glory and we’re going to be a part of that, and that’s what lost people are going to be separated from. Never have the opportunity to have a relationship with the God of creation, the Creator, and never be able to marvel in the riches of His glory that He manifests in His redemption and His reconciliation of all things back to Himself in the universe.
“That’s what the people who get destroyed, the lost people, lose out on being a part of.”
Monday, January 2, 2012
Working forward
Over the years, friends have been surprised to learn I’ve never read the Bible from cover to cover. I will say I have LISTENED to the entire Bible multiple times, read by Alexander Scourby on cassette tapes.
When I first quit my job in Manhattan I never left the house without my Walkman piping Scourby. Hundreds of hours were logged walking streets and parks (not to mention lying on the beach at Coney Island and Long Beach, Long Island), taking the subways and flying home to Ohio and other locales with the Bible in my ears. I was addicted to the habit and it actually kept me exercising (and sunbathing) longer because I didn’t want to part with the particular passages I was hearing.
Today, Jan. 2, is my dad’s birthday (1924) and I’ve decided to commemorate it with a commitment to read through the Bible this year under a plan presented yesterday in Shorewood’s bulletin. That said, I’ve got until Saturday to reach Genesis 24.
For all my dad’s faults (and my mom presented me with more unsolicited stories at Christmas about his bad behavior, this time stuff that happened when I was a baby and toddler and he was still unsaved—none of it pretty and I don’t know how my mom put up with it!), he was a man of discipline who, according to my aunt, didn’t even date in high school because he wanted to ensure he won a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan.
Upon getting his degree in pre-med, he took a government exam in which only the top 3% of scorers nationally won full scholarships to attend med school in return for service in the military. In exchange, my dad was forced to graduate from an accelerated program at Emory University, a highly respected med school at the time, in order to serve in the Air Force, eventually in the Korean War as a surgeon.
At my father’s funeral, a colleague, a highly respected Indian surgeon, Dr. Kuttothara, said, among other very nice things, that my dad was “a very talented physician who was ahead of his time.” I know from growing up working part-time in his office (age 11-18) that he was a very dedicated professional, putting in some of the longest days you could imagine, all the while being on-call one week a month at the hospital.
What my dad always wanted from me was dedication to the Lord's work and he was someone who really did care about my God-given talent as a writer and very much desired for me to use it to promote the gospel.
So, in short, this is the year for me to finally “git-r-done,” and it’s only going to happen if I make the sacrifice and give up living for myself—fully and wholeheartedly. Studying God’s Word and applying His will to all that I do is the answer that WILL work. Happy birthday to me too!
When I first quit my job in Manhattan I never left the house without my Walkman piping Scourby. Hundreds of hours were logged walking streets and parks (not to mention lying on the beach at Coney Island and Long Beach, Long Island), taking the subways and flying home to Ohio and other locales with the Bible in my ears. I was addicted to the habit and it actually kept me exercising (and sunbathing) longer because I didn’t want to part with the particular passages I was hearing.
Today, Jan. 2, is my dad’s birthday (1924) and I’ve decided to commemorate it with a commitment to read through the Bible this year under a plan presented yesterday in Shorewood’s bulletin. That said, I’ve got until Saturday to reach Genesis 24.
For all my dad’s faults (and my mom presented me with more unsolicited stories at Christmas about his bad behavior, this time stuff that happened when I was a baby and toddler and he was still unsaved—none of it pretty and I don’t know how my mom put up with it!), he was a man of discipline who, according to my aunt, didn’t even date in high school because he wanted to ensure he won a scholarship to attend the University of Michigan.
Upon getting his degree in pre-med, he took a government exam in which only the top 3% of scorers nationally won full scholarships to attend med school in return for service in the military. In exchange, my dad was forced to graduate from an accelerated program at Emory University, a highly respected med school at the time, in order to serve in the Air Force, eventually in the Korean War as a surgeon.
At my father’s funeral, a colleague, a highly respected Indian surgeon, Dr. Kuttothara, said, among other very nice things, that my dad was “a very talented physician who was ahead of his time.” I know from growing up working part-time in his office (age 11-18) that he was a very dedicated professional, putting in some of the longest days you could imagine, all the while being on-call one week a month at the hospital.
What my dad always wanted from me was dedication to the Lord's work and he was someone who really did care about my God-given talent as a writer and very much desired for me to use it to promote the gospel.
So, in short, this is the year for me to finally “git-r-done,” and it’s only going to happen if I make the sacrifice and give up living for myself—fully and wholeheartedly. Studying God’s Word and applying His will to all that I do is the answer that WILL work. Happy birthday to me too!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
An inward understanding
Tonight at church, Jordan recalled an old saying: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
He explains, “The idea is you always need to keep some people in your life who are ahead of you. The way to become a leader in any area of life is to become a follower. Look around for somebody and find, ‘Where can they be my leader?’
“You’re teaching them how to be a follower by following their lead. When it comes time for your area of leadership, you know what they’ll all do? They’ll follow you.
“Leadership is not something you demand or something you command from people; it’s something you earn by demonstrating largely how it is to be a follower. And let them be responsible. You’ve heard me say for 30 years, ‘I don’t care who makes the decisions as long as they’re responsible for them.’ ”
“When you’re in an assembly of people, there are some people you can be their leader and there are people you can be a follower of and teach them to be a leader. It’s that ‘body life’; every part supplies to the good of the whole.
“You wouldn’t want everybody to be right at the same level all the time because then there could never be any real growth unless you had just one person out there ahead of everybody who becomes functionally the pope for the group and that’s not a good thing.”
*****
What the Book of the Revelation is all about is the revelation of Jesus Christ that God the Father gave to Him from heaven with His mighty angels.
Jordan says, “It’s a fascinating thing: there are no genuine atheists. Romans 1:18-19. Notice they’re not holding the truth in a manner in which to believe it and to enhance it. They’re holding the truth in unrighteousness. These are not people who are going to deal honestly with truth; they’re going to pervert it.
“God built you in such a way that you know there’s a God. He manifested that. God has put in His creation a knowledge, an inward understanding that there’s a personal, individual relationship that you were designed to have with your Creator. It’s witnessed by creation out here; the things that are seen evidence that to the point that men are without excuse.
“They know two things: they know there’s a God (His eternal power and His godhead) and they know they’re going to face Him in judgment and they’re without excuse. There’s no person who reaches the age of personal accountability for himself who doesn’t know that because God put that there and that’s what the age of accountability is all about. It’s coming to that realization and that consciousness.
“As Psalm 14 says it, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.' How’d he get there? He didn’t start out there. He didn’t start out as someone who didn’t believe in God.
“Richard Dawkins, for example, talks about how he gave up on the idea of God. He knew there was a God but there was some things that happened that he got mad at God, and rather than glorifying Him as God and being thankful to Him, he became vain in his imaginations and he talks about that in Ben Stein's documentary!
“Dawkins didn't know it but what he was doing in Ben Stein’s movie, when he talked about giving up on God and developing this rational alibi system to not believe in God, he was describing what Paul two thousand years ago wrote as a biography of the guy! You say, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty good!’
“So when you come over to II Thessalonians where it says God’s going to ‘take vengeance on them who know not God,’ this isn’t people who never could of possibly heard, known or didn’t know anything about it, sitting off in a dark closet with the light off and had no hope of ever knowing about God. These are people who have willfully kept themselves completely ignorant. They had a knowledge and they rejected it.
“There’s often the question, ‘What about people who don’t know?’ I remember back in the ‘70s I was out knocking on doors, trying to share the gospel with people, when a postman came up to me and asked, ‘What about the heathen who don’t know? Where do they go?’
“People think about ‘the heathen’ as being off in the darkest Brazil, or Africa, or the remote rain forest somewhere. You rub shoulders with the heathen right down at Walgreens and Sears. You don’t know what they know.
“In Moody’s science films they’ve got a great old movie where they trace some of these tribal regions in Africa that, when Europeans came in contact with them in the 17 and 1800s, they were in dark savagery and Moody went back and traced the lineage of some of these tribes into more ancient times and discovered that these people a thousand years before had light and knowledge; they had associations with truth but they rejected it!
“What happens with light rejected is it becomes lightning and so you don’t know where those people have been because you haven’t been there. You aren’t God and you aren’t accountable for them. But you know how they got there—by holding the truth (the truth God put within them) in unrighteousness.
“The Scripture’s real clear in Romans 2 that if you walk in the light you have, no matter how dim the light is, it will give you light.”
He explains, “The idea is you always need to keep some people in your life who are ahead of you. The way to become a leader in any area of life is to become a follower. Look around for somebody and find, ‘Where can they be my leader?’
“You’re teaching them how to be a follower by following their lead. When it comes time for your area of leadership, you know what they’ll all do? They’ll follow you.
“Leadership is not something you demand or something you command from people; it’s something you earn by demonstrating largely how it is to be a follower. And let them be responsible. You’ve heard me say for 30 years, ‘I don’t care who makes the decisions as long as they’re responsible for them.’ ”
“When you’re in an assembly of people, there are some people you can be their leader and there are people you can be a follower of and teach them to be a leader. It’s that ‘body life’; every part supplies to the good of the whole.
“You wouldn’t want everybody to be right at the same level all the time because then there could never be any real growth unless you had just one person out there ahead of everybody who becomes functionally the pope for the group and that’s not a good thing.”
*****
What the Book of the Revelation is all about is the revelation of Jesus Christ that God the Father gave to Him from heaven with His mighty angels.
Jordan says, “It’s a fascinating thing: there are no genuine atheists. Romans 1:18-19. Notice they’re not holding the truth in a manner in which to believe it and to enhance it. They’re holding the truth in unrighteousness. These are not people who are going to deal honestly with truth; they’re going to pervert it.
“God built you in such a way that you know there’s a God. He manifested that. God has put in His creation a knowledge, an inward understanding that there’s a personal, individual relationship that you were designed to have with your Creator. It’s witnessed by creation out here; the things that are seen evidence that to the point that men are without excuse.
“They know two things: they know there’s a God (His eternal power and His godhead) and they know they’re going to face Him in judgment and they’re without excuse. There’s no person who reaches the age of personal accountability for himself who doesn’t know that because God put that there and that’s what the age of accountability is all about. It’s coming to that realization and that consciousness.
“As Psalm 14 says it, ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.' How’d he get there? He didn’t start out there. He didn’t start out as someone who didn’t believe in God.
“Richard Dawkins, for example, talks about how he gave up on the idea of God. He knew there was a God but there was some things that happened that he got mad at God, and rather than glorifying Him as God and being thankful to Him, he became vain in his imaginations and he talks about that in Ben Stein's documentary!
“Dawkins didn't know it but what he was doing in Ben Stein’s movie, when he talked about giving up on God and developing this rational alibi system to not believe in God, he was describing what Paul two thousand years ago wrote as a biography of the guy! You say, ‘Whoa, that’s pretty good!’
“So when you come over to II Thessalonians where it says God’s going to ‘take vengeance on them who know not God,’ this isn’t people who never could of possibly heard, known or didn’t know anything about it, sitting off in a dark closet with the light off and had no hope of ever knowing about God. These are people who have willfully kept themselves completely ignorant. They had a knowledge and they rejected it.
“There’s often the question, ‘What about people who don’t know?’ I remember back in the ‘70s I was out knocking on doors, trying to share the gospel with people, when a postman came up to me and asked, ‘What about the heathen who don’t know? Where do they go?’
“People think about ‘the heathen’ as being off in the darkest Brazil, or Africa, or the remote rain forest somewhere. You rub shoulders with the heathen right down at Walgreens and Sears. You don’t know what they know.
“In Moody’s science films they’ve got a great old movie where they trace some of these tribal regions in Africa that, when Europeans came in contact with them in the 17 and 1800s, they were in dark savagery and Moody went back and traced the lineage of some of these tribes into more ancient times and discovered that these people a thousand years before had light and knowledge; they had associations with truth but they rejected it!
“What happens with light rejected is it becomes lightning and so you don’t know where those people have been because you haven’t been there. You aren’t God and you aren’t accountable for them. But you know how they got there—by holding the truth (the truth God put within them) in unrighteousness.
“The Scripture’s real clear in Romans 2 that if you walk in the light you have, no matter how dim the light is, it will give you light.”
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