The character of THAT tribe

In Judges 18, the children of the tribe of Dan show up, “And the priest said unto them, Go in peace: before the LORD is your way wherein ye go.”

Jordan explains, “You know, one of the major marks of this crowd is they’re always talking about peace. ‘Go in peace, my brother.’ ‘Go in peace, my son.’ That’s a hallmark of their message and the Danites say, ‘Why don’t you come and be a priest and a father to us?’

“They’re saying, ‘Hey man, we’ll give you a bigger parish. We’ll give you a bigger congregation. We’ll get you out of that little small church there and you can head up the whole tribe.’

“Now right here is where Baal worship got its foothold in Israel. Micah’s just got his family, but now the whole tribe of Dan is going to be converted to Baal worship.

“Verse 20: ‘And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod, and the teraphim, and the graven image, and went in the midst of the people.
[21] So they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the cattle and the carriage before them.’

“He takes all this religious paraphernalia that he’s using to worship God and packs off with the other guy. Verse 23: ‘And they cried unto the children of Dan. And they turned their faces, and said unto Micah, What aileth thee, that thou comest with such a company?
[24] And he said, Ye have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more? and what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee? Ye have taken away my gods.’

*****

“Now that’s what happens when your religion is made up of all that external nonsense. When you lose your priest, your idols, your ephod--all this external paraphernalia . . . He says, ‘What do you mean, what ails me?! I don’t have anything left!’

“That’s a great insight into the psyche of people who get caught into this. One of the reasons they hang on to it is because it’s all they’ve got. And you can’t take something away from somebody unless you give them something better in its place.

“That’s why the gospel . . . Thessalonians says they ‘turned to God from idols.’ Not that they turned from idols to God, they turned to God, and when they did, they left the idols.

*****

“Deuteronomy 33:22 is going to match what Jacob said about Dan back in Genesis 49 when he gave those prophecies on the twelve boys. There are various places in your Bible where people give prophetic utterances (statements) about different people. Jacob does it in Genesis 49 about the tribes, the boys.

“In each one of them you’ll see, ‘This is the character of that tribe that comes from that boy.’ Here’s Moses’ assessment: ‘And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan.’

“A whelp is the offspring. Who is the lion? Well, the lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lord Jesus Christ but this is going to be the lion of the tribe of Dan. Well, who’s the counterfeit lion in the Bible? I Peter 5:8. It’s Satan--going around as a ‘roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’

*****

“That place Bashan is important. Psalm 22. Matt. 27. By the way, there’s no way to understand this stuff if you don’t study all of the Bible. I mean, I tried to use Revelation 17 and Judges 17 because those passages kind of crystallize it. There are three to four other chapters we could have used. But out of them you run all these other places.

“If you don’t understand the rest of Scripture when you read the thing about an ephod, you don’t make the connection between the robes and the long robes and by the way, in II Kings 10, you know what those long robes are called? Vestments. Jehu gathers the Baalite priests into the house of Baal and he gives them their vestments.

“You go into these churches and the lobby out front, you know what you call that? The vestibule. You call it that because that’s where the priests vestments were kept.

“I mean, everything you don’t understand that’s going on out there in the world, if you stay long enough you’ll find the answer to it in Scripture.

“You’ll never understand the real enemy if all you study is Romans through Philemon. If you study those books it becomes very obvious that Paul understood this stuff and expected us to understand it.

*****

“Matt. 27:36. All around that Cross, the only friends Christ had there were Mary and Mary and John; everybody else forsook Him. And the crowd around that Cross mocked Him. He identifies them as the ‘bulls of Bashan.’ In other words, they were carrying out this system right here and they were personified by Israel’s religious leaders. That’s why He told them in John 8, ‘You are of your father the devil.’

“Jeremiah 14:17 and Psalm 16. Here’s what their worship service centers around. Their worship is going to be focused in incense, drink offerings . . . The drink offering is going to be in that golden cup and that golden cup is going to be filled with wine. Rev. 16:4.

“Deuteronomy 32 talks about the ‘pure blood of the grape,’ and these guys when they consecrate that wine, what do they say happens to it? It turns back into blood.

“That’s why in Revelation 17 he calls it ‘MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT.’ When he says ‘mystery,’ he means superstitious mystery religions.

*****

“In I Kings 16, Ahab and Jezebel make Baal worship the official state religion. They go out and rebuild Jericho, a cursed city, and Babylon, a cursed city. And Israel never recovers from that.

“Go to Exodus 32 where they start worshipping the calf. When Moses came down off the mountain, Joshua says there’s the noise of war. Moses says, ‘No, it’s not the noise of war. It’s the noise of people dancing.’ And when he got down there, Exodus 32 says the people were naked. They were dancing naked to music.

“Where did they learn music from? They’re only a couple of days out of Egypt. Egypt in the Bible is a type of the world.

“You hear Christians talk about contemporary Christian music, but it’s just the world’s music and it makes you dance.

“There’s three parts to the language of music—the melody, the harmony and the rhythm. The melody is designed to carry the lyrics. Harmony is designed to bring harmony. When you have two more notes played, they have to be harmonious. It’s designed to make you feel; touch your soul.

“The rhythm is designed to keep it all together. Everybody’s hitting the same note at the same time. The rhythm is designed to make you take action.

“What do you need when you dance? You need the rhythm. My grandson is in the drum line. He says, ‘Grandpa, we control the whole band.’ Why? They can’t even hear it but they can feel it.

“Rev. 2:14. The first time the name Baal appears in your Bible as a stand-alone name not associated with a location is with Baalam back in Numbers 22-24. Baalam was a prophet from the east and Jezebel, she’s a woman preacher. You see the religion’s all in this stuff!

“Revelation 2:20 says, ‘Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.’

“Their worship ends in immorality. That’s what they were doing back in Exodus 32. All of this stuff ends in nothing but an open display and satisfaction of the flesh.

*****

“The thing that holds lost people in the satanic grip is that it all works to enhance the desires of your flesh, and of your mind, and to bind you by that. This religious system ends in that.

“It’s fascinating that both John and the Apostle Paul have the same conclusion about both of these things. In Revelation 18:4 is the prophetic orders.

“What’s Israel to do? Come out! Don’t be a partaker with her! But what was Israel? Joined to idols. Any time you see any of this stuff, run like a scalded dog in the other direction.

“Paul says in I Corinthians 6:15, ‘Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.’

“MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT is the ‘mother of harlots.’ She’s the source of the harlots. You know what the Corinthians are doing? They’re eating things sacrificed to idols.

“I Corinthians 10:20-21 says, ‘But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
[21] Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.’

“Where would you find the table of devils? Don’t you offer cake and drinks and all that stuff around a table?

“Notice what Paul says in verse 14: ‘Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.’ You know what it means to flee? There are just certain things in your life you need to run from. Not just stay away from them; GET away from them!

“And that religious system—it doesn’t all have to get itself in. it just gets its nose under the tent like it did in Judges 17. That started out with that boy’s mama giving him some money to go make him an idol with—and it grew.

“When Paul says in II Corinthians 6:17, ‘Come out from among them and be ye separate,’ that’s what he’s talking about.

“When he says, ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,’ he’s not talking about, ‘Don’t marry some unsaved person.’ He tells you that in I Corinthians 7. In II Corinthians 6, he’s talking about this thing here! Don’t have fellowship with it! Don’t have communion with it! Don’t have concord with it! Get away from it!”