Adoption process

When you read about the law in the Bible, you’re reading about the ultimate form of religion.

“The only religion God ever gave, He gave to the nation Israel through Moses, and every other religion is manmade and it’s a step down,” says Jordan.

“I read in the newspaper recently about how in Great Britain they’re going to take all pork products out of the subway systems’ restaurants because the Muslims have become such a force there and they are highly offended by the presence of pork.

“You know where they got that from? Moses. They hate Moses and they hate Israel and you say, ‘Wait a minute, if you hate Judaism and you hate the Jew, why are you doing what you got from their program?!’ That’s where Mohammed got that; he didn’t dream that up.

“Religion is just all this stuff. You can see the humor in the connections and the blindness of people doing that kind of thing. Religion is that way.

“Paul’s saying, when you move out of just being under the law and that thing about ‘tutors and governors,’ well, that’s what people use the law and religion for: ‘Tell me what God wants me to do and I’ll do it. Tell me what I shouldn’t do and I won’t.’

“Now, how good does that work? It doesn’t work at all. Galatians 3:10 says, ‘For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’

*****

“I get asked this question at least twice a month: ‘Don’t you think you ought to keep the Ten Commandments?’

“Well, sure you should. The question is, ‘How you doing with that?’ Somebody counted them one time and said there are 613 specific commandments in the Mosaic Law.  You thought there were just ten.

“James says, ‘If you offend in one point you’re guilty of all.’ You see, the problem with the law is the law demands absolute perfection. If you lived the rest of your life perfect and never made another mistake, you couldn’t take care of your past because your past is already screwed up.

“The law’s not going to be an answer for you, because the law’s going to do what it’s designed to do. Paul says, ‘By the law is the knowledge of sin.’

“You can look around the room and say, ‘I’m better than that person,’ but keep looking and you’ll find somebody better than you. That’s why in II Corinthians 10, Paul says, ‘For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.’

“You compare yourself to the glory of God and you know, ‘Cut off my legs and call me shorty! I don’t make it.' That’s what the law does.

“The danger of mixing law and grace . . . you know that verse in Romans 11:6 where Paul says, ‘And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.’

*****

“When you mix law and grace, you destroy both of them. When you mix grace with the law, you weaken the law and the law is no longer that absolute, complete, inflexible standard of righteousness. 

"You wind up making it a rule; a bunch of precepts and rules to follow to give you some ethical guidance in life and you weaken the law when you mix grace with it.

“When you mix law with grace, you harden grace. Grace is the absolute free gift God gives you; you don’t deserve it but you need it and He gives it to you because He bought it and paid for it and lavishes it upon you. Like Paul says in Romans 5: 20, ‘But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’

“People say, ‘No, don’t say that because people will just go out and live in sin!’ You say, ‘We can’t have that, so let’s put a little more law in there,’ and you know what you do? You make grace hard; you harden it. Instead of it being this lavish thing that’s inexhaustibly expended upon people . . .

“Think about God’s inexhaustible grace offered to an exhausted world. But then you say, ‘Wait a minute; you can have it IF . . .’ and you start making little caveats: ‘If you don’t do this and you don’t do that. Or if you do this but you don’t do that.’

*****

“One of the things to understand is the different operating systems God’s put you under and they are diametrically different, designed to be different.

“Paul says what happens to us is there comes a point in time when God deals with children where He says, ‘I’m going to move you from law to adulthood. Take you out from under the 'tutors and governors' of the law and treat you like an adult.’

“When he moves you to being treated like an adult, that’s what He calls grace. That movement from law to grace, in the passage (Gal. 4:4), is called adoption. Galatians 4:6 says, ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’

“The adoption of sons is to be placed into the position before God of being able to cry, ‘Abba, Father!’, talking to your father in a personal, intimate way.

“A child can know what his daddy’s doing because his dad tells him. A child can go out and work with his dad in the field or the business, because his dad teaches him and he’s watching over him making him do it. But when he becomes an adult, and here’s when a dad understands something about his child being ready to be an adult . . .

“By the way, the responsibility of a dad to his child is not just to tell them him what to do, thinking that when they get older, ‘They’ll do what I told them to do,’ but it’s to train them.

“It’s to understand that child so well that you understand who they are, how they think and how they function and to give them a sense of their identity in Christ so that that identity is what lives in them.

“Knowing your child that well you come to the place where you know when they come to that transition. It’s the father’s responsibility to say when they reach that and have that Galatians 5:4 conversation.

*****

Jeremiah 9:24 says, ‘But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD.’

“You know what He’s saying? ‘If you want to really have something to glory in, glory in the fact that you know me; you understand me--who I am and what I delight in.’

“By that verse write down Psalm 40. It’s a psalm about the Lord Jesus Christ, quoted in Hebrews 10. In Hebrews 10, Jesus Christ is quoted talking to His Father, ‘I’ve come to do thy will, O God.’

“In Psalm 40, He says, ‘I delight to do thy will, O God.’ When Jesus said ‘I come to do thy will,’ He didn’t just say, ‘I know what you want me to do and I’m gonna go do it.’

“He said, ‘Father, I understand what you’re doing and I’m on board 100 percent. What your joy is is the joy of my heart and I delight in what you delight in and I think about it the way you think about it.’

“One of the greatest things that illustrates a son . . . the adult son does voluntarily that which he formerly did out of fear and compulsion because now he understands what delights the father.

"But he isn’t doing it just because it delights the father; he’s doing it because it delights his heart too, and it’s that internal motivation that comes because his heart and thinking matches the thinking of the father, and the mind of Christ literally becomes your thinking, and what delights Him delights you. That’s being an adult in the family. That’s what adoption is about.”

Miraculous wonderings

Mark Twain is quoted as having written his daughter Clara, “More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the father; He is always longing for the love of His children and trying to get it on the cheapest and laziest terms He can invent.”

 

While atheists love to claim Twain as one of their own, anybody who studies the life of America’s most famous satirist knows he wasn’t someone who didn’t believe in God; he was someone who DESPISED God and laid into Him on anything and everything.

*****

Jordan recalls watching a special on C-SPAN set in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Mo., and hosted by humorist and Twain aficionado, Roy Blunt:

“Somebody called in and asked the question, ‘What did Twain believe about God and what was his relationship to religion?’ Well, the answer the historian gave was that he was an atheist who hated religion, but Roy said, ‘Well, I don’t know if it’s really accurate to call him an atheist because he was always arguing with God, and if you don’t believe there’s a God, why are you always arguing with Him?’

“Roy said, ‘Twain believed in God, he just believed God was a mean, nasty, wicked guy because he’d see all the suffering in the world and Twain thought, If you can be God and let all that suffering go on—and you could stop it—you’re a mean, nasty guy.’ ”

“You heard that before? That’s a common thing. What are they saying? ‘Show us a miracle! Stop all that evil and suffering and I’ll believe in you!’

*****

“Christians are always looking for some miraculous demonstration from God in their life to prove His love for them, but interest in miracles is not a sign of spiritual maturity, or spirituality, or even spiritual interest, because miracles are physical and you can look at the miracle and not get ANYTHING spiritual out of it.

“Listen to me, in the Bible, the overall impact of miracles is not to cause people to believe—it’s to cause them NOT to believe.

“Now, it shouldn’t be that way. The miracle was designed to confirm the word that God gave them to be believed. Believe it, it’s confirmed.

“But what happens in the Scripture, from the beginning all the way to the end, when you see people exposed to miraculous events to the suspending of natural and supernatural laws, instead of it engendering and sparking faith, invariably it sparks unbelief, and when it does spark faith, it does it in a way that the faith is never sustained for a long period of time.

*****

“Did you know there were three cities where Jesus did the great majority of His miracles?

“We read about them in Matthew 11: [20] Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
[21] Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
[22] But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
[23] And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
[24] But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

“Now, why did he upbraid them? Here’s the people who saw the majority of His miracles. John 12:37 says, ‘But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him.’

“My point to you is, these guys back here, they saw the feeding of the 5,000, and all they saw was the physical. The physical doesn’t engender faith. It hampers it and it’s that way all through Scripture.

“Immediately you say, ‘Well, why is that?’ Well, let me ask you something. When you’re wrong about something, do you like somebody just to stick it in your face that you’re wrong? Nag, nag, nag.

“Do you want somebody to stick you with the truth and just keep pounding you with it? No, you don’t. When your old sin nature’s wrong, it doesn’t want the truth just stuck in its face over and over and over again.

*****

"Paul writes in Romans 1: ‘Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
[20] For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
[21] Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.’

“You can argue about it, philosophize about it, do all the mental gymnastics you want to, but the fact is everybody knows there’s a God and they’re going to face Him in judgment. They know His eternal power and His godhead. They’re without excuse. Verse 25 says, ‘Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.’

“You see what unsaved man, a lost man, your old sin nature does? It says, ‘I want to be God.’ Now what does a miracle do? It sticks it in your face that God’s God.

“I’ve said for years to people, ‘You want to be God? Go step out onto the street, create you a universe, step in it and you can be God.’ How you doing with that? It don’t work so well.

“You see, that’s what we do. We try to create our own little world so we can be God.

“There’s that old story about how God and Satan got to arguing about making man and who could do a better job. They flipped a coin and Satan won and he reached down and got a little handful of dirt and God said, ‘Wait a minute, guy. Get your own dirt.’

*****

“Hebrews 11:6 says, ‘But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’

“Faith for Israel had two steps in it. They had to believe that He’s God and that there’s a benefit for them in submitting to Him. What the miracle demonstrated was the benefit.

“The reason God gave Israel physical deliverances and healings and such was because that was part of Israel’s blessing package. So the miracle demonstrates the benefit of believing. But first they had to believe that He is; they had to believe Him.

“Abraham believed God and that He would confirm His word with the sign following. A miracle is a help AFTER you believe; it comes along and confirms what you believe.

“You got to get this order. You believe, then the confirmation. But if you just have the confirmation, the miracle takes OUT the believing. It takes believing there’s a God out of the realm of faith and puts it in the, ‘He just stuck it in my face; I can’t . . . ’ I mean, when you watch somebody feed 5,000 people, cleanse a leper, raise someone from the dead, you really can’t question whether that’s God or not.

“It’s not a matter of, as I Peter 1 says, 'Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’

“There it is. That’s why they miss the purpose. When they miss the purpose of the miracle, what did it demonstrate? It demonstrated that they didn’t believe.

“Psalms 27:13 is a verse where King David wrote . . . he says, ‘I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.’

“The goodness of the Lord he saw were all these miracles He saw God do, delivering Israel and providing for Israel. He said, ‘I would have fainted if I had not believed to see.’

“There’s the two systems: Seeing is believing and then there’s believing to see. God says, ‘To please me it has to be faith. It has to be believing to see.’ "

Context is king

John 6:29 says, “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”

“I read this passage and I think, ‘What makes people get this verse so mixed up?' " says Jordan. "I’ve watched great, brilliant, well-educated, highly-motivated theologians and Bible teachers take that verse and do what I just said.

“There are two problems. One is they ignore the comma in verse 29, because if you don’t pay attention to the comma, you read the verse wrong. Two, they ignore the context in which the verse is found. Consequently, they don’t know how to define the terms in the verse.

*****

“In chapter 20, John makes an editorial comment about what he’s doing. John 20:30 says, ‘And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.’

“Jesus did many miracles that John doesn’t record. The next verse says, ‘Believing you might have life through his name.’ In other words, the Book of John is a compilation of a series of miracles that Jesus did that confirm HHis claim to be ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

“There are miracles that are specifically selected out of His ministry, each one confirming the fact and the truth that He presents Himself as the Messiah. So the book is written around a series of miracles.

“In chapter 6, the miracle that starts the chapter is the feeding of the five thousand. Verse 10 says, ‘And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.’

“Notice it’s five thousand men. It’s not even counting the women and children that may have been there. Verse 14 says, ‘Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.’

“In other words, they see the miracle of the five thousand and they say, ‘This is the Messiah; this is that prophet like unto Moses.’ So you think they got what was going on here but keep reading.

“Verse 15 says, ‘When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.’

“They’re ready to make Him king. You would think they really got the issue of the miracle; that He’s the Messiah. So why does Jesus go away and hide?

“He doesn’t just depart into the mountain alone. It says, ‘And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea,
[17] And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. [18] And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.
[19] So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.
[20] But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid.
[21] Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.

“Now, that’s quite a miracle. Not only does Christ defy the elements by walking on the water, He defies space and time . . . they’re in the middle of the Sea of Galilee out here and He gets in the boat and immediately they’re on the other shore.

“So, there are these staggering miracles going on here. Well, in verse 22: ‘The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone.’

 “ ‘How’d you get over here?! Yesterday, you were on the other side, your disciples left. We know you didn’t go with them. There aren’t any boats left. There’s no cars, no transit, no Rent-a-Car. How’d you get over here ahead of us when you didn’t go with your disciples?!’

“They’re all perplexed about what’s going on. Here’s where it gets—the Lord’s going to talk to them in verse 26: ‘Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.’

“He goes right to the heart motive they had and He said, ‘You didn’t seek me because you saw a miracle and believed what God’s Word told you through it; you sought to make me king because I fed you. All you were interested in was the physical effect of the miracle. You weren’t concerned with the real underlying purpose of the miracle.’

*****

“Now, understand, God had been dealing with the nation Israel from its very beginning with miracles. You know that.

“John 4:48 says, ‘Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.’

“In I Corinthians 1:22, Paul told them, ‘The Jews require . . . not seek, not want, but REQUIRE. They won’t believe without it.’

“In the verse back in Psalm 74, they say, ‘We see not our signs.’ They belonged to Israel, and if they didn’t have them and see them, they were complaining. They wanted proof that God was speaking, that He was communicating, and He had worked with them with signs and miracles to confirm His Word to them, so they weren’t shocked that there was a miracle.

“It was something they expected to happen, and the purpose of the miracle Christ did should have been very clear to them. It was proof to Israel that He was the Messiah.

“But He said, ‘When you looked at the miracle, the issue wasn’t what the miracle was designed to teach you spiritually. You guys got fed and you figured out, Hey, we make this guy king and we can get fed.’

“He’s saying, ‘Don’t worry about satisfying your physical wants because it’s just a temporary thing. Your hunger’s going to return.’ Christ’s got some spiritual food that’s going to last forever and He wants to give it to them.

 “John 6: 28 says, ‘Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?' It's, 'We do (they want some merit) that we might.’

“When you get here, the question is, in the context, ‘What are the works of God that they want to do?’ Well, what was the work of God they just saw Him do? He fed the five thousand. They're saying, ‘What can we do that we might do miracles like you did?’

*****

"In John 9 is the story of the man blind from his birth.

“Now, in this blind man the works of God are going to be made manifest. What’s manifest in him? Jesus says to him in verse 7: ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.' The man 'went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.’ He got his sight.

“You go down in the passage and the Pharisees begin to question him about Jesus and all and asked, ‘Who did this to you?’ The guy says, and it’s one of the great testimonies in the Scripture, ‘I don’t know about all that stuff you want to argue about, but this one thing I know; I was blind and now I see.’

“You see, the work of God that was manifest in him was a miracle.

“John 10:32 says, ‘Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?’ Verse 38 says, ‘But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.’

“You can go all through the Book of John and He says, ‘Believe me for the work’s sake.’ Why? Because the works were miracles being done to demonstrate that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

“Now, in the context in John, they say, ‘What can we do to do the miracles of God? We want to do miracles like you do, Jesus!’

*****

“Come back to John 6:29 and let’s notice the comma now that we know the context: ‘Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.’

“The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand was the work of God, comma. It’s not a straight-through sentence; it’s a comma. What was the purpose of the miracle of feeding the five thousand? That you might believe on Him whom He sent.

“The miracle was to demonstrate that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God,’ and they got it because in verse 30 it says, ‘They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?
[31] Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’

“They understood that the work of God was the sign that He just did for them. So rather than ‘the work of God’ in the passage being God implanting faith in somebody, or rather than it being just a statement without a comma that says that faith is a work, what He’s saying to them is, ‘This is the work of God. This miracle over here, God did that, and He did it so that you would believe that I’m the Messiah.’

“If you miss that comma in there, and you just read it without the comma, you wind up not getting it.”

When you remember you're God's beloved . . .

J.C. O’Hair once wrote in a poem:

If we’re on the way to glory,

Joy should fill our soul;

‘Tis done by the Holy Spirit when

The Spirit has control.

There are burdens, trials, sorrows,

But God’s abounding grace,

He says, is all sufficient for

Every single case

 

In an old sermon, Jordan said, “I’ve been telling you for four decades, I don’t care how high you get in your understanding of truth and about what God’s going to do and how exciting it’s all going to be, the first step in ‘getting out of the closet’ is just believing in God’s love for you.

“The Book of Ephesians is full of this stuff. Ephesians 1:6: ‘To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.’

“You go out in the world today and there’s a cry to be accepted, to belong, to have a connection. People spend time, money, energy, resources to gain acceptance.

"You see young people giving their lives away—drugs, sex, etc.—because they want to be accepted; they want to be loved and valued and they’ll give away their future for the fulfillment of that.

"And you know what it is—it’s an illusion because it only lasts until, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ shows up.

*****

“There’s an acceptance that never goes away when God Himself accepts you; when He meets that need, that yearn, that drive, that thirst deep down in your heart and He accepts you.

"If no one else ever did, so what?! Who’s going to last the longest? Them or Him?! Whose opinion is going to be the one that really counts in the long run?

“I know how it is—you look at yourself and you say, ‘Who could accept me?!’ You know where God the Father finds you today if you’re saved? He doesn’t find you in a performance system where you’re living up to standards and pleasing Him because of it.

“He finds you in the one place in all the universe that He’s absolutely, sublimely pleased and that’s His Son. Whew! You can relax. All that tension, all that stuff the world, the flesh and the devil throws at you.

"You can say, ‘You know what, I’m enveloped in some ever-lasting arms of love, not because of what I do, but because I’m in Christ.’

“Satan knows that no temptation’s going to succeed in your life when you remember who you are; that you’re God’s beloved.

*****

“You remember what the name ‘David’ means? Beloved. It took a David to defeat a Goliath. It took David to destroy the giant. Listen, it takes someone who KNOWS that he’s God’s beloved to win the fights in life!

“When you understand that you’re God’s beloved, what that does is it makes you a victor no matter what the Adversary . . . no matter what the world, the system, the culture, the satanic drive and flow behind that culture; no matter how your old sin nature attacks, the answer and the victory is in being God’s beloved.

"One of the things the Holy Spirit prays through Paul who prays for you and me is Ephesians 3:18-19: 'That you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.’

“Notice that word ‘comprehend.’ God desires that you be able to get your mind around something and understand it.

“Colossians 1:27 says, ‘To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.’

“That’s what God wants you to know. What do you think the Adversary would want to hide from you?

"The devil doesn’t care if you pack a Bible and study it--just don’t comprehend out of that Bible what is the breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height, and to KNOW the love of Christ, which passeth all knowledge.

“Why does He want me to know? ‘That you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ You see, the goal is to get to know something that will result in God Himself controlling your life. Even the mundane things of life, every area of your life.

“Then you move into the places where there are real challenges and struggles. The injustices of life, the harshness of life, the things that happen just because you were a bonehead, and yet He says that in all of it, 'We’re more than conquerors through Him that LOVED us.'

*****

“I John 4:10 says, ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.’

“You know what love is? Love’s not going out there, saying, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ Love is what God did at Calvary when He paid for everything that’s wrong with you.

*****

“Under the law, God gave Israel a bunch of regulations about how to set things right when they were wrong and in Leviticus 27: 9-11 are rules about when something is lost and has to be replaced, how do you determine the replacement value of the thing.

“Verse 12 says, ‘And the priest shall value it, whether it be good or bad: as thou valuest it, who art the priest, so shall it be.’

“They bring the thing. They say, ‘Here’s where I’ve been damaged,’ and the priest sets the replacement value. The value that the priest placed on it, well, that’s what God says the value is.

"Who is our high priest? You remember Hebrews 10:10? The verse says, ‘By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

“You know what your high priest says? ‘Here’s the value, here’s the way I value it. I have by one offering . . .’

“You see, if God was waiting for you to be perfect, Jesus Christ would have stayed home. He came so that He could provide perfection for you. Now, if the priest values it that way, God says, ‘That’s the way it is!’ If God values it that way, what say ye?

“When you’re working along in life, trying to figure out how God thinks about things, that’s where you start thinking.”

Dancing with the Stars

There’s an old theological concept related to the Trinity called ‘the dance of deity.’

“It’s not talking about doing the ragtime, jitter bug or the Macarena; it’s talking about each member of the godhead working in harmony, flowing to the rhythm of what they’re doing together,” explains Jordan. “It’s an ancient idea that goes back to the early days of Christianity.”

“While there’s only one essence and being of deity, there are three people who possess that essence; that eternal, infinite essence of deity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. We give them those three titles because they are titles of relationships within the godhead.

“God wants you to understand that the way He lives is in relationship. He’s not a god sitting off on a stump by himself like Allah, who is isolated. You know, if someone is isolated or standoffish, you don’t know whether you can talk to them or not. You don’t know whether they want to talk to anybody or not.

“But if they come out and give you a glad hand and a smile and start talking to you . . . you ever get on an elevator with somebody?

“The godhead is not one individual sitting off over there and, by the way, if you’re isolated, you don’t have a lot of social skills necessarily to deal with other people.

“So when you recognize the idea of God the Holy Spirit being a part of that--Jesus is saying, ‘I’m going to receive this truth the Father gave me and I give to Him, and what He gives to you will be what He got from me, and what He got from me is what I got from the Father and we’re all working together in this.’

*****

“John 16:13 says, ‘Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.’

“First, understand the Holy Spirit is a person. Two, He’s God. He can do what only God can do. He can show you things to come. But as ‘the Spirit of truth,’ what is truth? Jesus says in the next chapter, ‘sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.’

“He’s the Spirit who’s going to write the word of truth and a part of what He does when He writes the word of truth, is show you things to come. What Jesus is doing here is He’s literally giving a pre-authorization for the writing of the New Testament.

*****

Regarding Israel’s false gods, God argues in Isaiah 41: 22-23, ‘Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
[23] Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.’

“He’s saying, ‘If you’re God, you can tell us things to come and be accurate about it.’ You see, that’s a characteristic of deity. Jesus takes that characteristic of ‘God alone’ and says, ‘You know, the Spirit of truth, when He comes, He’s going to do what only God can do.’

“Not only does that passage help you understand the Holy Spirit is a person, it helps you understand that the Holy Spirit is a divine person. He’s one of the members of the godhead.

“That’s why when Peter’s dealing with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, it says in verse 3-4, ‘But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?
[4] Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.’

“Who’d he say he lied to in verse 3? The Holy Spirit. The Apostle Peter is not averse to saying, ‘You lied to the Holy Spirit--why did you lie to God?’

“That’s because in the Scripture, he would have understood from John 14:13 (‘And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son’) that the Holy Spirit was one member of the godhead,  and that when he lied to the Spirit of God, he was lying to God Himself.

*****

“With this thing about the trinity, and each member of the godhead working together in harmony, there’s a great story about David and his ‘three mighty men,’ where the Scripture says they went as one; each member of the godhead working together.

“Each member of the godhead works together in the incarnation of Christ, and in the death of Christ and in the resurrection of Christ. All working in harmony. That’s the idea of the trinity.

“People sometime say the trinity is not found in the Old Testament and people say, ‘Well, He says ‘let US make man and so forth,’ and that’s an indication there’s somebody there that he’s talking to, but somebody else will say, ‘Well, but there’s other people around there than them and He just said, ‘Watch me do it.’ People gainsay those things.

*****

“Here’s a passage that really isn’t a gainsaying passage. Isaiah 48:16: ‘Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.’

“The one who’s talking is Jehovah. Verse 12 says, ‘Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.’

“In Revelation 1, when the Lord Jesus Christ identifies Himself as ‘The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,’ He’s referring back to a verse like this one in Isaiah.

“So the person who’s talking here is going to be God the Son, the second member of the godhead, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Isaiah 48:16 says, ‘Come ye near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.’

“Notice there are three people here. In a King James Bible, when you see the word ‘LORD’ in all uppercase letters (notice verse 17) what does that tell you? It’s the word ‘Jehovah.’ Behind the English word there is the Hebrew word ‘Jehovah.’

“When you see in verse 16 that GOD is in all caps, that’s what it’s telling you there too. So in verse 16 when it says GOD, that’s Jehovah, but when it said Lord (first cap and then lowercase), that word Lord there is Adonai Jehovah.

“Every time you see that construction of ‘Lord GOD’ with that kind of capitalization, that tells you that what the Hebrew text is saying is Adonai Jehovah. That is always God the Father.

“One of the identifying marks in your Bible, when you say Adonai Jehovah, you’re talking about the first person of the godhead.

“In verse 17, when it refers to LORD, all caps, that’s Jehovah Elohim. Most of the time the word ‘God’ is the translation of the word Elohim. So in verse 17 when it says, ‘LORD thy God,’ that will always be God the Son, the second person of the godhead. There they all three are right there.

*****

“Isaiah 61:1 says, ‘The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.’

“There’s God the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father, to anoint the Lord Jesus Christ. You see that in Matthew 3. God the Father speaks from heaven, the Holy Spirit comes down and anoints the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s the Son, the Spirit and the Father.

“If you go back to Genesis 2:4 (‘These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens’) who made the heaven and the earth? Jehovah Elohim, the Lord Jesus Christ. John 1:3 says, ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.’

“Look at Genesis 2:7: ‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’

“There’s verse 8, verse 16, verse 18. Who is it that’s creating Adam, dealing with Adam, educating Adam, communicating with Adam? Jesus Christ is the spokesman of the godhead! He’s the manifest person of the godhead.

“So when you come down to chapter 3:8 (‘And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden’) you see Adam, in the garden, literally had fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, the second member of the godhead.

“Jesus Christ is always the one—He’s the go-between, the mediator.

“Under the old covenant, with the Holy Spirit’s ministry, He would come, do things and go back home. They didn’t have a permanent ministry. There were many things He didn’t do. He didn’t regenerate people. He didn’t do a bunch of things, because those were new covenant ministry things. Now Jesus is talking to them about what He’s going to do with the new covenant and they’re going to kick the thing into high gear.

*****

“I John 5:7 says, ‘For  there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.’ This is the great Trinitarian verse in the Bible.

“Our congregation members, Nick and Helen, got kicked out of a ministry over this verse. They were going to a church on Chicago’s south side and they noticed that in their doctrinal statement, where they had a statement about God being a trinity, that it didn’t have that verse in it. So Nick asked the preacher why it wasn’t there, and the long and short of it was they got put out in the road.

“My point is, you need to watch doctrinal statements. When you pick up somebody’s doctrinal statement, and you look at the statement about God and about the trinity, you’ll be shocked how often this verse doesn’t appear. If you didn’t want to believe in the trinity, you wouldn’t want I John 5:7 in your bible because it pretty much ties the rag to the bush for you. That’s a verse people like to leave out.

“I John 5:7 is the clearest, most profound verse in Scripture about the trinity, but it’s left out of all the new bible versions. It exists in the Received Text. It’s in the bibles our ancestors have used and you can find it all the way back to the Sixth Century in versions and translations that people were using all over Europe and Africa. But the modern critical text leaves it out and so the folklore is it shouldn’t be there.”

BREAKdown on Antichrist's rise

Hosea 13:4 says, “Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.”

“That’s one of those great verses where Jehovah says, ‘I am thy Saviour; there’s no saviour but me,’ ” says Jordan. “That’s a great verse to give a Jehovah’s Witness, by the way. The Jehovah of the Old Testament, over and over and over, is the Jesus Christ of the New Testament.

“In Amos 3, He says, ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.’

“God had only one nation in the earth He held relationships with from Egypt on and that was Israel. 

“He continues in Hosea 13, ‘I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.
[6] According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.’

“Whatever they needed Him to be, that’s what He gave them and when they were filled, their heart was exalted. They thought the blessings and glory of the provisions from God were their own doing.

*****

“Ephraim says in Hosea 12:8, ‘Yet I am become rich, I have found me out substance: in all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me that were sin.’

“What a braggadocios nut they had become! But you see they were doing everything according to their own understanding. They were ‘going about to establish their own righteousness.’

“They took the blessings God gave them and forgot who gave it to them and you know who they wound up saying gave it to them? They said, ‘We did it ourselves,’ and they attributed it to false gods: ‘Mother Nature did it.’

“You remember what Hosea said about Gomer? ‘I loved her in spite of her sin. I paid her bills. I bought her groceries. I gave her all these provisions and she gave all of her lovers credit for what I did.’

“God says in Hosea 13, ‘Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them:
[8] I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.’

“You know, if you meet a lion by the way, that’s not a good thing. If you meet a bear bereaved of her babies, that’s not a good thing.

“All four of those beasts describe the Antichrist and God is telling them that He Himself is going to bring the Antichrist against the nation Israel. He says in II Thessalonians 2, ‘And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.’

“Literally the Lord Himself sends the Lie, the personification of ‘the Lie program,’ the Antichrist; ‘the rod of mine indignation.’

“Now, God didn’t think up the Lie. He doesn’t sanction the Lie. But He uses the wrath of men to praise him and, literally, He will allow Satan—you remember how he allowed Satan to go after Job?—to attack the nation Israel through the Antichrist in order to purge out the people who want to believe the Lie.

“God says, ‘I’m going to send him so that his persecution will purge out everybody who wants to go that way. I’m going to send him so they’ll go; so that all those who want the Lie will have it and they’ll follow it.’

*****

“What God does in the first few verses of Hosea 11 is describe how, ‘I loved them; I called them my sons but they were ungrateful, they turned away from me.’ Verse 3 says, ‘I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.’

“He said, ‘I took them by the hand and I tried to teach them to walk.’ What do you do with a child? You try to educate them. He said, ‘They had no gratitude for me at all. They didn’t even know it was me that was doing it.’

“Verse 4: ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.’

“ ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.’ Isn’t that a wonderful way to say that?

“That term 'yoke' is talking about bondage. ‘And then I laid meat unto them.’ He's saying, 'I gave them liberty and all kind of provisions out of my love.'

*****

“Now, that’s an interesting thing. Liberty came from God and His love; bands of love. You know, we talk a lot about ‘life, love and the pursuit of happiness.’ We talk a lot about being free.

"People have the idea that freedom is something that’s just a willy-nilly kind of thing out there, but freedom really comes not from revolt, not from casting off . . .

“When He says, ‘I was to them as they that take off the yoke,’ that’s what they were trying to do with their religion. You remember in Hosea 4:1, when he starts the teaching part of the book: ‘Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.’

“That thing about breaking out--all those sinful activities they were involved in; they were trying to break the cords of God. We saw that in Psalm 2 where Israel joined the Gentiles. They said, ‘We’ll break His bonds.’ They looked at God’s Word like bondage.

“God says, ‘You know what it really was? It was really liberty. Liberty from the bondage of sin and corruption.’ And that’s the key. A man who is bound by sin is not free. God knew that.

“In fact, Jesus said, ‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin,’ and when He says in John 8, ‘You shall know the truth and truth shall set you free,’ that’s not made for the masthead of a political newspaper like people do. That freedom in John 8: 33-36 is freedom from the bondage of sin.

“When people are bound in sin, they’re not free. They’re not free to obey God. Romans 6:20. People who are in the bondage of sin are not free to serve God. People think, ‘Oh, we’re free.’ You’re not free. You’re bound by the cords of your own iniquity.

“That principle is what He’s talking to Israel about back here, but Israel didn’t get it. They thought freedom was through what they were doing in their religion and it only made them more and more bound in the round of their sin.

“God doesn’t stampede people to Himself. The Lord is not a dictator. He’s worthy of being loved. John says, ‘We love him because He first loved us.’ And He draws us with His love. And the love of God puts an obligation on people to respond.

*****

“The name Ephraim means ‘fruitful,’ and the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were the last two of the tribes of Israel. Ephraim’s a blessed tribe in Israel, and when he trembled at God’s Word and stood in the truth of God’s Word, he was exalted and God did for him what He told him He was going to do, but when Ephraim offended in Baal worship, he died.

“You can’t disobey and abandon God’s Word and go out into idolatry and prosper. ‘And now they sin more and more. They have made them molten images.’

“That’s the way sin is. When you sin, you don’t just sin. Pretty soon you sin more and more. The wages of sin is DEATH. As James 1:15 says, ‘Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’

“Sin produces death. That’s all it can produce. And when you have sin in your conduct, and sin in your conscience, what it does is deaden you. It’s like Novocain.

“There’s pleasure in sin for a season, but it only lasts for a season, and the reason it lasts for a season is because 'the wages of sin is death.' If you sow to the flesh, of the flesh 'you’ll reap corruption.' Sin doesn’t build up your life; it destroys your life.

“As you have sin in your life, what happens is it comes in with the pleasure and the excitement and the stimulation that’s there, but pretty soon that stimulation dies away, and to get that same level of stimulation, you have to go deeper into it.

“I’ve never been a drug addict but I’ve been around a lot of druggies. They call it chasing the dragon; chasing that ecstatic experience of stimulation; getting up there but you never can find it again. Alcoholics don’t start out being a two-fifth-a-day drunk. You start out with a little something in a Coke.

“Paul says, ‘Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.’ They had feeling, but now it’s been deadened and they’re past feeling. You sin until you literally have no more volition about the sin and are given over to lasciviousness. When you give yourself over to something, literally you betray yourself.

*****

“Here's the particular sin they get led into in Hosea 13:2: ‘And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.’

“Imagine, they’re making images of their silver and idols according to their own understanding. They’ve completed rejected God’s Word.

“You see what the images are of in Romans 1:23: ‘And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.’

“That’s a complete, total perversion of the value system God gave man. The craftsman. You elevate the work of a craftsman to a place of divinity and worship the creature. What are they worshipping?

“It’s, ‘Kiss the calves.’ They’re worshipping the very animals that they use to farm with, plow their fields and haul their produce! It’s a complete reversal of anything that makes any common sense at all!

*****

“Back in Hosea 40-48, when you have that great polemic of Hosea against the false religions of the world that were corrupting Israel, when it talks about the idols, he says, ‘How dumb can you be?! You’re praying to an idol that you have to move to sweep around him! That idol can’t even do that and yet you pray and ask it to help you!’

“That’s being a blockhead, in the terms of the Book of Psalms. Doesn’t make any sense. That’s why he says in Romans 1:28, ‘And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.’

“Notice he says in Hosea, ‘Let the men that sacrifice,’ and by the way, what they were sacrificing was not just animals; they wound up sacrificing their own children! They were so deluded that they took their own children and sacrificed them to idols; to gods.

“He says, ‘Let them sacrifice. Let them kiss the calves.’ That’s the kiss of veneration. They bow the knee and they kiss the calf. That’s Baal worship, and it so thoroughly permeated the nation Israel that they’re just completely given over to it.

*****

“When we study the Minor Prophets, you have to remember these books aren't just designed to be history; they're  dress rehearsals, as it were, for the ‘last days’ and these books are prophecies. Hosea was a prophet.

“What’s going on here in verse 2 when he talks about the craftsman and he talks about the images and kissing the calf . . .

“The whole context in Hosea 13 turns out to be the Second Advent and the Antichrist. Because the captivity Israel’s going into, that 5^th Course of Judgment, culminates in the personification of the lie program in ‘the man of sin, the son of perdition.’

“You’ll see the precursors of it back here. Daniel 8 says, 20] The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.
[21] And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
[22] Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.

“Now the first king of Greece was Alexander the Great. When Alexander the Great died he was still a young man. The kingdom of Alexander was divided into four kingdoms. You read that in history.

"One of those kingdoms is going to be the kingdom of the Antichrist. Verse 23 says, ‘And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.’

“You’ve moved from Alexander the Great’s day in 100 B.C. to verse 23; you’ve moved into the future from where we are. You’ve moved out of history into prophecy because now we’re talking about the latter days; the ‘end times,’ or the concluding of the 70^th Week of Daniel.

“Verse 24 says, ‘And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.’

“What I want you to see is the thing in verse 25: ‘And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand.’

“He’s going to come in as a peacemaker and he’s going to have a peace policy that he brings to the Middle East to rescue the nation Israel from destruction so that he can take over.

“And as he does that, it says that ‘also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand.’ Now when you read ‘craft’ there, come to Acts 19. Craft is a very special craft. Paul was a tentmaker—that was his craft. The Antichrist won’t be a tentmaker.

*****

“Acts 19:24 says, ‘For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen.’

“They made idols to worship Diana. But the issue in their mind was getting rich. That’s what religion is about. You remember Paul said in Galatians that he ‘prospered in the Jews religion above many mine equals’? He said in Philippians, ‘What things were gain to me. .  .’

“Paul was making a fortune being a rabbinical scholar and that’s what religion does. It’s what it’s about. And the Antichrist is going to be in the business of bringing in that 'peace,' and through that peace policy he’s going to cause this idolatry of Baal worship to prosper.

*****

“You go to Revelation 17, and you’ll see the whole religion of the Antichrist is the manifestation of Baal worship. The religion of Baal worship is going to be a BIG DEAL in the tribulation. He’s the beast that rides on the woman and the woman is ‘MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’ He comes to power RIDING on her.

“So this Baal worship Hosea’s talking about capturing Israel, goes all the way to the Antichrist. In Revelation 13, you’re going to see the Antichrist show up in detail: [11] And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
[12] And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. [13] And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.'
 

“This character is in charge of worship. Have you ever heard anybody say the pope was the Antichrist? That’s what the Protestant Reformers said. Well, they didn’t know anything about studying the Bible rightly divided so they got it all screwed up.

“But nobody who reads the Book of Revelation thinks the pope is the Antichrist. You might think he was the false prophet, because that’s the religious dude, but the Antichrist is going to spurred on and promoted by the religion of Baal worship.

“Rome is the modern-day manifestation of Baal worship. When you take the details of Baal worship and write them on a chalkboard, by the time you’re through, you think you’re talking about the Roman Catholic Church. Now, a lot of what Rome does is found in Protestant churches, because they didn’t get that terribly far away from Rome. It goes all the way back to Genesis 11.

“Revelation 13: 13-14 says, ‘And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.’

“He can work miracles. Notice that miracle workers are not all good guys. The next verse says, 'And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.'

"You begin to see that the reason for the images is to have people prepared so that when the image of the Antichrist shows up, they’re ready to bow down because they’ve got all the miracles.

"Paul says in II Thess. 2:8-9, 'And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
[9] Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.'

"Notice that word 'Wicked' has a captial 'w'? That's his name! You go back through the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms, and you see 'the wicked, the wicked, the wicked.' That's who you're talking about! This character who is the Wicked; it's the Antichrist.

“He’s going to come in claiming to be the minister of Jesus Christ and having the signs of an apostle to validate it and it’s all going to be a lie. It’s going to cause people to bow down and worship the image.

*****

“Hosea 13:7-8 says, [7] Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them:
[8] I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.

You see those four different beasts? The lion, the leopard, the bear and the wild beast.

“Come over to Revelation 13 where he describes the Antichrist (Back in Hosea he says it’s going to be AS a lion; Hosea is full of similitudes, or comparisons using ‘like’ or ‘as’).

“Revelation 13:2 says, ‘And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.’

“The dragon is Satan (Revelation 12). Those are exactly the same four beasts in Daniel 7 that describe the career of the Antichrist.

“Notice his body is like a leopard that has feet like a bear and a mouth like a lion. He’s a composite, but the basic appearance is that of a leopard. You remember in Jeremiah 13 when the Lord asks Israel, ‘Can a leopard change his spots?’

“In Revelation 13, there is a mark of the beast. A leopard has a mark on him, doesn’t he? You know what the spot on a leopard is? It’s a black spot. You ever seen anybody come out of Mass on Ash Wednesday and look at what they’ve got on their forehead?

“And if you don’t put it on your forehead, because you’re going to be on TV and don’t want people to see it, you know where you put it? In your hand. In Revelation 13, where does it say they’re going to put the mark?

“By the way, when he says ‘kiss the calves’? Ever hear anybody talk about ‘the kiss of death’? That’s it. You know how Judas betrayed Jesus? With the kiss of death. That’s what this is right here.

*****

“Hosea 13:3 says, ‘Therefore they shall be as the morning cloud, and as the early dew that passeth away, as the chaff that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney.’

“That’s four similitudes. It’s going to be as the morning clouds. What happens to the morning clouds? When the sun comes up, it just dissipates. Soon as the heat comes, it’s gone. You know what He’s saying? You know what’s going to happen to Israel? They’re just going to disappear. They're going to go off into captivity. They’re going to be like the early dew that passes away; it evaporates.

“ ‘As the chafe that is driven with the whirlwind out of the floor.’ Matthew 3:12 talks about how the Lord Jesus, ‘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.’

“You know what chafe is? Did you ever take peanuts out of the shell and roast them in the oven?

“When you take a peanut out of its shell like that when it’s raw, the little husk on the peanut stays on the peanut and you just about can’t get it off. That’s one of the reasons you roast it. But as soon as you roast that thing, that little outer shell, it’s all brittle and you take it and roll it around in the pan. Don’t blow it on the porch; blow that stuff out in the yard. That’s what he’s talking about. The whirlwind’s going to come and blow it out the door. The whirlwind’s the Second Advent of Christ. Job 37.

“He’s talking about the fact they’re going to go into captivity and they’re going to dissipate and they’re going to be dispersed in that captivity; they’re going to be scattered like the chafe; like the smoke.”

Secrets and similitudes

II Peter 1:21 says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

“Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost and then God caused that word that He spoke by those prophets to be in-scripted,” explains Jordan. “The word ‘scripture’ means script; written down.

“The verse says, ‘And all scripture is given by inspiration of God.’ It comes right out of the mouth; it’s the breath of God. That’s why it’s called ‘in-SPIRED.’ ‘In-spirit-ation.’ He takes His breath (His spirit) and puts it in some words and causes them to be written down.

*****

“So God says in Hosea, ‘I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.’ Not only did He give them the Written Word, but He’s given them visions to reveal secrets.

“Amos 3:7 says, ‘Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.’

“God kept Israel abreast of what He was doing. Deuteronomy 29:29 says, ‘The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.’

“Now, He had some things that He didn’t tell them. For example, He didn’t tell them how He was going to take the old covenant away and make them who He chose them to be.

“It’s fascinating. God told Israel all along He had some secrets. The boast about Satan in Ezekiel 28 was ‘there is no secret that they can hide from thee.’ I love that verse. No secret THEY could keep from him. It didn’t say God couldn’t keep one from him. But God even put him on notice that He had some secrets. Satan knew he needed to go figure out God’s strategy and he still couldn’t figure it out! And Paul said that’s what the mystery was about.

*****

“God gave them visions, revelation. The point He’s making in Hosea is He kept them thoroughly—they knew exactly what His spoken prophesied plan was.

“And He used similitudes, which is a comparison that uses ‘like’ or ‘as.’  A metaphor is a comparison that does not use ‘like’ or ‘as.’

“Look at the end of the verse 9 in Hosea 12: ‘as in the days of the solemn feast.’ That’s a similitude. God gave to the nation Israel a whole series of similitudes. Those feasts back in Leviticus are a similitude. What that verse in Hosea does is it tells you, ‘When you go back and read those feasts, you’re seeing prophetic events God is using to simulate the doctrine associated with the redemption of Israel.'

“They start with the Passover. Well, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes, and He dies at the Cross, you know what He’s doing? ‘He’s Christ our Passover which is sacrificed for us.’ Then you have Pentecost, which is the coming of the Holy Spirit; the witness of His resurrection.

“Jesus Christ ascends back into heaven and receives the Father’s testimony that He is the risen one and then He sends the Holy Spirit because of His session at the Father’s right hand; His acceptance there.

“The Blowing of the Trumpets is the regathering of the nation Israel; calling Israel back from the nations. Then you have the Day of Atonement, which is the Second Advent of Christ when He comes back, their sins are blotted out (Acts 3:19), and then there’s the Feast of Tabernacles, which is the kingdom.

*****

“When he says ‘as in the days of the feasts,’ that’s the one where he’s talking about how all of them are similitudes. So all of a sudden you realize all this stuff in your Old Testament is not just unique little ditties that Israel did.

“It’s all there to teach them, to rehearse with them, what the future reality is going to be. Now you teach children with those kinds of methods. You know, visions.

“My grandchildren don’t pop in a video of Grandpa teaching. They love their Grandpa but they watch cartoons; little plays.

“In God’s Word, you teach children with the similitudes, but that’s what Galatians 3 says when it says ‘the law was a schoolmaster.’ Who has to be under a schoolmaster? Children. So that’s how He’s teaching them.

“But when you and I go back here and read these things, which are there for our learning, you look at them and see some marvelous things.

*****

“Did you ever go watch a Disney animated movie with your children and you, as an adult, see one thing in it and they see something else? You know, there’s that animated movie ‘Up,’ where the funny-looking little guy gets the house and they float off in it. If you, as an adult, watch that, you take away something different from what kids do.

“You take ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ It was a written as a religious social parody. Now, you never saw a kid get any of that out of it. But if you study it; I mean, they have college courses that study ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ They study the similitude of it. Well, God did that.

“There are only 33 original plots in all of drama, theatre, literature and arts and every one of them comes out of the Bible. That Book in your lap is the only scientific textbook to explain to you the symbols and the activities on this planet.

“That’s some Book, folks, and I know people don’t have much appreciation for it, but the more you spend time in it and the more you stay with it, the more you realize that all that discussion about, ‘Is it true? Is it really that way?’ just comes from people who really don’t sit and take it in, and take it in, and take it in, and take it in. They read Books about it but they don’t read it.

“There are similitudes about the Second Advent. Malachi 4:2 says, ‘But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.’

“That’s S-U-N, not S-O-N, but when the S-O-N arises, it will be like the S-U-N arising and you can go through the Scripture and you can watch the sun. God back and read Psalm 19 about the sun.

“Stars in the Bible are pictures of angels. Read Psalm 19 thinking that when you read about the stars and the heavenly bodies, and the thing it says about the sun, and think about that in the context of a similitude about the Second Advent. All of a sudden Psalm 19 takes on a whole different picture for you.”