I’m still working on a new piece about locusts and other animals’ part in tribulation prophecy from the Old Testament.
While searching my document files for something today, I found this blog post of mine from the beginning of Obama's second term:
Last week’s news gave the results from a recent Harris poll that showed “Jesus Christ is not the No.1 hero in America; it’s President Barack Obama.” Christ ranked No. 2, followed by Martin Luther King and Ronald Reagan. Captain Chesley “Sulley” Sullenberg came in ninth!
According to the national poll, which didn’t provide participants any list of respondents to pick from and was conducted on 2,634 U.S. adults between Jan. 12-19 just ahead of Obama’s inauguration, “American adults (age 18 and over) spontaneously named President Obama as the person they admire enough to call their hero.
“Respondents gave multiple reasons for their choice of heroes, including: doing what’s right regardless of personal consequences (89%); not giving up until the goal is accomplished (83%); doing more than what other people expect of them (82%); overcoming adversity (81%); and staying level-headed in a crisis (81%). “
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Over the years, I’ve heard dozens of different dispensational preachers try to go about best-explaining the all-important “secret” God made known to the Apostle Paul, often varying wildly in their methodology (and skill) in trying to get across the information where the ‘average Joe’ can get it.
In Jordan’s latest attempt at a weekend Bible conference earlier this month in Southern California—where many attendees had never been exposed to either dispensational Bible study or the “secret” before—he started by explaining just who Jesus Christ really is.
He first asked the crowd to compare Ephesians 1:10 with Colossians 1:16, stressing, “You absolutely need to get this!”
Ephesians 1:10 reads, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him.”
Colossians 1:16 reads, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.”
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“Jesus Christ is the manifest person of the godhead. He’s the image; you couldn’t see God—Jesus Christ is the one who manifests Him!
“You remember in John he says, ‘In the beginning was the Word’? What do you do with words? You express yourself. His name—it’s a capital letter, a proper noun. His name is the Word.
“He’s the chief spokesman of the Godhead. He’s the one who speaks so God’s person and will can be known. If you’re going to know God, Jesus said, ‘No man comes to the Father but by me.’
“The only way to find the God of creation is in Jesus Christ because He IS the God of creation! Paul says, ‘He’s the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature.’ He’s the head of ALL of the creation. He not only manifests who God is; He’s the head of the creation that HE created!
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“So back here in Genesis 1, isn’t it interesting (Moses) didn’t say ‘God created the universe.’ He says, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth.’ He didn’t just create the physical universe; He created a government to run that physical universe. Now if you’ve got a government, what do you need? You need some creatures to be in the government.
“What He does is He populates the heaven and the earth with positions of government; then creatures to be in them. Now, the original creatures in those positions were angels, and races of angels—statuses of angels.
“And God’s original intention was that all the positions of government in heaven, and all the positions in the earth, would focus on Jesus Christ and promote His will and His glory. Because why were they created? They were ‘created by him, and for him.’ (Col.
“Now, we know something happened. There’s a fellow that He created called Lucifer. What Lucifer does is he says, ‘You know, God’s got this plan. It’s called ‘truth’ and it’s a wise plan, but I got a better plan,’ and he develops what Daniel 10 calls a ‘policy.’ It’s called ‘the lie’ by God.
“But he develops a counter-plan to usurp God’s plan of truth and Lucifer goes out . . . If you want to usurp a position of governmental authority, what do you do? You get the folks in it to follow you and not the other guy, right? So Lucifer did that. And you have the fallen angels.
“In response, God says, ‘I’ll tell you what, I got a plan. I’m not going to tell anybody about it, but I got a way to fix this. Because I got a plan where I’m going to come and do for man what he couldn’t do for himself, and I’m going to do it by way of a cross—something nobody ever thought about doing.’
“God said, ‘I’m going to become the creature and I’m going to pay for their sins, and I’m going to redeem them, and I’m going to reconcile them through the blood of that cross.’ You’d have never thought about that as long as you live and Satan never would have either!
“Ezekiel 28 says of Lucifer, ‘He was so wise there was no secret you could keep from him.’ God says, ‘Well, I’ll just show you how dumb he is; I’ll keep a secret he won’t figure out.’
“ ‘He won’t figure out that somebody could love the unlovely so much that they would give their total self for him. Because Satan’s whole wisdom was built on taking and ‘making me No. 1.’ That’s the reason ‘I’ is the middle letter of the word sin, pride and Lucifer. It’s the deification of the creature. Romans 1:25 says that’s the basis of the lie program. ‘I’ is also the middle of that word ‘lie,’ okay?
“So again, God says, ‘I’ll come and do for man what he can’t do for himself.’ And He does that. He had put man on the earth and said, ‘Adam, go win the earth back; subdue it,’ but how good does Adam do? He doesn’t even last a week. He joins the enemy.
“God says, ‘Okay, I’ll do for man what he can’t do for himself. I’ll be the seed of the woman; the seed of the woman become the seed of Abraham, becomes the seed of David, becomes the seed of Christ.’ He goes to Calvary and He dies and He pays for the sin of the world. Nobody even knew that but God did!
“As we know, Christ then ascends up into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father up there and tells everyone, ‘The wrath’s coming.’ He says, ‘I’m going to do all this,’ and Satan says, ‘You can’t; I got you covered. I’ve got you defeated. You can’t. They’re in sin; they’re my possession.’ Jesus Christ says, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, I’m going to do it.’ Isaiah 49. The devil says, ‘No you can’t.’
“And then God reveals the secret about how, ‘Yes, I can because I got a plan. Satan, you did something (by crucifying Christ on the Cross) that’s going to let me do it and you didn’t even know you were doing it! Why? Because you’re not as smart as I am.’
“It ain’t arrogance if you can do it. There’s an old saying: ‘It ain’t brag if you can do it.’ God did it!
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“Two agencies to accomplish one purpose: Israel
“You need to understand the reason He’s forming the Body of Christ is to accomplish that eternal purpose of making Jesus Christ the head of all things. Without the Body, He could be the head of the earth but not the heavens.
“As Ephesians 1:11 says, ‘In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.’
“This is called ‘the counsel of his will.’ Understand that what that means is you have become, by virtue of being in Jesus Christ, a part of that plan. God has this great cosmic plan for His Son. To be the head of all things and He made you a part of it.
“You’re a part of something big, folks. Don’t stoop along the way to be something else. That’s the mystery of His will. He’s given it to you to know because He’s made you a part of it and that’s who you really are, and that’s why He made you who you really are.”
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