Every day today one of 'last days'

What Bible-believers understand like no one else is that the political structure of our country and this world is controlled by ‘the prince of this world,’ i.e. Satan.

“We live in a culture that’s running headlong into greater and greater evil, debauchery, violence, corruption--polluted by what (Robert) Bork calls 'modern barbarians,' " says Jordan. "Just the indecency and the vulgarity and the lack of respect for people . . .

“When the Apostle Paul writes the things he does about being a good citizen, living in a society—Paul was in a culture every bit as pagan and morally bankrupt as ours is today.

“You shouldn’t think that our current world is the only one that ever had abortions. When Jesus Christ was born there was a wicked tyrant who ruled that land and sent out word, not to kill unborn babies, but to kill every child under two years old that happened to be born a male.

“People talk about the political and economic oppression of the government, but when the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, His mom and dad had gone there because there was a decree from the government of His day that there would be a tax.

“And they went there, not to get out of paying their taxes; not to try to find a way they didn’t have to submit to the taxing; not saying, ‘Oh, it’s an unjust tax and were not going to pay it!’

“I mean, where could there ever been a more unjust government and taxing system than what they were under?! But they didn’t say, ‘We’re not going to go!’

 

*****

“They lived in a day when slavery was institutionalized. Racial bigotry is an odious, nasty, ugly thing. But you read all through your Bible and you don’t find people decrying the Roman government; bemoaning the evil economic system or even the injustices.

“You’re not going to rid of those things, folks, by fighting the system. The way you become the conscience of a nation—the way you have an impact on the nation—is you go out and understand they need to be transformed INTERNALLY! They need to have a change inside of them.

“That’s why in Philippians 2:14, Paul says, ‘Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.’

“That’s how you do it and you see from the passage they lived ‘in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.’ But Paul’s not telling them to go out and fight that by political means. He’s talking about fighting it by holding up some LIGHT that gives life. And that light, which is life, transforms the rest.

 

*****

“By the way, the way you transform a culture is not by quoting II Chronicles 7:14: ‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.’

“You know what the problem with that is? Go back and read the context, and the context is when he says, ‘If my people,’ the two verses before that tell you it’s the people of Israel!

“It’s also not going to be by following I Chronicles 4 and the ‘Prayer of Jabez,’ where God says to ISRAEL; Jabez prays to the God of Israel that God would enlarge his tents!

“I don’t care how many millions of books were sold trying to propagate that stuff, that isn’t it! You say, ‘Well, it’s in Bible.’ Hey, folks, the Bible says, ‘Judas hung himself . . .  go do thou likewise.’ Help yourself! If that’s the way you quote the Bible, have at it! But don’t expect somebody who thinks about what’s going on to trot along behind you!

 

*****

“Paul says in Titus 3, ‘Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates, to be ready to every good work, To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men.’

“The message is, ‘Go out and be good citizens in the world; go out and live in the culture, as pagan, and wicked, and evil as it is, but go out there and live in it as a Believer. Go out and demonstrate in your life, individually and as an assembly, the transforming power of the gospel of the grace of God to change life and culture.’ ”

*****

Below is a passage from a study Jordan gave at Shorewood’s summer Bible conference almost two decades ago in 1997, when he first warned our country was on the verge of another “winter” cycle, one that we now know was “set in motion” by 9/11 and won’t conclude until the next decade:

“Can I tell you that in seven years, mark my word, I’m not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but in seven years we can meet right here and things are going to be drastically different in our nation.

“Politically there’s going to be a whole ‘sea change’ coming. It’s happened before and it’s going to happen again. You’ll face it in the next decade. I’m not a prophet. I’m talking to you about what I know is gonna happen because of what’s out there.

“Economically, socially and spiritually. We stand at a very critical point in history and the history of our nation and the history of the church. I’ve told our fellows, and I’ll tell you publicly— in the last year-and-a-half, as I’ve traveled around the country, the ripples of the future begin to appear.

*****

“There have been four great awakenings in our history as a nation. The first one was back in the 1700s with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield. And that great awakening recovered the truth of ‘justification by grace through faith alone plus nothing.’

“. . . That letter that was read just this morning. . .  That dear lady, Mary Love, writing a letter to her husband who was going to be beheaded the next day, all because he had a Bible! He took a Protestant Bible and went out and preached ‘justification by grace through faith plus nothing.’ No tradition, no works, no church, nothing—just Christ and Him alone.

“The morning after he got that letter from his wife, the (court) gave him this legal document that said if he would just recant ‘faith alone in Jesus Christ’ they’d spare him. And his wife had written him in that letter, ‘Don’t! I’ll see you in glory.’

*****

“You can sit in an air-conditioned room tonight with a Bible in your hand and faith in your heart because of people like that! And it was people like that who produced this recovery of Pauline truth of justification.

"The result of that great awakening was the American Revolution, by the way. When the pendulum swung back.

“The next great awakening took place in the mid-1800s; the 20s to 40s along in there. The revivalists—Charles Finney and those guys. The emphasis there was on the walk; on the doctrine of sanctification. You hear what I’m saying to you? First it was Romans 1-5. Then it was Romans 6-8.

“The next great awakening after that was with D. L. Moody and the Bible Movement of the late 1800s. And they began to recover the distinction between Israel and the Body of Christ and the Rapture and Revelation. That’s Romans 9-11! What are they doing? They’re laying again the foundation of grace!

"The last great awakening was from 1962-1984 and is called in history the ‘New Age awakening.’ It was a total abandonment and repudiation of Pauline truth in favor of human viewpoint . . .

“Every great awakening produced a social impact. The first one produced the American Revolution. The second one produced the Civil War and the liberation and consolidation of the Union. The third one produced the G.I. generation of the ’50s. They went out and won World War II. It was the Can-Do Joe. They put a man on the moon. They all took that truth and when it came time, it made an impact.

*****

“You know what’s going to happen this time? When it comes time for the nation to make those decisions that have to be made in the death of winter and the grips of struggle, the heart and the core of Pauline truth ain’t going to be there. They’re going to need us desperately like never before.

“A little light shines real bright in the darkness. I challenge you tonight to be a Philippian—to take your own life and identify yourself.

“Where are you? You have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That’s what it is people. It is a PERSONAL relationship. I can’t have it for you. You have it. How’s it going? Is there anything to it? Is it just words on the page or is it something real in your heart? Where are you? What does it mean to you?

“When my kids were little itty-bitty guys I used to sit with them on the floor. They couldn’t even talk and I’d pray with them and talk with them about the Lord. It was real easy to do then. When they get grown it ain’t so easy. How about you and your family?

“Can I tell you that to be a leader in the cause of Christ—I Timothy 3 says that a man, if he’s going to be in the office of a bishop, a leader in the assembly, an elder, he has to have a relationship with the Lord that’s real and active and personal. And His family has to be there in those things. And you aren’t going to produce that kind of stuff with cheap stuff.

“Right here in this room tonight there’s some of you men and women who need to do some business for the Lord. But you want it to be without cost to you; without a personal involvement other than just going and being seen.

“How is it with the world around you? Are they any more than machinery or scenery to you? You see, I want to challenge you tonight.

“That ministry that Paul had; the spirit, and the source, and the substance of it needs to be yours, but it has to be yours in a real way. There’s some of you folks that could get going if you’d get REAL with what’s out there. We need you to do that.

*****

“What’s the chaff to the wheat? Down South in the grace movement I’d been a part of, they’d sit around and bicker and potshot and nose-pick one another. And then I came up into the Midwest and found brethren who had perfected the 'right boot of fellowship' to a fine art.

“I back up from that and I say, ‘You know, there’s an opportunity right now and we haven’t got time to be involved in all that other stuff!’ We’re not all there is, but we is and we are what we are!

“Let me tell you something, your community, your nation, the church-at-large is going to need you in the next decade more than they’ve ever needed you before. We’re back in a position where ‘our time is at hand.’ And it’s time to fish or cut bait.

 

*****

“When you understand the truth of the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery, that gives you a sense of your place in things. It gives you a sense of your place in the world—you know you’re not Israel; you know who you are; you’re an ambassador for Christ, a member of the Body of Christ.

“It gives you a sense of your place in history. We’re not in the prophetic program; we’re in the mystery program. It gives you a sense of your place in the church—you’re members of the Body of Christ and you know who you really are. It gives you a sense of your place in the will of God.

“The dispensation of grace is an age of a remnant mentality. It’s not an age that’s pressed forward by corporate activity. It’s an age where the work of God is done through faithful men; through individuals in whom the truth lives and works, banding themselves together in local assemblies to go do the work of the ministry.

“It isn’t carried on in big organizations and religious movements. That’s why we don’t have an organization here, by the way.

*****

“When we were asked to leave the Berean Bible Society organization, there was a group of 10-12 men who met in my living room. One of them asked, ‘Well, what are we going to call the new organization?’ and I said, ‘Who wants to nominate me for the board of a new organization?’ The room was silent. You know why? The men in there understood.

“There’s an old saying, ‘In the seeds of the formation of a religious institution are the seeds of its own destruction,’ and I’ve been to meetings where they discuss, ‘Well, how do you stop that?’ but nobody ever gives the answer.

“The way you stop it is you don’t do it! You don’t build something that’s designed to self-destruct! People say, ‘Well, but, but, but . . .’ No buts about it, you just don’t do it!

 

*****

“What do you do? You go do what God gave you to do. And you don’t try and improve on that. The dispensation of grace is going to come to a close. It might come to a close tonight or it may not come to pass for another 50-100 years. I don’t know.

“But the dispensation of grace always ends in total apostasy, and today the church-at-large lives in an abject state of failure. You can’t read II Timothy and not see the church in ruin in the ‘last days.’ And every day today is one of the ‘last days.’

“It’s going to be faithful men. Little ‘remnant mentality’ people who are going to be true to the faith, true to the doctrine, and keep going, and they’re not going to be out trying to build something that they’re not. They’re going to go out being who they are.

 

*****

“Now, most of you folks here tonight are capable of being Philippians. Most of the church, though, is stuck back in Corinthians or Galatians. Those two books, you can take and identify almost any Christian ministry today.

“Almost any Christian believer you know is either a Galatian or a Corinthian. They’re either hung out under the legalistic strictures of Galatianism—mixing law and grace—or they’re over in the Charismatic mania of the flesh at Corinth.

“By the way, there are two great theological groups that are at loggerheads with one another today—Armenianism and Calvinism. There’s the man-centered Corinthianism and the Moses-centered Galatianism.

“Most of you folks have grown beyond—you’ve come to understand the establishment truth in Romans about Calvary and you’ve gone on to the doctrinal truths in Ephesians. You’re an advanced breed, frankly. I count it in honor to know you in that way and I rejoice in that with you.

“The biggest problems the Philippians had, as I said earlier, wasn’t what they knew. They were mature believers. The understood Ephesian truth—advanced truth, mystery truth.

“Their problem was working together in unity and harmony of mind and purpose in defeating the satanic policy of evil that’s designed, not just to get you to defect from the doctrine, but designed to attack you and one another and sew discord and animosity among the brethren so you’re just as ineffective as if you didn’t know the doctrine.

*****

“When I moved to Chicago in 1979 (after a lifetime in Alabama) it was a shocking experience for me and my wife. If it hadn’t been for the folks in our assembly, my wife and family would have never made the transition.

“The people who brought us here had absolutely no idea or actually any concern about what was happening to my family, and if it hadn’t of been for the saints at the church doing what the church always does, and is designed to do and should do—just naturally caring for one another—we would have been in a mess, but we weren’t.

“I began to fellowship with these folks and I began to ask about J.C. O’Hair. I worked with Pastor C.R. Stam. I met Charles Baker. Those three names. . .

“Mr. O’Hair was a visionary. I heard stories about things he had planned and was going to do. I talked with people who knew him but never heard those stories because those were ‘quiet’ stories. Those were stories he had in his mind and in his heart that he wanted to do but didn’t get done.

“He wanted to start a Bible institute. He wanted to tear down the old church building at the corner of Wilson and Sheridan and build a nine-story high-rise in its place that would have 600 students the first year.

“ ‘Whoa, we can’t do that! That might be a success!’ A guy actually said, ‘He’ll do it too! We gotta stop him!’ and they did, for good or bad.

“Now, Mr. Stam was a pugilist—he’d get out and contend and fight for the faith. They’ll never be a better writer dispensationally than Stam.

“Mr. Baker was an academic. And those three men working together led the grace movement into existence as we know it. There’s not a place in America, and hardly around the world, that knows some of the truth we rejoice in about right division that didn’t come from those men’s ministries.

***** 

“When I moved to Chicago, I realized things weren’t in such good a shape. I’d go to meetings like this and be the youngest man there. I traveled around the country and I’d find people were discouraged and down in the dumps and didn’t really understand what was happening.

“By the way, in 1870, six men met in a Chicago suburb; six pastors met in a suburb of Chicago. They came from six different places in the Midwest to study the pre-millennial Second Coming of Christ and decide if they thought that’s what the Bible taught.

“Those six men studied and came to the conclusion that there was a distinction between the Rapture and the Second Coming of Christ to the earth—one for the body, one for Israel.

“They said, ‘We’ll go home and we’ll study and a year later we’ll meet again.’ A year later, they rented a little room in Boston to meet. They went there to meet and the word got out and they began to have crowds of 100-150 people come to that little week of meetings.

 

"The next year, they scheduled another meeting and they had 500 people. The next year they had an even bigger meeting and it became known as the Bible Study Movement.

“It was out of that Bible Study Movement that the Scofield Reference Bible—

Dr. Scofield and those men were recovering truth and it was out of that that fundamentalism in the 20^th century got its teeth and strength to battle against the modernists and destroy them.

“It was out of that movement that J.C. O’Hair and the Grace Movement came and progressed on into truth. You and I stand in very much the same situation tonight in 1997.”

Intellectual poverty of 'Pope for the Poor,' for one

I’ve got a new article for tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s an old piece that relates to Tuesday’s post entitled, “Charitable request”:

In conjunction with the betrayal of Jesus Christ just before His death, John 12: 4-8 reads:

“Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, [5] Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? [6] This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. [7] Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. [8] For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.”

*****

Jordan explains, “Mary was offering the sacrifice of devotion. She realizes Christ’s going to die. That’s a fascinating thing because the apostles hadn’t yet got that. She’s actually ahead of the very men He’s training to be the leaders in the ministry!

“Now, she didn’t understand all the meaning of His death, you understand. He’s been telling the disciples since Matthew 16:21, and Luke 18: 31-34, that He was going to go to Jerusalem and die, and be raised again, but they didn’t get it.

“Mary, seeing what’s going on, she’s got it and she’s got that heart to say, ‘I value you.’ You’ve heard people say, ‘Give people their roses before they die, not at the funeral.’ That’s kind of what she’s doing here.

*****

“Look at Verse 4. Judas has no heart for Christ. He’s just a spiritual blockhead. She gave up 300 pence worth; Judas is going to sell for 30 pieces.

"She takes a box and breaks it; she’s got the bag. She’s worshipping; Judas is a thief. She’s pointing people to Christ; Judas is drawing people away from Christ, pointing them to the poor: ‘Don’t think about Christ; the poor are more important than He is.’

“And he’s infecting the other apostles. That’s why Christ tells Judas, ‘Let her alone,’ and then rebukes the whole bunch of them because they had ALL bought into the influence of Judas!

“You remember that verse back in Psalm 23: ‘Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head.’ That’s literally what’s going on here.

“And you see the devotion of a Mary, and a Martha, and a Lazarus, and a Simon, but you also see even among the apostles the inroads of the hatred, the questioning, the murmuring.

“Notice that statement about Judas, ‘Not that he cared for the poor.’ The criteria that Judas states about, ‘Let’s give it to the poor; look at all we could do for the poor with this,’ is saying, ‘Why waste this sacrifice on Jesus when it could have been used for the felt needs of the poor?!’

“That’s really the criteria of a covetous soul. That verse in Mark, when he calls it ‘This waste’--you understand love is never a waste. Sacrifice, generosity, is never a waste.

“Verse 7 is a real clear rebuke and what Christ’s saying there is, ‘The opportunity to ministry to me isn’t going to be here that long. It’s fixing to be over with. In a week I’ll be gone. The poor are still going to be here.’

“That’s a great statement. What Jesus is saying is, ‘What you need to do, guys, is keep the first commandment FIRST: ‘Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and your neighbor like unto it as yourself.’

“Judas is saying, ‘We should take that and give it to our neighbor.’ Mary’s saying, ‘He’s God; He’s more important than any neighbor we will ever have! We want to keep Him first.’

“That’s in essence what Christ is saying. That day of opportunity to honor Him isn’t going to be there forever.

“Mary anoints Him before He dies. Mark 16:1 is after His burial. So Mary’s ahead of the game. When He says there in Verse 8, ‘The poor you always have with you, but me ye have not always,’ this is just sort of as an aside.

*****

“Two things in that verse strike me. When He says, ‘But me ye have not always,’ that’s a death stake into the heart of the pagan doctrine of ‘transubstantiation.’

“That’s the Roman Catholic idea of the Mass that when they consecrate the wafer, the host, and the wine, that the literal real presence of Christ is there; that that bread ceases to be bread and becomes the real, literal body of Jesus Christ.

“Their idea is because the Mass is being performed somewhere on the planet at every moment of the day, there is this perpetual presence of Christ through the Mass with us and that He’s always here: ‘Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world.’ (Matt.28:20) They say that means the Mass.

“Well, that verse in John says just the opposite: ‘You’re not always going to have me with you.’ You say, ‘Well, what does Matthew 28:20 mean then?!’

“It’s talking about in the future in the Kingdom when He comes back and sets up His kingdom—THEN He’s always going to be there! This is the first coming, and between the first coming and the Second Coming, He isn’t always going to be there.”

Charitable request

Charity, by Bible definition, is the motivation behind what a person does.

“The first time that word occurs in Scripture tells you what the word’s about,” explains Jordan. “The English word ‘charity’ means ‘liberality to the poor and needy,’ and while giving to poor people is the way the word’s used in today’s vocabulary, that’s really not the essence of the word. The essence of the word is ‘liberality; openness to people who are in need.’

“In I Corinthians 13, and, by the way, this is a word Paul introduces, it says, [1] Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

[2] And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

[3] And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

[4] Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

5] Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
[6] Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
[7] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
[8] Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

*****

In I Corinthians 8, where Paul makes the overall statement, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifeth,” he teaches that “if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”

Jordan explains, “In other words, if your brother’s offended by you eating meat offered to idols, Paul says to ‘walk charitably.’

“To walk charitably to the guy would be to put his needs above your needs; to put his concerns above your concerns. You’ve got a right to eat it, but because it grieves him, you can use your liberty not to do it and sacrifice your interest for the good of the other.

“Now, where does the motivation for that come from? The motivation is an understanding of God’s charity to us. I Cor. 13 is a chapter that talks a lot about charity. In chapter 12, he introduces it by saying, ‘Now concerning spiritual gifts.’

“He tells us about the spiritual gift program, but in verse 30-31 he says, ‘30] Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?
[31] But covet earnestly the best gifts: and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.

“There’s a better way, Paul says, than going by the sign gift program. What is that way? ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’

“If I speak with the tongues of men and angels and I don’t see my brother who is offended by my meat, and don’t walk charitably toward him, putting his needs above mine, then I’m just talking.

“You notice how Paul says ‘though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and have not charity . . . ’? Charity in the Bible is NOT giving to poor people. Charity is going to have to do with the motivation BEHIND the doing. In Verse 4, he’s going to describe what charity looks like.

“Charity isn’t a braggard, it’s not proud, it’s not covetous, doth not behave itself unseemly. It’s patient and suffereth long.

“Boy, you read those things and you think, ‘Wow! That’s quite a mental attitude to have!’

“Paul says ‘charity never faileth.’ So what charity is is a lifestyle that puts the interests of the other ahead of your own interest.”

Baby Boomers = violence, chaos

One of the characteristics of Baby Boomers (1946-1964) is they didn’t grow out of their adolescent stage until reaching their 40s, and that’s the explanation for a lot of what’s gone on the last two decades in American political and social life, suggests Jordan.

A Boomer friend of mine who enjoys collecting antique Bibles admitted to me once that he’d never read the Bible even though he’d made a dozen or so attempts, always starting in Genesis 1 but fizzling before he was even half way through the first 50 chapters.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that while the first 11 chapters of Genesis cover approximately 2,000 years of human history, the rest of the book doesn’t even cover 350-375 years!

As Jordan explains, “First, you have the beginning of the human race with Adam. Then you have the beginning again with Noah after the Flood. You say, ‘Well, why would He put 2,000 years in 11 chapters and chapters 12-50 cover less than 400 years?’

“The reason is the first 11 are foundational material. They’re not there to describe all of the details; they’re there to show you those four divine institutions God established for the perpetuation and the foundation of the human race—volition, marriage, the family and nationalism.”

*****

“In Genesis 12, something far more significant took place on the world scene then in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence that laid our country’s groundwork.

“Those kinds of things come and go, and while this might happen to America and that might happen, in Genesis 12, God gave birth to a nation!

“Now, when a nation is born, it’s a wonderful thing but, brother, when God gives birth to a nation, that’s something SPECIAL because God didn’t do that but ONE time in all of human history!

“And it’s with this nation that He gave birth to through Abraham that we arrive at Genesis’ ‘third beginning.’ ”

*****

With God’s re-populating of the earth after the Flood, the idea was that, in order for man to function properly, he would, on the basis of volition, bind himself to the authority of God’s Word and choose a mate based on the Word’s principles of marriage.

“When you break down the family unit—breaking down volition, marriage and the family—you have the chaos you see today in the modern cities like Chicago.

“Just being married is a big thing nowadays; being willing to make the commitment to be bound together and become one flesh, becoming this one new personality that comes through marriage.

*****

“Nationalism and human government is designed to give those other three institutions (volition, marriage, family) the protection necessary for them to function without interference.

“In Genesis 12, the world came to the place where nationalism was subverted by the satanic policy of internationalism at the Tower of Babel.

“Before the Flood, the earth was filled with violence, compelling God to fully destroy the wickedness. After the Flood, the world was filled with idolatry, prompting God to set aside a people for Himself.

“When the world deserved only His wrath for its rebellion, God chose out one man by the name of Abraham to bring salvation and blessing to all the nations. He separates Abraham out and, later on, builds a ‘middle wall of partition’ between Abraham and the other nations so it’s obvious that there can be no union; no compromise. They’re set apart and a big wall is built between them.

*****

“God exhorts His nation in Isaiah 51: 1-4, ‘Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.
[2] Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.
[3] For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.
[4] Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, O my nation: for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the people.’

“Abraham being told to ‘Get out of thy country!’ and ‘Separate yourself from them!’ was God’s judgment upon the nations of the earth.

“Notice in Isaiah, though, God calls Abraham ‘the hole of the pit.’ That’s not a real flattering title!

“Deuteronomy 26:5 says, ‘And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:’

“Abraham was over in Mesopotamia, just a Syrian ready to perish; he’s a guy who’s ripe to die and go to hell. The reason he was that way is in Joshua 24:2: ‘And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.’

“They were idolaters! They bought into the scheme of Genesis 11! They had become a part of the satanic purpose to thwart what God was doing.

“In fact, they had even moved over there to the Chaldees. They were in the land of Shinar as participants in that evil program.

“God says, ‘You were just a hole in the pit; you were lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut,’ as we’d say Down South. ‘You weren’t some exalted guy; you were just a reprobate ready to go to hell.’ ”

(New article tomorrow)

It's easy bein' 'the Green One'

As part of the hype surrounding the hotly-anticipated release this Thursday of Pope Francis’ “encyclical on climate change,” is an “epic Hollywood trailer” that can be viewed on Slate Magazine's website called, “Future Tense, The Citizen’s Guide to the Future.”

The opening quote of the video—“If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us”—is an actual line from one of Francis’ recent sermons on the environment.

“It is expected to form the heart of his argument in the forthcoming letter to the world’s Catholic churches,” reports the website. “It just gets better from there. At one point, Jesus appears in the corner of a boxing ring as the pope prepares, saying, “The power of me compels you." You can’t make this stuff up—except apparently they did.”

*****

As the universe’s fastest-growing religion, “Going Green” is positioned as a prime vehicle toward brainwashing the masses into endorsing the Antichrist’s Babel II.

The undeniable aim of our Dewey-Darwin American public school system is to instill a duty-mindset of justified persecution against any who don’t bow down to nature and the teensy-weensiest of its creatures and flora.

An article a while back in the Wall Street Journal rang an alarm-bell about “frighteningly pushy eco-lessons that now fill children’s books.”

“Contemporary children are so drenched with eco-propaganda that it’s almost a waste of resources,” warned the story. “Like acid rain, but more persistent and corrosive, it dribbles down on them all day long. They get it at school, where recycling now competes with tolerance as man’s highest virtue. The get it in the peppy ‘go green’ messages online, on television and in magazines.

“Susceptible children are left in no doubt that we’re all headed for a despoiled, immiserated future unless they start planting pansies in their old shoes, using dryer lint as mulch, and practicing periodic vegetarianism.

“Not surprisingly, many young people are anxious. The more impressionable among them are coming to believe that their smallest decisions could have catastrophic effects on the globe.”

*****

Fueling their panic is an eco-message “seeping into the pages of novels that don’t, on their face, necessarily seem to be about environmentalism at all,” the newspaper reported.

Patriarch of green-themed children’s books, novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, has, for example, a story entitled "Scat" about three kids “who band together with an eccentric biology teacher and an armed ecoterrorist to stop a buffoonish Texas oilman from illegally extracting petroleum from the habitat of an endangered Florida panther.”

The WSJ article continued, “In all Mr. Hiaasen’s books for children, young readers are asked to sympathize with environmentalists who thwart businessmen, even when the good guys take destructive measures such as sinking boats and torching billboards. And the eco-tropes that have worked so well for Mr. Hiaasen—Good nature! Bad capitalist!—are steadily creeping into books across the age range.”

*****

A web page I've bookmarked from Dial-The-Truth-Ministries (www.av1611.org) details thousands of New Age perversions in Eugene Peterson’s incredibly successful 2002 bible paraphrase (consistently ranked among the top-five bestselling bibles) called “The Message,” endorsed by such Christian “heavyweights” as Billy Graham, Chuck Swindoll, Rick Warren, Max Lucado, etc., etc.

 

Under the heading, “The Green Hope,” author Dr. Terry Watkins notes that Romans 15:13 in “The Message” contains “the most bizarre statement ever in a mainstream Bible.”

The verse reads, “Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life-giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!”

This compares to the King James Bible: “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Watkins writes, “Who is the ‘God of green hope’? The ‘green hope’ originated with the hellish, human sacrificing, Druids. The publication Talks on Freemasonry states, ‘Green was, with the Druids, a symbol of hope and the virtue of hope with a Freemason illustrates the hope of immortality.’ (Kenneth Tuckwood, Talks on Freemasonry).

“The ‘green hope’ mantra is a popular rallying cry in the new age Mother-Earth environmental movement. In the New Age Movement, ‘green’ signifies ‘Oneness with the Earth,’ hence the title of William Anderson’s book, ‘Green Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth.’ ”

Watkins references page 159 of the “Dictionary of Symbolism,” considered the most comprehensive one-volume work on the language of symbols ever published, in which author Hans Biedermann notes:  “. . . the devil appears as ‘the green one’. . .”

It's purely academic

The allegorical method of interpreting Scripture has its roots in Alexandria, Egypt, with a Jewish philosopher named Philo (25 BC-50 AD).

“Philo tried to take Greek philosophy and unite it with the Hebrew Old Testament,” explains Jordan. “Then came (theologian) Origen, the first Bible corrector; the first polluter of the Word of God.

“Origen not only developed a false method of interpretation and introduced it into Christendom, he also developed the corruptions to the Word of God that are available today in the New International Version, etc.

“These bibles leave verses out, add verses and change words around to change meanings. Origen is the source of all that . . .

*****

The opposing school of interpretation, using the Grammatical/Historical method, was in Antioch, Syria, home of the opposing Bible text.

“Do you remember that the disciples were first called ‘Christians’ at Antioch?” says Jordan. “In Acts 13, it was the church at Antioch that sent Paul out with the gospel. He reported back to Antioch all through his ministry.

“If you wanted to find out how to understand and interpret the Bible, would you go to Egypt or Antioch? I’d go to Antioch!

“For the first few centuries of church history, there was not one church historian who ever lived who would say the Alexandrian method was a sound method.

“What they wanted was to make the Bible equal with human viewpoint--and vice versa--and join them together. The culprit behind this was education.

“It was about human wisdom versus divine revelation. In the Bible, the way God expects you to understand His Word is literally, always making the words on the page the issue.

*****

“The ensuing fight between these two power centers among the Church Councils led to Antioch losing the political battle in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries.

“The ‘church fathers’ turned to the Greeks as the model by which they trained. The great discussion became what they call virtue. You know, with the Greek philosophers—Plato, Aristotle—virtue was the big issue; what is the supreme good?

“Virtue is what? It’s your lifestyle; the rules that order the things of your life. All of a sudden, things changed from the assimilation of sound Bible doctrine, which produces life, to the external lifestyle and academics that would produce--to where you could say, ‘This is it—we meet the rules.’

“This is where the academic life began. Leaving the Pauline method of Bible study, you enter into the academic world. This is where the structures of the university system started and gave rise to all of that.

*****

“In the 5^th Century, a controversy started by Pope Cyril of Alexandria and targeted at Nestorius of Antioch, resulted in church literalists forever losing to the allegoricalists.

“Cyril got into a conflict with Nestorius, who was archbishop of Constantinople, about whether Mary was the ‘mother of God.’

“It’s a long detailed issue and they got arguing about what some words mean and Cyril wanted to take it allegorically. Nestorius says, ‘We take it literally,’ and they wound up with a great controversy.

“Cyril said Mary’s the mother of God. Nestorius spoke of Mary as the mother of Christ but thought it improper to speak of her as the mother of God.

“The fact that Nestorius was trained in Antioch, and inherited the Antioch zeal for exact biblical exegesis, insisting upon the recognition of the full manhood of Christ, is of first importance in understanding his position.

“In Antioch, they emphasized the humanity of Christ. Cyril says, ‘Because you’re emphasizing the humanity of Christ, you’re denying His deity.’ Strange, isn’t it? Nestorius wasn’t; he was just emphasizing His humanity.

“But Cyril says, ‘See, you’re denying the deity of Christ because you don’t think Mary is the mother of God! You only think she’s the mother of the humanity, so you believe Jesus is only a man.’

“Now, Nestorianism itself, as a theology, developed the idea that Jesus was two people in one person, but Nestorius didn’t believe that heresy.

“Nestorius was exactly right and Cyril was wrong, but you know who won? Cyril. And that controversy . . . by the way, the Nestorians gave out the gospel as missionaries in China in 7^th Century. They took it all over Africa, Persia, and India and all the way to the Pacific Ocean in China. They were heretics, named that way, but they had a zeal. You know what they were? They were outside the camp.”

*****

During the Middle Ages, a mixture of biblical teaching and Aristoliean philosophy developed known as scholasticism. There was an attempt to reconcile divine revelation with Aristotle’s human speculations.

“They developed a methodology in the academy and that’s where systematic theology came from,” says Jordan. “Aquinas, these guys, based on Aristotle’s Golden Mean—the greatest virtue—and they develop a systematic way of explaining God.”

Aristotle was a student of Plato, who was taught by Socrates. In my Dummies book on world history, it says, “Socrates was a critic. He lived to question, to pick apart assumptions . . . Plato depicted Socrates as intent on convincing his fellow Athenians to reexamine their ideas about right and wrong. Plato’s writings describe Socrates using a technique that’s been called the Socratic method ever since: Socrates asks the person he is talking to for a definition of a broad concept (such as piety or justice) and then tries to get the person to contradict himself with his answer.”

*****

“Now, when you get into Romanism, you get what’s called monasticism; men going into the monasteries,” explains Jordan. “The idea now is you’re not just going to seek virtue, but you’re going to be celibate from the world off in a monastery and find the supreme good through isolation. You’re going to get rid of worldliness by not being in the world.

“Now, can just anybody do that? If everybody can’t do it, you then have to have a special class of superior people. That’s where the clergy comes from. See how it all develops?!

“You now need to go out of culture to a place to learn it and therefore you’re not learning among the people! Paul says in Thessalonians, ‘Know them that labor among you and over you in the Lord.’ People in leadership of an assembly are people who are among you—not off on a hilltop somewhere.

“When that developed, it was these guys from the institutional Church that took it over. And so you have this whole system where you had this special class of people and this runs really from the 5^th to the 15^th Century. That’s called the Dark Ages.

“There were only two places to get any learning—one was in these segregated places and the other was in the king’s court. And if you want to see what happens when things go that route, the Dark Ages is what you’re looking for.”

*****

With the Reformation in the 1600s came a return to training people outside of monasteries, but what was used was the writings of the Greek-Alexandrian influenced Reformers.

Jordan explains, “You ever talk to anybody called a Calvinist? Why would you call them a Calvinist? Because they follow the writings of Calvin (who followed Augustinian doctrine). You ever talk to anybody who tells you they’re part of the Reformed Church? Why do you call them the Reformed Church? Because they’re following the writings of the Reformers. Catechisms, creeds . . .

“There’s a big movement to go back to the ‘confessional church.’ They’re talking about the Reformation churches that have these great creeds. The Westminster Confession of faith and the Helvitic Confession of faith. The doctrinal statement becomes the standard. For Paul, what was the standard? The Book.”

Faith is faith is faith

It was in the 16^th and 17^th centuries that theologians began to think about how the soul and spirit interplay in the inner man, developing what they called the “doctrine of the kenosis.”

Of course, kenosis (meaning theology) is as old as Philippians 2; Paul thought about it originally.

After the 6^th and 7^th centuries, there was no doctrinal development inside the institutional church for almost a thousand years. It wasn’t until the 15 and 1600s, with the Reformation, that the great topic in theology called Soteriology (salvation) emerged.

“The issue of salvation in the Reformation was really the issue of the application of redemption,” explains Jordan. “Romans 1:16 says, ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.’ If you don’t get the proposition straight, the rest of that verse won’t help you . . .

*****

“I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of the writings of Pope John Paul II; I have. This man talked constantly about Christ dying for his sins, about Jesus Christ being resurrected, about Him being ‘God in human flesh come to intercede in the sufferings of humanity.’

“He was schooled, and he genuinely filled his mind with all that information on a daily basis, it seems. But Romans 1:6 doesn’t say that’s how you get saved. It says the way you get saved is by relying exclusively on that information.

“See how close you can get to it and miss it?! You can get real close! It can look—you can have all the Is dotted, Ts crossed, the doctrinal statement exactly right and look like you’re there, but miss it.

“Because having it or not having it isn’t in organized religion’s theology; it’s in the Bible. It’s understanding that the life is ‘Christ in you the hope of glory’; not how shiny your doctrinal statement is.

“Romans 1:16 is a verse of Scripture you need to get clearly fixed in your understanding about the clarity of the gospel. That issue of the proposition—and that’s where the ‘Lordship Salvation’ comes in, that’s where the ‘Easy-Believism’ stuff comes in—all that confusing stuff you hear comes in from just a failure to make the issue the issue, and the issue is relying exclusively on faith; no works involved.

“And it’s not just knowing all about it—people say, ‘Well, they didn’t really have saving faith; they weren’t really . . .’ Listen, faith is faith is faith! There isn’t but one kind of faith and that’s just faith!

*****

“ ‘If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater,’ says I John 5:9. If you know how to trust somebody who tells you, ‘We’re going to meet at a certain time at a certain location,’ and you follow the map, and come that day because you took their word for it, you know how to have faith.

“That’s how you have faith in God. The thing about God is, though, He’ll never lie to you. I might. God won’t make a mistake; I sure will. God won’t let you down. The witness of God is greater, deals in greater things—eternity.

“But faith is faith. There’s no value in my faith; the value’s in what I’m trusting. And what God says is, ‘You have to trust me exclusively—nothing else.’ And that’s what quote ‘saving faith’ is. But that’s a Calvinistic term because they think that there’s a bunch of merits and different kinds of faith, and that’s this theology business.

“Do you think anybody understood justification by grace through faith before Martin Luther? Sure they did. Where do you think he heard about it?! We’re going to see there are people all through church history . . . For 1,600 years there’ve been people preaching it. Luther was just a guy with a lot of political clout who came to believe it and made the headlines.

*****

“The only visible, organized religious system that God ever established was the nation Israel. That’s why if you can’t identify the difference between Israel and the Body of Christ, you’re never going to get straight the issue of where the real life of the Body of Christ really is.

“Institutions, councils, crusades, church boards, worship services, images, clerical garb—all that stuff is not the issue. That’s focusing on things that aren’t the issue. The issue is sound doctrine, truth, I Timothy 2:4: ‘Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.’

“So, to study real church history, what are you going to study? Well, you’re going to study what is the real issue, aren’t you? Which would be people, saints and sound doctrine. It would be the outworking of sound doctrine through God’s people, not the institutions of ‘religionized’ Christendom.

“You understand when you read a church history book, most of them are really giving the history of the ‘anti-church’? The false church?

“There’s a guy who calls us ‘hyper-dispensationalists.’ You haven’t lived until you’ve been called an ‘ultra-dispensationalist.’ I got a friend who responds, ‘Well, if I’m a hyper, you’re a subtra.’ In other words, ‘If I went too far, you didn’t go far enough.’

*****

“What I wish I could make the people who dismiss me as a ‘hyper-dispensationalist’ understand is that, according to the Bible, Believers will one day participate in the running of the government of the heavens and our job assignments will be based upon our grasp of the Word.

“In II Timothy 3:7, Paul warns about those who are ‘ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ In heaven, people will always be coming to more and more knowledge about the truth.

“Just as one event in your life leads to another event and to another event, and causes maturity and growth, and understanding and expansion of knowledge, everything God wants you to know is already in the Book, but you’re going to have an eternity to learn about it.”