Interestingly,
Barnes’ Notes (circa 1830s) says that II Peter 2:13 (“And shall receive the
reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day
time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own
deceivings while they feast with you”) references a “sacred festival” where the
attendees celebrated “with licentious feelings, giving free indulgence
to their corrupt desires by gazing on the females who were assembled with them.”
The next verse reports, “Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot
cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with
covetous practices; cursed children.”
“They wind up in the ‘last days’ under the ministry of the
Antichrist, who rides to power riding the whore from Revelation 17,” explains
Jordan. “These people are right in there with him. They’re a part of this
polluted religious system that promotes, through the false prophet, the
activity of the Antichrist and they wind up with the judgment of that, and in
the midst of that judgment don’t even understand. Still deceived, still dead to
see it, sporting themselves, reveling, while they feast with you.
“That’s a great modern word--sporting. What do you do in a sports car? Do you try to be real
inconspicuous? No. you’re out cutting the rug, trying to call attention to
yourself.
“When he says of them in verse 13, “spots they are and
blemishes,” the other time spot’s used in I Peter 1, he writes, ‘But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a
lamb without blemish and without spot.’
“These people are the exact opposite of Jesus Christ.
James 1:27 says, ‘Pure
religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the
fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.’
“That issue of spots has to do with a sore spot, literally,
that comes up on their body for having taken ‘the mark of the beast.’
Revelation 16 describes it as a running sore like leprosy. In Revelation 3 it
says, ‘Thou hast a few names
even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they
shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.’
“When it says, ‘Having
eyes of adultery,’ that’s the depths of sin’s dominion. I’ve said to you time
and time again through the years that sin starts on the inside. People get mad
at sin and say, ‘We don’t smoke, we don’t chew, we don’t hang with the folks
that do,’ and they’re always dealing with externals, but sin always begins
inside. It isn’t what you put into your body that defiles you.
“Mark 7:21 says, ‘For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil
thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders.’
“That’s why that verse in II Peter says they have a heart
they’ve exercised with covetous practices. You know where the defilement comes?
In Luke 6, he talks about ‘an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil:
for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.’ It comes
from a sin nature.”
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