Perilous times pending

When Paul warns Timothy that "perilous times shall come," the term "perilous" is the idea of dangerous. Talking about his life, Paul writes in II Corinthians 11:26, "In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren."

“All of those conditions are dangerous conditions that can kill you, can overwhelm you; they're horrendous and can overpower you,” explains Jordan. 

“In Romans 8, Paul uses the term in an interesting way. Verse 35 says, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?’

“Perilous times can have to do with you just being taken out and slaughtered. They’re dangerous times.

“When he describes them in II Timothy 3, the nature of the age under grace—it’s not going to be getting better.

“I remember in the ’80s, right after I’d come up from Alabama to Chicago, preaching a message at North Shore Church and I quoted a verse in Ecclesiastes. Afterward, I had three people come up to me and ask, ‘Where is that verse?’ I thought everybody knew the verse but I came to find out people don’t read the Book of Ecclesiastes.

“Ecclesiastes 8:11 says, ‘Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.’

“Isn’t that what Peter said about the dispensation of grace? II Peter 3 says, ‘The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.’

“Man doesn’t say, ‘Wow, I’m glad I missed the wrath! Thank you for not destroying me!’ He says, ‘Oh, He doesn’t see. I’ll go out and do some more.’

“Isaiah 26:10 says, [10] Let favour be shewed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD.

“You know what the longsuffering of God demonstrates? The complete depravity of humanity. And the longer the dispensation of grace goes on, the longer you’re going to see a more and more mature depravity overtake mankind.

"De-evolution, not evolution, is man’s pattern. That’s why that image in Daniel 2 starts at the head and winds up at the feet. Man doesn’t go from the dust to glory; he goes from glory to the dust.

“Occasionally they’ll be a little burst forth of life and light as the Reformation was when it finally anchored itself in England . . .

“You know, until that last person gets into the Body of Christ, that day of grace keeps going and then it will be over. Now that’s God’s timing. I have no idea to tell you when He’s going to do it; when He activates it. That’s up to Him.

“What we do is just be faithful and consider every day to be the last day. When you look at the world around you, instead of saying, ‘Oh, woe is me, how terrible it all is,’ just say, ‘Well, it’s exactly the way God said it was going to be. Thank God for the testimony.’

“Years ago, when I was young, I used to preach on the street with a guy in his mid- 40s who’d been saved out of a gangster’s life. He’d been a bootlegger, a robber, a thief, pretty much everything.

“Elbert had been in a knife fight when he was young and his face was cut from here to here and they did a botched job of sewing him up so he couldn’t talk out the right side of his mouth because it was nerve-dead.

“One day we were out passing tracts and some smart aleck business guy came along and started mocking Elbert about the Bible, saying, ‘What do you know? Look at you!’

“And Elbert reached up, took his fingers and got that guy’s nose and just twisted it and the guy’s nose started bleeding. He was screaming and hollering and Elbert looked at him and said, ‘Bud, thank you for the testimony,’ and walked off.

“I said, ‘Elbert, what it the world?!’ and he said, ‘The Bible says the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood (Proverbs 30:33). Still true!’ ”

Days of Noah on steroids

Activities associated with the Antichrist will go far beyond the simple physical, political, economical, philosophical, etc. The ten kings that yield their power to him are described in the same terms as those who gave father to the “nephilim” in Genesis 6. The past becomes prologue to the future.

“When you study the career of the Antichrist, we're not just talking about world leaders at the United Nations; we’re talking about some stuff that, if you get to thinking about it long enough, it will scare the living bejeebers out of you!” says Jordan. “All of a sudden, people see demons behind every rock, and while that isn’t what’s happening today, there’s sure going to be some of that stuff happening in the future!

*****

Occultists of every sort love to deal in portals. According to a website, “CERN is specifically building a stargate — a portal to another time or place —to allow the return of the Annunaki. The Annunaki were powerful ancient deities that once inhabited Earth. Some ancient astronaut theorists believe, instead, that they were extraterrestrials, the very same who assisted in early mankind’s progress.

“The only downside is we don’t know, if CERN were successful, whether or not the Old Gods would come in peace. However, portals and stargates may be the least of our worries. Some feel that during their experiments, in searching for extra dimensions, CERN may open the ‘wrong door.’ ”

Isaiah 13:2 says, “Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.”

Jordan explains, “In other words, there is a portal through which they’re going to come out of the angelic dimension into our dimension in order to be able to fight.

“Angels are not made of Carbon-14 and in Scripture there are passageways; we use the term portals. In literature, they use the term ‘stargates.’ Fascinatingly, that’s what the Bible calls it. If you come over to Revelation 9, all the ones I know how to identify geographically are in the Middle East. One is described being in Egypt, one in Babylon, one in Palestine. They are doorways.

“If you think about in the angelic world, they’re just as real as you are. They’re just not made of the same physical properties. Life in their realm is just as real as it is in our realm.

“I’ve tried to show you that in heaven are farms and cities and manufacturing plants. We talk about the business of heaven. Paul describes the invisible realm and he uses exactly the same terminology to describe it as he does for down on earth. There’s work, there’s jobs, there’s life to be carried on.

“In Daniel 10, Gabriel leaves heaven and it takes him 21 days to get to Planet Earth because the passageway he traveled through to get down here had some roadblocks.

“Every time he crossed a territorial boundary, the government he crossed into wanted to see his passport, or diplomatic pouch, and they held him up and slowed him down. Gabriel testified it took him 21 days. He said, ‘When I go back there’s a war up there going on and I’ll have to go back through all that stuff.’ So there are routes across the heavens.”

*****

Jude 6 says, referring to the days of Noah, “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”

Similarly, II Peter 2:4 states, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.”

Jordan explains, “The angels had a house built by God and they left it. They shifted their dimensional habitation. They literally came into man’s dimension to reside to participate in this experimentation, and that’s where those gates come in.

“Revelation 9 starts out: ‘And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.’ All these demonic creatures come out. Once again, there’s this coming in and going out.

“Genesis 6:4 says there were giants in the land AFTER the flood. What they were trying to do, through the genetic engineering, and these procreation experiments, was corrupt humanity so the seed of the woman could not produce a Redeemer.

“The reason Eve was taken out of Adam, and not created separately, is because there could be only one head of the human race. Everybody had to come from one person or you would have needed more than one Redeemer.

“Well, if you could create a human that was something other than human…the whole argument, the whole bio-ethic discussion about this kind of stuff hinges upon man being created in the image of God. If you weren’t created in the image of God, what difference does it make?

“What’s the difference between breeding somebody to be an athlete or training them? Well, ethically if you think we’re just the product of evolution, there is no big deal. In fact, it’s the logical, natural thing to do: ‘Let’s enhance things.’

“But if you understand the importance of man as a creation of God, as having a purpose in the earth: ‘Go out and have dominion; reclaim it.’ See, that’s why Satan was seeking to do all that in Genesis 6.

*****

"After the Flood Satan starts over again but then he quit. The reason he quit was because the issue was no longer about corrupting all of mankind; the seed of the woman became the seed of Abraham. He realized, ‘Now we only need to get Abraham.’

“Did you ever notice in Matthew 8:29, Jesus cast demons out of a guy and the demon says, ‘Hold on, thou Son of God, have you come to torment us before our time?!’

“You see the demons knew exactly what was going on dispensationally in Matthew 8! They know what’s going on dispensationally right now. Satan keeps up-to-date on what God’s doing and he doesn’t waste ammunition shooting at something God used to do and isn’t doing anymore.

“That’s why the giants were going after Israel. Today, the Adversary knows God’s not trying to repossess the land of Palestine. What’s He doing? He’s forming the Body of Christ.”

*****

A common question is when Jesus Christ descended into the paradise side of hell for the three days between His death and resurrection, what did He do there?

The answer is in I Peter 3:18-20:

18] For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
[19] By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
[20] Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Basically, Christ preached to those same disobedient angels from Noah’s day who impregnated human females with giant offspring and have since been held in chains of darkness (II Peter 2:4).

“What Peter’s doing is talking to some people out in the future who are going to face the same kinds of things the people faced back in Noah’s day. The origin of it was back there before the Flood, and the culmination of it will be over here in the upcoming tribulation period,” explains Jordan. “Just like Christ had a witness through Noah, ‘a preacher of righteousness,’ this Little Flock is going to witness during the tribulation.

“In Daniel 2, you’re going to discover that all this stuff going on with the giants is directly connected and associated with what the Antichrist will be doing!”

*****

What’s ever-fascinating is the picture-type presented in Nimrod, who we learn from Genesis is related to the giant offspring produced by the demons!

“Everything Nimrod’s doing is in rebellion to God, and in what begins in Babylon, the plain of Shinar where Nebby shows up later on, is the setting for the inception of Baal worship, the Antichrist’s religion.

“It says Nimrod BEGAN to be one of these mighty men; men of renown. When you were born, did you just somewhere after maybe 20-25 years begin to be human? It said he began to be one of these mighty men of old; men of renown. I read over that verse for years and never thought much about it, but then I got thinking about it. 

“It’s like Nimrod had been living along here and all of a sudden something clicked. There’s a catalyst. There was some gene turned on and he began to be. When I read that, I think, ‘These guys had tapped in to an ability to control’ . . . I mean, today we’re just scratching the surface with cloning, genetic engineering and that kind of stuff.

“These guys had tapped into the ability to manipulate and control DNA, the human genome. Going forward, man’s devious nature is going to take whatever you do and do what? His imagination is only evil continually.

“This is real important because they learned some secrets about the spirit world from these angels when they co-habitated with them.

“Nimrod founded Babel and Babel (which is Babylon) was and will be the place of the centralization against the purpose and plan of God. It’s there that they’re going to have the one-world language, the one-world religion, the one-world government. They’re going to do everything they can to thwart God's purpose.”

For truth has fallen in the street

Evil forces vying for power and control today are banking on the human phenomenon known as “source amnesia,” which leads people to forget whether or not a statement is true.

“Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true,” informs a New York Times op-ed column on the subject. “With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a non-credible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength.”

Obviously you can see the biblical implications. That’s why you hear all kinds of outrageously untrue statements about what the Bible really says. People listen to other people’s lies and don’t remember what they once knew as fact from God’s Word.

*****

"In the Bible, truth is more than just being right all the time; it’s the ultimate basis of reality," says Jordan. "What makes what’s real? God.

“You know that coffee table is solid, but at the atomic and sub-atomic level it isn’t. Well, what’s reality really made of? In Scripture, the ultimate source of what’s real—not illusionary, but what’s real—is who God is.

“There’s a scene in one of the Indiana Jones movies where, at the end, everything resolves itself; they figure out the mystery they’re looking for in the crystal and Indy asks, ‘Well, did they go out into space?’ The other guy says, ‘Yes, the space between things.’

“You know that what he’s talking about is not outer space. You take an atom

and it’s got all these neutrons, protons and electrons that circle. Well, what’s between all that?

*****

The thing you notice more and more about yourself as you study and try to apply God’s Word is how much you lie to yourself.

The more the lie is subconsciously reinforced in the brain the harder it becomes not to buy into it as truth on a physical-emotional level where it actually debilitates you in a very real way.

Paul writes in I Thess. 2: 13, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”

Jordan asks, “How do you get where the truth effectually works inside of you, and produces its work in you so when your feet hit the ground you’re off doing what God’s Word says you should be doing? How to you get from where it’s stuff you just know in your head to stuff that lives in your life?”

He answers, “There’s one word and it’s not religion. It’s not rules or regulations; performance systems. Look at what the word is—believe.

“You know what the long and the short of it is, folks? When you read a verse of Scripture and it says that this action and attitude ought to be the action and attitude you take as a Believer, because you’re a Believer—because you’re complete in Christ and you know who you are—it should be, ‘This is the way I will live my life on a daily basis; this is how God would live and act in me.’

“When you don’t do that, you know why you don’t do it? Because you don’t believe the verse! That’s all there is to it! There’s not any other excuse. You’ve got misplaced dependencies; your confidence is not in God’s Word; it’s not in who God’s made you in Christ. It’s in you or someone else and what you want and not what God wants.

“You want the verses to work in your life? Believe. That’s all you got to do. The only response grace will accept is faith and when you believe the verses, you know what they’ll do? They’ll transform your life into what they say. The reality of what they say WILL work in your life.

“Your emotions are designed to respond (that’s why there’s the word motion) and God has built you so a part of your inner man’s designed to put into motion the things that your heart and your mind have chosen to do.

“But the order is facts first. Then you have to faith in the facts. And once you have faith in the facts, it will produce some fruit. And the fruit will then produce the feeling.

“You have to have it in that order, because until your faith rests in the reality of the facts, those facts can never go to work in your life. They’ll just be rolling around in your head. When your faith rests in them, your faith in those facts releases the power of that truth and it works effectually in you that believe.”

Meditate therein day and night

“And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.”--Revelation 5:4

In Jesus Christ’s day, “most of the masses were careless listeners (much like today) for they were willing to listen to hearsay rather than check out the facts for themselves,” writes R. Dawson Barlow in his 2005 book The Apostasy of the Christian Church.

The first occurrence of the word “read” in the King James Bible, where somebody is physically reading something, is in Exodus 24:7: “And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.”

Jordan says, “Notice Moses writes the words down in a book. He sprinkles the book, but before he does, he READS the w-o-r-d-s. You see, it’s important in the Bible that you read the Bible.

“When Moses describes to Israel about what they’re to do when they enter into the ‘land of promise,’ one of the first things he tells them (Deuteronomy 17) is that when the king ‘sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
[19] And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them.’

*****

“If you want God’s Word, the truth of who you are in Jesus Christ, the life of Christ, to work in you, you need to get into READING. If you want who God has made you—He called Israel to be somebody and if that was to work in them, they had to get those w-o-r-d-s, read them all the days of their life so those words would work in them.

“You don’t operate simply on your memory. You don’t operate on what you heard a teacher or preacher say. You sit and read the words yourself.

“When Moses dies and Joshua takes his place of leadership, God advises, ‘Be strong and of good courage.’ He says in Joshua 1:8, ‘This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.’

“You see, they’re to take that book, they’re to read it, they’re to meditate on it, they’re to think about it, they’re to fill their mind with it.

“Joshua 8:34 says, ‘And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law.’

“When they’re going to be led into blessing, led into the land, they’re going to be corrected for their misbehavior, they’re going to look at verses in their Bible and read them. It’s that important, folks.

*****

“By the way, this BOOK that Moses starts writing; it just keeps growing. He keeps adding to it. God is writing His Word, growing His Word, adding Scripture to it.

“Joshua 24:26 says, ‘And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, and took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.’

“The verses are showing you there’s this BOOK and they’re reading it and the Book is why it’s important. Now that’s why there’s a Book, by the way.

“The Lord says in Isaiah 30:8, ‘Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.’

“The reason the emphasis is so much on that Book, and reading the Book, is because God designed His people to be People of a Book; of a written record of His Word.

*****

“I remember the first time I read through the Koran, and I had asked my neighbor to ‘get me a copy of the Koran that you guys use.’ I had gone and gotten the one that Arthur Arberry did and I didn’t know whether it was right or not. If you get a translation of somebody’s scripture you want to find the one that the people doing it want.

“I told myself, ‘I’m going to read this through at least 6-8 times so I have a little information in my head about what’s in it.’ Thomas Carlyle said reading the Koran was the most vain effort there is to read and he was right. It’s a confusing kind of thing.

“Read it 4-5 times and you begin to see there really is no pattern to it, but I was struck by how, over and over, they refer to Christians and Jews as ‘The People of the Book.’

“That’s who we are. God wrote a Book. Now, that’s why READING it is important, because the reason you’re reading is you’re reading the Book that contains the w-o-r-d-s of God.

“God didn’t say to listen to DVDs and CDs; He said, ‘Read the Book.’

“Now there’s a listening and hearing issue too, but it starts with the reading. Why does Isaiah 30:8 say to note it in a book? ‘That it may be for the time to come for ever and ever.’ Notice they are to take the word God gave them (through the prophet) and write it in a book so it can be preserved for the future.

*****

"In theological circles, there’s a great discussion about inspiration. II Peter 1:20-21 says, ‘Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
[21] 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.

“Notice it didn’t say they wrote as they were moved. It said they SPAKE. See that? Romans 16:22 reveals, ‘I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.’

“Wait a minute, I thought Paul wrote Romans?! I thought Paul said, ‘Read what I write and you’ll get understanding’? Does that mean Romans doesn’t fit if this dude Tertius wrote it? What’s the deal there?

“Paul didn’t write most of his epistles. In Galatians 6, he writes, ‘Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.’

“It’s only six chapters. But evidently he had some problems with his eyes and he didn’t actually do the penning. He spoke, and as he dictated, Tertius wrote it down.

“But the verse says ‘holy men of God SPAKE as they were moved.’ So where was the inspiration? In spirit, in breathing; that’s talking. Then they record in written fashion the w-o-r-d-s. You know what the recording is? That’s preservation of what’s spoken. There’s inspiration and preservation in one verse.

*****

“It’s fascinating that you take the average doctrinal statement of the average church, and the average Christian institution since the turn of the 20^th Century, and they talk about the Bible. They say, ‘We believe the Bible was given by inspiration of God.’

“And they talk about verbal, planarian inspiration and dynamics in the original autographs. You know what the problem with that is? You’ve never seen an original autograph. You’ve never seen an original copy. The book Paul wrote to the Ephesians, you never saw the original. Most people didn’t. What did they see? Copies.

“Well, if it was only inspired in the original, what have you got now? By their definition, you have an uninspired bible. You say, ‘Well, that’s not good.’

“Now when you go out and raise that question, these people blow their stack at you and they say, ‘Well, you’re one of those ‘King James Only’ people.

“The point is God wrote His Word, He spake it and it was written down, and was designed to be preserved. How long did Isaiah 30:8 say it was meant for? Why did he say to go write it down? So it could be preserved for the next generation and the next generation.

“It’s still as much His Word after it’s written down as it was when it came out of Paul’s mouth. The scholars say Tertius is Paul’s ‘amanuensis.’ I love that title. That’s just means it’s his secretary. That’s a just a big fancy definition for ‘he’s taking dictation.’ You can’t charge somebody $50,000 for an education if you don’t teach them big words.

“What Tertius is doing is preserving for you the inspired w-o-r-d-s God gave through Paul. By the way, look at Romans 16:26: ‘But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.’

“If God’s Word is to be made known to all nations, what would that require? It’s going to require that it be translated. You remember that verse in Zechariah 8 where he says that ‘ten men shall take hold out of ALL languages of the nations’?

“God knows there’s all these different languages and if His Word is designed to be made known to all nations, He doesn’t tell all nations, ‘Come learn this language.’ He says, ‘Take my Word and put it into the languages of the nations.’

*****

“If you go back and study doctrinal statements before the turn of the 20^th Century, you know what you find they say? They don’t say God’s Word is found in the originals only. They say God’s Word was found in the originals and then preserved through history, designed to be translated into the languages of the nations.

“In fact, the Westminster Confession, the great old confession that everybody says is supposed to be the standard of everything, says that His Word is designed to be preserved PURE through all generations. God is going to preserve His word through history in written form, through copies, translating. It’s designed so it can be permanent and precise.”

Belief in freedom everything, Nike it or not

Regarding the controversy over the glaring omission of the American flag in the newly released movie about the first walk on the moon in 1969, First Man, a critic at the National Review opined, “History sure can be inconvenient when patriotism makes you queasy.”

Reading the quote online, I was reminded of this blog entry of mine from February, 2005:  

 

Last week, London-born Islamic terrorist Richard Reid, a.k.a., "The Shoe Bomber,"

was sentenced to 80 years in prison for his attempt to ignite explosives in his shoe aboard an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December of 2001.

Reid admitted being guilty in statements to the court but reaffirmed his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Islam, declaring, "I think I ought not apologize for my actions; I am at war with your country."

The formal response from U.S. District Court Judge William Young was a stinging, impassioned condemnation of the terrorist and terrorism in general that read, in part:

"See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. You know it always will. It seems to me you hate the one thing that is most precious - you hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely."

Reading the judge's words, I had to think of how God, as the Supreme Judge of all the earth (Gen. 18:25), similarly regards justice and freedom. We all have this same gift of freedom to believe or not believe in Him and one day the unsaved will stand before God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to answer for their sins at the Great White Throne of Judgment. Believers, on the other hand, will escape this judgment by the fact their sins were dealt with on the Cross and they are "justified from all things." (Acts 13:39)

"It is called a 'white' throne because its dazzling brilliance will not, like human courts, be sullied by partiality, dishonesty or cruelty - it will be a throne of perfect and absolute justice," writes now-deceased Bible scholar C.R. Stam about this upcoming event. "The throne is called 'great' evidently because of the vastness of its jurisdiction. There the billions of earth's unsaved will be gathered, from every age of history and every nation of the world. Here, at last, sinners will find themselves exposed to the searching gaze of Him who is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil' and who 'canst not look on iniquity'. At first it may appear that there are no witnesses but the Great Witness is on the throne. A second is in every man's heart, a third in every neighbor's face, and all the evidence is in the 'books'.

"Indeed, the books will be opened so that each man may see for himself what he did and acknowledge the judgment to be just."

*****

In a recent sermon, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church (www.graceimpact.org), explained that the very reason Jesus Christ came to earth as our Redeemer has to do with "demonstrating to creation in real-life terms the freedom and the liberty that love and the life of love can produce."

"God loves freedom so much that He literally, as it were, risked His own eternal plan on the altar of freedom because love has to be freely given and freely received - it cannot have the element of coercion," says Jordan, referring to God's intention from "eternity past" to have creation exalt His honor and glory through its exalting of His Son as Redeemer.

"You see God is going to accomplish His purpose, but He allows freedom to you and me - men, mankind - to disagree with His purpose and not to join Him in it. The Word of God is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways. For people who believe it, it will be life and for people who reject it, it will be death. What makes it that is the choice of the hearer - the response of the hearer."

Indeed, when Jesus Christ Himself says in Luke 12:57, "Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" He's pointing to the fact that our freedom is our responsibility, just as is our faculty of judgment or discernment of faith to know what's going on and believe in it.

A basic principle of God's justice and an infallible rule of the King James Bible is you get what you're seeking for. If you come to the Book wanting the truth from it, you get truth. Judgment is based on what a person seeks after.

(new article tomorrow)

Nobody else has got anybody like Him

Described in the foreword as “a portrayal of the soul-journey from the first stage of the Christian life until the best that God has for us, is reached,” Cora Harris Mac Ilravy’s 1916, 554-page exposition book of the Song of Solomon reads like nothing you’d ever imagine coming from another religion’s book, author or believer.

On verse 2:6 alone (“His left hand is under my head, and His right hand doth embrace me”), for one example, she extrapolates, “Some expositors take the meaning of the left hand to be the hand of God’s judgment and wrath; which in the place of being over and upon man, has been put under him through the work of Jesus Christ . . . It is the left hand of God under our heads that sustains and supports us when the billows are running high and the winds are contrary and raging. We are not always conscious that it is His hand that keeps us from sinking, for the working of His precious left hand is the least seen. But without that, we could not receive all He would give and do for us with His right hand.

“The right hand is the hand of manifest grace, inward love, and joy in Christ, the smile of His approval, the hand with which He molds and fashions the bride. The left hand holds us fast while the right hand deals and works upon the clay of the earthen vessel. The embracing of His hand is so precious, and He lets His love fall upon us like dew, as He leads us into deeper revelations of Himself and of that which He has prepared for us.”

*****

In my files, I have a sermon passage in which my pastor, Richard Jordan, recalls sitting next to an Australian on a long plane flight and talking to him about Jesus Christ. The man identified himself an atheist.

“This man knew absolutely nothing about the Bible; nothing about the Lord,” relays Jordan. “I said, ‘Tell me what you do know,’ and the way he came back was, ‘If there’s a God,’ and he told me his impression of Him was that He was a God of anger, wrath, hate, vengeance and torturing. He said, ‘That’s why I couldn't believe in Him.’ ”

Jordan asks, “Do you know that any other religious book you read doesn't give you the message the Bible gives you about God? You never get that kind of God out of the religious books of the world.

“The God of the Bible is a God of great love. He's a God who loves you, and it's that way from Genesis to Revelation, and when you come to the Pauline epistles, God's love is magnified to a pinnacle that never before could have been imagined because God takes His Son, who died at Calvary, and tells us all about that.

“The Book is so full and so focused on the love of God for us in Christ that there’s only three times He ever even uses the expression ‘the love of Christ’ and it’s only in Paul's epistles that that expression’s found.

“For many people, Romans 8 is their favorite chapter of the Bible. Paul writes, ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
[36] As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
[37] Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

*****

In another filed away Sunday sermon passage, my pastor, Alex Kurz, told of an India native who upset his peers when they learned he had converted to Christianity.

"Why would you do such a thing?" they wanted to know. His answer, in effect: "There are 330 million gods in Hinduism and yet Jesus Christ is the only one who ever claimed, 'I will shed my blood for you.' All the others want you to shed your blood for them."

As an example, Kurz pointed to the major Hindu goddess Kali (Calcutta receives its name from her), who's actually depicted in blood.

"Her idol is black, besmeared with blood," confirms Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. "She has red eyes, four arms, matted hair, huge fang-like teeth, and a protruding tongue that drips with blood. She wears a necklace of skulls, ear-rings of corpses, and is girdled with serpents."

According to a website on world religions sponsored by St. Martin's College in the United Kingdom, Kali "feeds on death and must be offered blood sacrifices. . . Her blackness represents the supreme night which swallows all that exists. . . Kali's terrifying appearance is the symbol of her endless power of destruction and her laughter an expression of absolute dominion over all that exists, mocking those who would escape.

"Her arms are the four directions of space identified with the complete cycle of time. Four arms symbolize absolute domination. Her sword is the power of destruction, the severed head she holds is the fate of all the living, and the garland of skulls shows the inseparableness of life and death. Kali as the power of time destroys all and embodies all fear. As she alone is beyond fear she can protect from fear those who invoke her."

*****

Of course, none of this could be more opposite from Jesus Christ, who is said to have purchased us "with His own blood" (Acts 20:28), dying on the Cross as a willing sacrifice for sin in order to give eternal life as a free gift to anyone who simply places their faith in Him and what He accomplished by giving His blood.

As this purchased possession—a prized, precious possession of God's beyond anything we can comprehend—He is interested in taking care of us and watching over us. The Apostle Paul actually says that when we trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we're married to Him.

We become "flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone," (Ephesians 5:30) and nothing can ever separate us from His love or remove our status of full joint-heirship with Him. The issue of security is forever settled and we're actually one with Christ. There are no works involved. It's not in any way a performance-based system.

*****

By contrast, the Koran's Allah, whose name is derived from the ancient pagan moon-god Al-ilah, is said to be unexplorable and incomprehensible. Out of "99 beautiful names" the Muslims memorize for Allah, with each one said to describe one of his characteristics, not one is "love."

The Koran makes clear Allah only loves those who he deems good and who do good, and doing good by Muslim standards requires daily adherence to the Five Pillars of Faith (public recitation of the creed, "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his messenger," praying to Allah five times a day while facing Mecca, giving alms equal to 2.5 percent of a person's income, fasting during Ramadan and making a pilgrimage to Mecca).

Allah does not love the person whose bad deeds outweigh his good deeds and he will be consigned to hell at the end of history.

"In the Koran, Allah reveals his will, but he never reveals Himself; neither is he ever portrayed as a God of love, nor as a Father to His people, as He is in the Bible," writes world religions scholar Rick Rood on the website Probe. ". . . Though some Muslims have modified this doctrine somewhat, the Koran seems to support the idea that all things (both good and evil) are the direct result of God's will. Those who conclude that Islam is a fatalistic religion have good reason for doing so."

*****

For Buddhism, there is no concept of a personal God and Buddha taught that people don't have individual souls. By reincarnation they return to earthly life after death in a higher or lower form of life depending on their good and bad deeds.

Nirvana, or the final breaking from suffering in this endless process of birth and rebirth, is achieved partially through an "eight-fold path" of personal discipline, but it is not a place like heaven. Buddha never articulated what exactly it is.

"(Buddha) claimed to be the one to point the way to Nirvana, but it was up to each individual to find his own way there," writes Pat Zukeran on Probe's website. ". . . Buddha himself was not certain what lay beyond death. He left no clear teaching on Nirvana or eternity. What he did leave are philosophical speculations. Today the body of Buddha lies in a grave in Kusinara, at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains. The facts of life after death still remain an unsolved mystery in Buddhism. . . All the Buddhist has is hope in a teaching Buddha was not sure of."