Oracular God: 'Stop thinking you're Israel'

“Les Feldick says over and over that he believes 95% of people in churches are lost. I used to hear an old Baptist preacher from the South years ago, who traveled all over America preaching, say, ‘I believe 95% of the people in the churches I preach to are unsaved.’

“God says, ‘All will know me.’ That belongs to Israel and we’re not Israel, and when you’re reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it’s not you, and the reason it doesn’t work in your life, and when you try to do it it brings condemnation, bitterness, disappointment, failure and hypocrisy, is because it isn’t you.

"Where it gets right down to the real nub is in Luke 19: [9] And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.
[10] For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

“Luke 19:10 is what they use at the Pacific Garden Mission. It’s the motto verse of the rescue missions. I started my preaching ministry in the late 1960s in an inner-city rescue mission. Rescue missions belong to an organization called The International Union of Gospel Missions.

“Jesus said, ‘This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he’s a lost sinner on his  way to hell.’ No, it was forsomuch as he’s a son of Abraham.

“That’s interesting. You see the message Christ was preaching in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John belonged to Israel. He told the woman at the well in Samaria, ‘Salvation is of the Jews.’

“He tells the apostles in the Great Commission in Matthew 10, 'Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:
[6] But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'

“When you’re reading Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you’re reading the earthly ministry of Christ to the nation Israel and He’s not talking to you; He excludes you.

"You couldn’t preach, ‘Salvation is of the blood of Christ,’ because Christ said, ‘Don’t preach to Gentiles.’ You got to have a change in the program to do what we’re doing.

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I Peter 4:11: [11] If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

“Hebrews 5:12: [12] For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.

“Your mouth is an orifice; an oracle has to do with speaking, a mouthpiece.

“Romans 3: [1] What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?
[2] Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.

“When Solomon builds the temple, I Kings 6 says: [13] And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel.
[14] So Solomon built the house, and finished it.
[15] And he built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar, both the floor of the house, and the walls of the cieling: and he covered them on the inside with wood, and covered the floor of the house with planks of fir.
[16] And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house, both the floor and the walls with boards of cedar: he even built them for it within, even for the oracle, even for the most holy place.

“In the Holy of Holies, it’s called the oracle. Who was there? God. What was in the Ark of the Covenant? The two tablets with the 10 Commandments on it.

“You know what Moses was supposed to do with the original manuscripts? Put them in the Ark. That’s where they kept them. And the priests were to take them out and make copies and be sure the king had a copy. The priests were to go out and teach all over Israel the Word that came out of that oracle.

“All through the Old Testament is this reference to this Book and things being added to the Book. That thing is kept in that Ark. The Holy of Holies in there was where they worshipped God and it's where the Word of God came from.

“When it says, ‘If any man speak, let him speak as the oracle of God,’ it’s saying, ‘Let him speak like he’s talking right out of the Holy of Holies, where the glory of God is.’ ”

(new article tomorrow)