Power point presentation

II Thessalonians 1: [11] Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

[12] That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

When Paul talks about power, in the context, it's in the midst of trying, stressful circumstances--persecutions and afflictions--but it's a power that is accessed by faith and what is it that faith is accessing? "The grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ," explained Alex Kurz in his Sunday morning message this week.

You know what the Apostle Paul writes, for example, in Romans 5: [1] Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

[2] By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Paul never got over the grace of Almighty God. He was changed for life. Grace never dulled his senses. Grace was the fuel, the energy, the oxygen that kept him driven.

"The grace of our God." That has to do with persistent awareness and sense that the undeserved favor, the undeserved goodness--all of the riches of God's goodness were showered on the Apostle Paul.

II Corinthians 12: [9] And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

[10] Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

"I take pleasure." You know why? "That the power of Christ may rest upon me."

*****

“I don't think Believers appreciate near enough the fact that just by taking God at His Word--truly believing the Bible, dispensationally considered, contains absolutely everything God wants us to know about Him and our relationship to Him--lends real power,” says Richard Jordan. It's internal power that shatters anything the world has to offer.

It's that ability God gives in the inner man, strengthened with might. It's an energy in your inner man to endure. That's spiritual power. There's something about that strength, that power that God gives. No great open physical displays and things that make everybody "ooh" and "ahh," but that "patient continuance in well doing."

He's saying not only can we know something about the breadth, length, depth and height of Jesus Christ's love for us, but we can truly know it and its power to work in us. The power is in the faith in it.

Through knowing the measurements, dimensions and parameters of exactly what God is doing today, there's a maturing of the relationship that is extremely intimate and lends deep, deep communion.

You cannot just know about His tremendous love, but KNOW it, appreciate it, enter into it and find out how it passes knowledge. Just as it is in a momma's touch with a newborn baby, there's a love there and a communication there that passes any ability to understand and explain it.

It's that kind of a bond, that kind of a connection. It's as though it were a mother's touch that reaches down and assuages the hurt and salves the wound and dispels the fear and gives untold strength and stability.

*****

Paul writes in I Thessalonians 1:5: "For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake."

He says in chapter 2: "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."

Jesus says, "The flesh profiteth nothing," meaning all of OUR wisdom and OUR resources aren’t the issue.

You got to start there! You never want to glory in yourself: "It isn’t me; it’s Him."

Jesus said, "The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." The need is, "Not I but Christ." You're to constantly be learning this at a different level; that's part of what maturity is all about.

The words on the pages are the Words of the Spirit and when I believe that Word, and put my faith in it, it WORKS; it becomes energizing activity and life.

Paul writes in II Thessalonians 3:1: "Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you."

Paul’s saying, "I want the Word of the Lord to be set free; to run without obstacles, without needing to stop and be glorified."

When you glorify something, you demonstrate how valuable it is; how much of a treasure it is. How important it is.

How would you glorify the Lord Jesus Christ? How do you demonstrate in your life that you cherish Him—His wisdom, His thinking--more than anybody else?

*****

Pauline prayer is the vehicle for the release of the power of God’s Word in the details of life. It’s praying according to the principle of grace: “The only response grace will accept is the response of faith."

We take the truths of God and internalize them through that energizing ministry of God the Holy Spirit—through His enlightening and empowering ministry—and Pauline prayer is the catalyst to accomplish that. That’s why Paul prays so much.

We talk repeatedly about how prayer today focuses on spiritual issues. Our blessings today are "spiritual blessings in heavenly places." God’s blessings to us are designed to enhance our inner man, and good works come from the inner man, they’re motivated from there.

Pauline prayer is aimed at producing peace and contentment that’s independent of the circumstances of life. Rather than just simply manipulating circumstances, it’s designed to enhance your spiritual perception, and your spiritual character, so that regardless of whom you are, or the circumstances that come upon your life, you’re able to function with stability and contentment; with empowerment and effectiveness.

The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 3: [16] That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
[17] That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
[18] May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
[19] And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
[20] Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
[21] Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

Faith is faith is faith

(new article tomorrow)

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 Richard 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.”

Absolute steadfast, sure awareness of what's going to be

Paul begins Ephesians 4 with: [1] I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called,

[2] With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
[3] Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
[4] There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;

In Paul's epistles that word "hope" always refers to something about the Lord's coming. If we went over all the verses about hope . . . 

Romans 5: 2] By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

[3] And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
[4] And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

[5] And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. 

What is that "hope of the glory of God"? That's sharing that glorified body out there, explains Richard Jordan.

Romans 15: [4] For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

[5] Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus:
[6] That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[7] Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.

If you think about the resurrection, the hope of being with the Lord . . . Not just dying and going to heaven, but participating with Him in this great plan the Father has to exalt His Son. That's our hope.

Hope defined by the world is a "consoling dream of the imagination designed to make you forget the present troubles." In the world, a hope is just some imaginary illusion you have out there to try and make you feel better about what's going on right now and you dream about it being different in the future. That's not what a hope is in the Bible.

Hebrews 6:19 is a verse you need to put into your mind when you think of hope: [19] Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;

In the Bible, a hope is an anchor for your soul; something to make you steadfast and sure. It is a confident expectation. You know it's true. In this passage, it's because God had promised Abraham and He swore by Himself--He gave His word on it.

Brother Bill Cash used to love to sing that song, "My Anchor Holds." Bill would tell of his Navy days about laying that anchor chain out from the ship and how it would hold in the storm.

A hope is something that fixes your soul so it's not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but you have this steadfast confidence, and you know what it gives you? "Through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope."

When it talks about the work of love and the patience of hope, God directs your hearts into the patient waiting of His Son. II Thessalonians 3: [5] And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.

You see, that anchor about what you know for sure is coming gives you the ability to patiently wait. Confidently wait, not being tossed here and hither and yon, wondering what your future is, but just having that absolute steadfast sure awareness of what it's going to be.

And what's your future going to be? You're going to share in the future glorification of the Lord Jesus and get a body just like His, not so you can look good, but so you can participate in subduing all things under His headship. That's what the Father delights in. He says, "I want you to know and delight in that."

Colossians 1: [26] Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints:

[27] To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

The hope of His calling is the inheritance in His saints. He's going to inherit the heavens through us, just like He inherits the earth through Israel. That's what the hope of His calling focuses on.

Now, He wants you to know the riches of His inheritance in the saints. He wants you to understand not just the hope and the purpose and the steadfastness of His calling that you have as a member of the Body of Christ; He wants you to know the wealth of it. He wants you to see the riches of it. He wants you to see how valuable you and I are--how valuable the Body of Christ is to Him.

You see, God the Father's wealth is not in the universe. His wealth is not in the substance. God owns it all but that isn't where He thinks His wealth is. His wealth is in His saints, and He wants you to understand how valuable He considers what He's accomplishing in us is. His wealth is in the saints that He purchases.

Acts 20:28: [28] Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

Notice He purchased you and me, the church, with His own blood. 

Abraham's steps to follow

Here is outtake from the adult Sunday school meeting this morning and will have a new article late this evening:

Paul writes in Romans 4: [16] Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

[17] (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.
[18] Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations; according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
[19] And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara's womb:
[20] He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;
[21] And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.

[22] And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.

God did all that so the promise is sure. The surety is in God's grace and if it's grace, the only thing grace will accept is faith. Faith is the only way to make the promise sure. You trust God at His Word.

The rest of this passage talks about how Abraham trusted God, not just initially, but all the way through his life. It says he wasn't weak in faith. He started out kind of weak in faith, then he didn't stagger.

So you have weak faith, staggering faith and then you have strong faith. The thing that moved him from weak faith to where he didn't stagger and stumble and then was strong--" being fully persuaded" . . .

I love verse 21. That came about because Abraham didn't look at his circumstances; he looked at what God's Word said and He focused on that and kept that in his mind all the time.

When we walk in the steps of Abraham, we come to be fully persuaded.

But it's so bloody entertaining

(tiredness from my days old cold and waking nightly with stuffed up nose/coughing finally caught up to me and I conked out way before I wanted to last night--at least I feel much better and do not have to go to work today so I will post new article during the day Sunday) 

Fans of vampire movies, TV shows and books can't help but see the very blatant sexual metaphor in the so-called “feedings.” As the HBO director of “True Blood,” explains it: “There's penetration. There are bodily fluids exchanged. There's a cathartic, frenzied physical moment.”

Bible students know that Baal worship, from its inception in Genesis, has always been associated with drinking human blood, something strictly forbidden by God.

What’s so fascinating given today’s obsession with vampire entertainment is that the act of consuming blood is literally a re-enactment of the Original Sin in the Garden of Eden.

In author Arthur C. Custance’s 1980 magnus opus “The Seed of the Woman,” he lays out in exhaustive fashion just how the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was a grape and that the swallowing of grape juice by Adam and Eve is comparable to eating blood.

Jordan explains, “Custance has got some fascinating things about how fermented grape juice—alcohol—effects the physical body and that’s why there are two great sins in the Old Testament that are forbidden over and over. One is drunkenness and the other is nakedness.”

*****

Genesis 3:6-7 plainly reports, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

[7] And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

Likewise, Habakkuk 2:15 warns, “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness!"

*****

“All of it replicates what happened in the Garden, and when Adam and Eve took that grape it literally induced into their physical frame a physical defect that caused a genetic defect that we call death. It brought about physical death.

“There’s a great deal of study in our day about longevity and scientists are looking for the DNA formula that produces death. The problem is, if they ever found it they wouldn’t know what to do about it because it’s something beyond what they’re able to have a capacity to rectify.

“Now, when Adam watched Eve—‘she did eat’—with that grape . . . well, what’d God tell them would happen in they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? That they would die. Adam saw her die. ‘And she gave it to him and he did eat.’ He died with her.”

*****

As Paul informs in I Timothy 2, “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

“Eve was deceived into eating the grape but, you see, Adam was not deceived. When she gave that thing to Adam, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Now, the parallel passage in Ephesians 5 is, ‘Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.’ In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ chose to die for the church. The wife is told to ‘be subject to your husband as unto the Lord.’

“There’s this connection in the marriage relationship back there (in Genesis 3). If you think a little on what’s going on, Adam and Eve are standing there and their in this coat of many colors—they didn’t have their own clothing but they had this multi-colored garment of light that God gave them.

“And when the Lord Jesus Christ walked with them in the cool of the day, Adam had that same light of the glory of God. It was obvious they were His agents in the earth.

“But when Eve takes that fruit and eats of it, now she’s naked. That’s when the light went out and that garment went away. But not only that, that fruit affected her physically!

“Adam, of course, saw it, and rather than trusting the wisdom and love of God to fix the thing, when it says there in that verse ‘that she gave unto her husband WITH her,’ Adam’s there watching it take place.

“Now, if Adam had done what an instructed man of God ought to have done—he’d have done what’s over in Numbers 30. It says that when a man has a wife, and the wife is talked into making a contract, if the husband comes along and says, ‘No, that’s a bad deal, we’re not gonna have that—you deceived my wife,’ he can negate the whole thing!

“Go over to Numbers 30 and read it. What Adam should have done was say, ‘Wait a minute! This is a mistake! My wife’s messed up!’

"Instead of trusting God’s love and wisdom to straighten things out, Adam made a choice. He said, ‘I love her so much I’m not willing to live without her,’ and in rebellion against God, he took the fruit.

“He was not deceived into it; he wasn’t tricked into it. He did it in conscious rebellion, choosing to love his wife more than God Himself. And so he fell into sin. And something happened to Adam and Eve when they ate that grape.

*****
“Something happened with regard to their blood. Because God’s Word says the ‘life of the flesh’ is in the what? The blood.

“You see, they were created just like you and I are in the sense they had a cardiovascular system and a circulatory system and all, and they had blood, but it wasn’t contaminated blood. It wasn’t sin-cursed blood.

"Remember, Jesus Christ had blood, but He didn’t have a sin-contaminated blood. He had God’s blood. Well, Adam and Eve they got—the old-timers used to call it ‘blood poisoning,’ and I guess that’s as good a thing as any to call it. And they got it by eating that grape.”

*****

Just after Noah and his family got off the ark post-Flood, God instructed, “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.”

Similarly, God warns in Leviticus 17:10, “And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.”

In Acts 15, when Paul meets with the Jerusalem apostles and the Christian church there, he says, “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;

[29] That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.”

*****

“Folks, eating blood in the Bible is something you’re not to do. Moses commanded that you don’t eat blood. God told Noah don’t eat blood. And again, the reason is it’s a type of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden. When Eve took that grape . . .  

“By the way, if you go down to the drug store or Macy’s they have lipstick counters with 60 different shades of lipstick. A (cosmetic salesman) once told me that between 60-75 percent of all lipstick sold is red and they have all these other colors just to placate people so they’ll buy the red too.

“Did you ever eat grapes? Drink grape juice? Could you maybe guess why people put red lipstick on? You say, ‘Aghh, Brother Rick, now c’mon, you’re pulling our leg!’ but your (Bible-believing) grandparents knew exactly what I’m talking about!”

Little peons judged with darkness

(sorry for delay--new article tomorrow for certain)

Considered by some the “smartest man in the world,” physicist Stephen Hawking concludes in his book “The Grand Design,” “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

As a blogger reasons, “But how then does Hawking explain the existence of his metaphorical 'blue touch paper' that set the universe going? How does Hawking explain the existence of gravity in the first place? He doesn't! He simply presupposes that it exists. Hawking does not know how to explain gravity. To him that is simply where explanations come to an end.”

*****

Starting in Genesis 1, the Bible explains, [5] And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

“God named Day and Night; that’s a personification,” says Richard Jordan. “That’s more than just the physical; there’s a spiritual darkness being dealt with there. When He said, ‘Let there be light,’ that’s the ‘God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,’ as Paul writes.

“He’s declaring to His creation right there that the only place you’re going to find the purpose of God and His exaltation and His glory in His creation is in Jesus Christ; it’s not in that make-believe wisdom of the Adversary.

“You go down to Genesis 1:14 and you’re on Day #4 and God said, ‘[14] And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.’

“Now He’s going to put lights in the heavens. You’re going to have a physical light that’s going to separate the spiritual darkness into two categories and they’re going to be for signs.

"In other words, they’re going to divide up the darkness from the light and they’re going to be physical manifestations.

*****

“He’s going to start using sign language in His creation. You know Psalm 19: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.’

“But there’s a little more to it than that because He’s going to use the sun, the moon and the stars. The thing about them is they produce light. The moon reflects the light of the sun but it lights the earth with reflected light. Even in the darkness, when the earth is on the dark side of things, it can reflect off the moon and light the earth.

“The stars are light sources. One of the reasons angels are associated with stars in the Bible is angels don’t function in darkness. Darkness is a chain that immobilizes. God did that in Egypt in Exodus 10. Verse 21 says, [21] And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt.

“That’s darkness that could be felt. You read that and you see nobody could get around it—it was such oppressive darkness that it immobilized people, the Egyptians.

“In the Book of Jude it says God has those angels ‘bound in chains of darkness.’ They look for and gather around the light sources because they need those things to function. That’s why they’re associated with them.

“By the way, you see at the end of Genesis 1:16 it says, ‘he made the stars also’? That’s not saying, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, I think I’ll make a few stars.’ 

"He made the sun, the moon and the stars also to do what? The verse says 'God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night.' He made the stars also to RULE.

"Verses 17-18 says: [17] And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
[18] And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

“Who did God put in the heavens originally to rule the heavens in the earth? Lucifer and His angelic creation. That word Lucifer in Latin means he’s a ‘light-bearer.’ The original light-bearer was Satan before he became Satan, and ‘the host’ before they became fallen angels.

*****

“When the original light-bearer fell into a false wisdom experiment, God judged him with darkness. ‘Their foolish hearts became dark.’ God withdrew His wisdom and understanding and darkness consumed them.

“On that fourth day God put into the heavens some new rulers to replace the old rulers. The Book of Job talks about the ordinances of heaven; the constellations ruling the seasons in the earth. God literally set up a new structure in His creation; new laws, new rules to do to replace Satan, and they are for signs.

“They physically manifest the power God put in them that, when Satan usurped all that stuff, he’s getting people to worship the HOST of Heaven. They aren’t just worshipping the sun; they’re worshipping the power they think is behind that.

“Satan takes those rulers and wants them to worship him as the REAL power. You watch people worshipping fertility gods; that’s what you do with the sun and they’re trying to get the crops to grow. They’re not worshipping just the mechanics of the sun; they’re wanting ‘the god of the land’ to come and fill up the earth with food. So they are symbols, signs.

*****

“In Genesis 11 all this stuff got codified, if you can put it like that. At the Tower of Babel it was all organized into a worldwide religion. Remember, after the Flood God added nationalism. A nation, as we know from Genesis 10, is made up of borders, language and culture.

“Genesis 11:3 says, ‘[3] And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.’

“They say, ‘We’re not going to use God’s stone to make stuff; we’re going to use our own.’ They substituted man-made stuff—slime for mortar.

“Verse 4 says, [4] And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

“ ‘Let us make us a name.’ You see what’s driving this? There’s a philosophy; there’s a thinking process. ‘I want to have a name.’ ‘Lest we be scattered on the face of the earth.’ What did God tell Noah? Scatter.

“’They built the city in rebellion against God’s prescribed social order. Then they built a tower against God’s prescribed spiritual order. And they take the whole world in rebellion and all God had to do to thwart it was change their language. I think it’s so funny! God wasn’t sitting up in heaven, fretting, 'Oh, my, I wonder what they’re going to do.'

"As Psalm 2:4 says, ‘He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.’ God looks down and says, ‘They think they’re so smart. Watch! Ha, Ha.’

“The old boy’s over here trying to lay some bricks and he looks over to his helper and says, ‘Go get me some more mortar,’ and his helper hears, ‘Hit me in the head with a hoe.’ ‘You sure?!’ ‘I’m the boss, do what I tell you! Get on with it; do it in a hurry!’

“Can you understand how they couldn’t get along and He scattered them? What was happening there? It was all to reach heaven. It was to ‘worship the creature rather than the creator.’ What happened with all that stuff is God destroyed it.

*****

“When you read this stuff in Genesis 11, remember Moses is writing this to some people who just came out of Egypt and were going into Canaan, experiencing this stuff. Moses is explaining, ‘All this heathen stuff you’re going to face--this is where it came from and this is why they do it.’

“Now, fast-forward a bunch of centuries, more than a thousand years, and watch what happens with Israel. II Kings 17:

[7] For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,
[8] And walked in the statutes of the heathen, whom the LORD cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, which they had made.
[9] And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.
[10] And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree:
[11] And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the LORD carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger:
[12] For they served idols, whereof the LORD had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing.

“Drop down to verses 16-18: [16] And they left all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.
[17] And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.
[18] Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight: there was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

*****

“What happens is when Israel got in that land, rather than them being separated from (the evil), that stuff infiltrated and they embraced it.

“You go down in the chapter and you see over and over, ‘they know not the manner of the God of the land.’

"That term ‘God of the land’--you ever hear anybody talk about territorial spirits? You know who believes in that? Heathen. That’s a pagan doctrine. They believe there’s a god for this land and a god for that land.

“When God brought them out of Egypt, it wasn’t just that they didn’t have to make cakes anymore; He brought them out of captivity to the gods of Egypt and set them free from that religious system that made them think that those little gods were God.

“You know how the Believer thinks? ‘The heavens are the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.’ He owns it all; He’s the God of it all. All these little guys are just little peons; false claimants of pieces of the land that God Himself owns, not them.

“Look at II Kings 17:32-33: [32] So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.
[33] They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

“That’s the ruination! They said, ‘We’ll serve Jehovah and all these other gods like they’re all the same.’ God told them it don’t work. That’s why Paul says, ‘Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate.’ You can’t serve Baal. They don’t mix. That’s why Moses said to destroy them.”

Law of attraction WORKS

(new article tomorrow)

When Deuteronomy 18 lists witchcraft among the abominations God says not to be a part of, it has to do with, “I know secret code words I can speak and when I speak them, it gives POWER in the spirit world.”

“You ever heard a preacher tell you your words have power? It’s called ‘word of faith,’ ” explains Richard Jordan (shorewoodbiblechurch.org). “In the business world they call it the ‘Law of Attraction.’ It’s all the same thing and it’s EVERYWHERE. Why? Because it’s the way the world’s been made to work; that (other) spirit that RULES and WORKS.

“This Mystery Mother prospers everywhere the Word of God, the springs of living water, doesn’t go out. Where there’s hunger for God’s Word and yet it’s gone and people are out there in that barren wilderness of life. She doesn’t prosper where God’s Word holds sway, because light drives darkness away.

“In Jeremiah 7 and 44 she’s called the Queen of Heaven. Baalam, the sun god, the god of heaven, marries the earth and he’s got a queen. The whole issue here is the joining of heaven and earth together. That’s Satan’s original intention. That’s the secret; the intent behind it all to make Lucifer the head of heaven and earth. It’s to put him on the throne and bring the two together under his control.

*****

The religious system the Antichrist uses to come to power started back in Genesis, but when God changed the program from the prophetic program to the mystery program, the Antichrist program morphed into a mystery form, called “the mystery of iniquity,” to counterfeit godliness.

“This is what the real battle’s about. Most people sit around and try to fight the symptoms--the evil things they see in the world today-- and they miss the source.

“If you take a course in using a fire extinguisher, the first thing they tell you is you don’t spray at the flames; you spray at the base where it’s coming from. You get to the source, not the symptoms.

“All these religions out there have their own little religious system but they’re all worshipping the same ultimate program. She’s the mother of all kind of other things that just reflect different aspects; different cultural expressions of her lie.

“All these religious systems have things they do. An image is a symbol, an idol is a symbol, a sacrifice is a symbol, a temple is a symbol. It’s an expression of a thinking process. There’s a spirit of thinking people have to express themselves in these things.

“We don’t need a symbol; we’ve got the reality. We don’t need all those go-betweens. We don’t need bellhops and busboys. We’ve been made ‘accepted in the Beloved.’ You don’t need aids to worship; you’ve got the truth of God’s Word that you can understand and walk in an intelligent understanding of His will written in His Word. You stand on truth, objectively demonstrated and by faith understood. We don’t need all that stuff, but if you don’t have the other, that’s all you’ve got.

“It’s like Micah in Judges 18 when the guys took off with all of his idols and his priests. He’s wailing, and the guy looks at him and says, ‘What aileth you?’ Micah says, ‘You stole my religion!’ Well, you can’t steal a belief.

“To steal your religion, they’d have to take Christ out of you, and if Christ is one with you, to take Christ out of you--what would it leave in you? Nothing; you’d go with Him! You see what a different mindset that is?! Sometimes we get so stuck on what we have—our money, our job, our possessions, our plans, our things—but this world isn’t it; that’s not our real identity.

*****

“Nahum 3:4 says, [4] Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

“Notice it effects families and nations. It effects the whole culture you live in; not just you but your family and the world you live in.

“When it’s described as a harlot, it’s describing someone who sells benefits. Here’s someone selling the benefits that this goddess is going to produce. It’s not free love; they want money in exchange for what they’re going to give you.

“When it talks about witchcraft, they’re billed to do miracles and prayer circles and sacred code words.

“I was at an evangelism meeting where a guy got up at the end of the meeting said, ‘Now, we want to have unity in here, so let’s all join hands and make a big circle and sing and have a kumbaya moment.’ I thought, ‘Where’s the restroom; I’ve got to be excused.’ I mean, even in Bible-believing places where people want to preach the gospel, it gets in.”