Reason to believe God's reason

(new article tomorrow)

In Scripture, the great demonstration, and the objective proof, that the Bible is exactly what it says it is, and truly is God’s Word, is fulfilled prophecy.

God guarantees in Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I change not.” That verse is echoed in Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

 “I know people use that verse and say, ‘See, God never changes and therefore anything He did in the past He’ll do in the future,’ ” said Jordan in his Christmas eve study. “That verse is not designed to teach you that the Bible is not to be studied dispensationally.

“Paul says, ‘And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.’ The idea in Malachi is God’s saying, ‘If I told you I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it! You can count on it! I’m not going to change. If I’ve given you my word about something, I’ll do it; you don’t have to worry about it.’

*****

“That issue of the preservation of the nation Israel is really, in the Bible, the issue of God telling you He’s going to do something and then doing it.

“Some 100 years ago a mathematician wrote a book about statistical probability and said, ‘If you had eight specific things that identified someone and those eight things, independently given, came to pass, you would have a probability of 10 to the 28^th power.’

“The idea is that is a statistical certainty that we use to prove that people are guilty in a court of law by DNA and fingerprints. The probability gets to be so large that it’s conclusive and doesn’t make a lot of sense not to believe it.

“He said that if you had eight specific identifiers independently given that were authenticated to take place in one person’s life, that would be a probability of 10 to the 28^th power. If you had 16, it was like 10 to the 149^th power. Anything beyond that it was absolutely foolish and illogical not to believe it was true.

“This is exactly the kind of apologetic that God uses. If you go to theology school and read the books about apologetics, there are all kind of different ways to prove that there’s a God and all that kind of stuff, and there’s like six or seven different philosophical ways (ontology) where you’re demonstrating it, but when God wants to demonstrate you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, ‘I am God,’ He uses fulfilled prophecy.

“In the Book of Isaiah, chapters 40-48, you have a description (it’s really a polemic) by God against the false religions Israel has gotten involved in and He’s arguing to Israel how foolish it is to believe in the false religion and not to believe Him.

“He just sort of gets in the face of the false religions in Isaiah 41: [21] Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.
[22] Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come.
[23] Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together.

*****

“Never think that God doesn’t want you to reason. In the first chapter of Isaiah He says, ‘Come now and let us reason together.’

“Just recently I had someone say to me, ‘Well, you know, you’re a man of faith and I’m a man of reason.’ I laughed at him and he said, ‘What are you laughing about?’ and I said, ‘That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. If you think you’re a person of reason and you think I’m a person of faith, really you’re the guy who’s taking a blind leap in the dark. I don’t take a blind leap in the dark. I have mathematical, statistical, scientific evidence that what I believe is true. What have you got? You got opinions, which are like two arm pits. Everybody’s got them, and they’re not very attractive at that.’

“What God says is, ‘I want you to sit down and think, and when you do, here’s what you find out.’ Here’s what He says to them in verse 24: ‘Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you.’

“That’s a pretty strong statement but it’s true. That’s the verdict. It’s the verdict on them (‘ye are of nothing’), on their work (it’s ‘of naught’) and on the worshippers that follow them (they are ‘an abomination’). So it’s the whole bunch of you who are zippo.

*****

“The next verse says, ‘I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come: from the rising of the sun shall he call upon my name: and he shall come upon princes as upon morter, and as the potter treadeth clay.’

“Isaiah 42:9 says, ‘Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.’  Chapter 43:9 says, ‘Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth.’

“You see, God says, ‘I can tell you what’s going to happen. Can anybody else?’ Now, there are a lot of people who try. Everybody used to know who Nostradamus was and the lady in the tabloids, Jeanne Dixon. Then you’ve got the Psychic Network and Madame Blavatsky and all that.

“The problem is there are no specifics involved in any of that stuff. When you think about the idea of fulfilled prophecy, the great thing in the Scripture, and that’s what Joel’s talking about, is God is going to do exactly what He said He was going to do and that’s bring the nation Israel back.

“One of the great things that demonstrates the validity even of that truth is the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing in all of history is as clear as a demonstrable proof of the truthfulness of God’s Word as the coming of the Messiah.

*****

“I have a little book in my library from the 1930s about ‘333 prophecies fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah.’ Now, any time someone gives you a number like 333, my first question is, ‘Well, why wasn’t it 331 or 337?’

“Somebody picked a number and listed it. You don’t need that many but it is fascinating how many there actually are. In that book the author makes the point, ‘How do you take one piece of mail and get it to come to the specific house?’

“The way you do it is you have some eliminators where you eliminate a lot of options. First, you get the right country, so when you pick the U.S. you’ve eliminated about 181 other countries in the world. Then you get the right state, right city, right street, right housing unit number, and then you need to get the right person.

“You can narrow the thing down to the place where you know exactly who it is. Well, God does that with the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Think of what He does. In Genesis, He says the Messiah’s going to be ‘the seed of the woman.’ Right there He eliminated half of the human race because of male and female. Then He says He’s going to be the seed of Abraham. One nation out of all the nations in the earth. See how He narrows it?

“But then when He says it’s going to be the seed of Abraham, it’s not going to be just any seed of Abraham. Abraham had a whole bunch of kids. Remember that? First he had Ismael, then Isaac. After Sarah died he got married again and had a bunch more kids. A lot of folks forget that.

“Well, God said it’s not going to Ismael and that other clan; it’s going to be Isaac. He narrowed it down again. Isaac’s got two kids, Esau and Jacob. He said of those two it will only be Jacob’s. Then Jacob has 12 tribes that come out of him, and God said of those 12 it’s only going to be the tribe of Judah.

“Then He says out of that tribe of Judah, it’s not going to be just anybody. As Isaiah 11:1 says, ‘And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.’

“Jesse is a descendant of Judah but now it’s going to be not just anybody out of Judah, it’s going to have to be somebody who descends from the family of Jesse. Jesse had a whole bunch of boys and it was only David who got chosen out of them.

“That’s why Matthew 1:1 says, ‘The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.’

“If you look at Psalm 132:11, it says, ‘The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.’

“The messiah is going to sit upon the throne, but when He does, it’s going to be the fruit of David’s body that He sits in. That’s why He’s called ‘the lion of the tribe of Judah,’ because that’s what David is.”

Catching up on headlines

Barron's headline today: "Swedes Stock Up on Food as Fears of War Deepens." First paragraph: "Swedes are stocking up on food items in case of war, as more conflict in Europe no longer feels like a distant possibility and authorities encourage measures to boost readiness."

From September 30th's "unprecedented military meeting" of around 800 generals and admirals, per Yahoo News:

"At a rare gathering of top generals and admirals in Quantico, Va., President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled a sweeping — and highly political — plan to reshape the U.S. military.

" . . . Hegseth also delivered a warning for adversaries: 'To our enemies: FAFO,' he said, using an acronym that translates to 'F*** around and find out.' 'If necessary, our troops can translate that for you,' he said.

"But if they were expecting applause, they didn’t get it. Hundreds of officers, summoned from around the world, sat mostly stone-faced — a stark contrast to the raucous cheers Trump drew from rank-and-file soldiers at Fort Bragg this summer. At one point, Trump even broke the silence: 'If you want to applaud, you can applaud. ' ”

Democracy Docket on this meeting:

"President Donald Trump, in an address to the U.S.’ top military officials Tuesday, stressed that after decades of military campaigns abroad, it was time to turn the armed forces inwards against an unspecified 'enemy from within.'

“ 'Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within,' the president said. 

“ 'We’re under invasion from within,' Trump repeated. 'No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out.' "

Analysis of this meeting by a YouTuber:

"I call it the Merkel (as in Germany's Angela Merkel), but Hegseth did the Masonic pyramid hand sign at least 100 times. I was taking screen shots of all the different times he did it and I was starting to get like carpal tunnel it was just so many times he did this sign. There's been a lot of big Christian nationalist rallies, so it's hard to keep up with all the propaganda."

*****

From Catholic News Agency headline on September 14: "Pope Leo XIV on Saturday morning (Sep. 13) received Brian Burch, the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace for the formal presentation of his letters of credence.

"According to a U.S. embassy statement, the two men discussed the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as “protecting religious freedom, the Vatican’s relationship with China, and the AI revolution.”

"Regarding this week’s assassination of conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk, 'Pope Leo underscored that our political differences can never be resolved with violence and told Ambassador Burch that he was praying for the widow of Mr. Kirk and his children,' the embassy said."

Analysis: "Why would a pope tell a U.S. Ambassador who he's praying for? Oh, in case you haven't heard, we just got a new ambassador of the United States to the Holy See, incumbent since September 13, 2025. It's kind of interesting that we even have an ambassador to the Vatican. Shouldn't we recognize the Vatican as a legitimate nation?"

*****

From Vatican Jubilee official website: "In 2025, the Vatican Jubilee will mark the centenary of the Reformation and will be a monumental event for the Catholic Church, with the theme 'Pilgrims of Hope.' Part of a tradition that dates back to the 14th century, this special Holy Year will begin on Christmas Eve 2024 and will end on January 6, 2026. This is a great opportunity for travelers to experience the rich spiritual and cultural heritage of the Vatican and Rome during this period of time . . . 

"The term 'Jubilee' comes from the Hebrew term 'yobel,' which means 'ram’s horn.' In Jewish tradition, the sound of the horn marked the beginning of a particular year of remission and forgiveness. The Catholic Church adopted this tradition and made it a year of pilgrimage, prayer, and reconciliation.

"The first Jubilee of the Catholic Church was proclaimed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1300. Since then, the Church has celebrated a Jubilee every 25 years unless the Pope decides to call an extraordinary Jubilee, as Pope Francis did in 2015."

*****

What has now made the rounds is the resurfaced Charlie Kirk X Tweet from May 8, 2025 in which he wrote: "We talk about a Golden Age in America . . . I am an Evangelical Christian, but I pray the new pope will help usher in a new Golden Age of Christianity. If the new pope defends the faith, defends the West, defends biology and eternal truths, I will be his biggest fan."

Analysis from a YouTuber:

"What does Kirk mean by, 'I pray the new pope will help usher in a new Golden Age of Christianity'? 'Usher in' is often used with the Antichrist. Do we need a new golden age of Christianity? When was the old golden age? What are you even talking about?!

"This sounds kind of like Christian nationalism, which is kind of a nightmare. You can't force people to become Christian. That's not how it works. There's going to be plenty of lost people at the end of the age. There never will be a golden age on earth until Jesus Christ returns. He will usher in a new golden age. We don't need the pope's help. The pope cannot possibly usher in anything . . . 

"Kirk says he hopes the pope 'defends biology.' Didn't the pope just have a transgender summit at the Vatican? Looks like he's not defending biology. But I guess it's illegal to say anything contrary to the great Messiah, the alleged martyr."

From September 1: "Outreach, a ministry promoting LGBTQ acceptance, will participate in a big Holy Year pilgrimage Friday and Saturday sponsored by Italian LGBTQ Catholic group 'Jonathan’s Tent.' Significantly, the pilgrimage of about 1,200 people includes a Mass at the Jesuit church in Rome celebrated by the second-highest member of the Italian bishop’s conference . . . 

"The message received from Leo was 'that if people were happy with Pope Francis’ approach to LGBTQ Catholics, they’re going to be happy with Pope Leo’s approach.' " 

*****

Here is an event scheduled this coming week on the National Mall called "Awaken the Dawn," as described by the organizers on their official website Communion America:

"We are calling the nation to gather in Washington DC on the national mall on October 9-12, 2025.

"We are not gathering around celebrity personalities. We are gathering around the presence of Jesus at the center of our nation’s capital. This is a festival around the presence of God and the gospel for a new generation because his presence changes everything!

"We will gather in 50 state tents filled with thousands of musicians, worshiping and praying day and night in public. We will gather every evening together for gospel proclamation and commissioning.

"On the final day, we will come to an unprecedented communion table the length of the entire national mall to declare Jesus’ reality, and our love for one another to the nation.

"This is not just an event. It is a commissioning of a generation to host God’s presence in their region and campus!"

Dead church with name, reputation

(new article this evening for certain)

Revelation 3 begins, [1] And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.

That goes back to Revelation 1:4 and 1:16 where Christ is seen as the Son of Man and He has the seven spirits of God and He’s got these seven stars.

Verse 4: [4] John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;

Verse 16: [16] And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

He’s seen in Revelation 3 in that capacity because of the problem at Sardis. The problem at Sardis, Christ says, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”

They have a reputation and a name for living, because they’ve got all these works in their midst, but He says, “Thou art dead.”

According to a website article: History tells us that the city of Sardis was about thirty miles southeast of Thyatira and about fifty miles northeast of Smyrna. Sardis was on a major commercial trade route and also on an important military road.

The acropolis of Sardis was large and lay on a ridge of the Tmolus mountain range, forming a natural fortress which was extremely difficult for an invading army to penetrate. Today, there are very few ruins left.

One of the outstanding ruins is that of the temple of the goddess Artemis. It lay in the Hermus Valley about 800 feet below the Acropolis. The columns of the temple were so large that four men, holding each other’s hands, are needed to surround the entire columns. That helps us understand the size of the temple. The gymnasium in the ancient city was enormous.

Herodotus, the 5th century B.C. historian, tells us sarcastically that Sardis was a city of “tender-footed” people who could only play on the cithara, strike the guitar, and sell by retail. William Barclay adds that Sardis was a city of peace, where a “man whose dreams are dead and whose mind is asleep, the peace of lethargy and evasion.” In short, the people in the city were given to pleasure and leisure.

******

The problem the church at Sardis has is that they’re dead and yet they look like they’re alive. How can you be alive and yet dead? It’s talking about spiritual death, not physical death.

You remember the story of the prodigal son. In Luke 15 there’s a place where he uses the word dead and death in the context just like what’s in Revelation.

The prodigal’s gone off, he’s wasted all his substance in riotous living, but he came to himself and returned to the father.

Luke 15: [21] And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
[22] But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
[23] And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
[24] For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.

Now tell me, was the boy dead physically? No. Was he resurrected physically? No. He was separated from the father and now he’s been reunited with the father and so the father says, “My son was dead; he was gone and it was as though he were dead; he was just completely separated from me, I had no contact with him, but he’s come back and now he’s alive again.”

It's not physical death in Revelation 3:1. This church isn’t dead in the sense they don’t have any activity involved in their midst. The problem is they don’t have any spiritual life in their midst.

They’ve got the works. They have the form of godliness but they’re spiritually dead. The problem there is formalism. Dead religion. They’ve got the activity. They’ve got the name. They’ve got all the form, but they don’t have the life. It’s not the Spirit of God working in their midst.

That’s why Christ’s referred to as "him that have the seven spirits of God.” The Holy Spirit of God is the one who gives life. The Spirit of God is the one who gives life to the church and is the one who imparts spiritual life.

This Sardis church doesn’t have the real life of God. The works they have are not being produced by God; they’re being produced by their own activity.

Revelation 3:2: [2] Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

Notice he doesn’t say, “Strengthen the people that remain.” He says strengthen the things; the works that remain. There’s some good works being done in their midst, but the works aren’t being done because God’s generating them; they’re being done out of formal activity.

Forgive and forget = God's freedom

(new article tomorrow)

When Paul writes in Philippians 3:12, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” he’s saying, “I’m not where I want to be yet but I follow after that I may seize it.”

“Apprehend means to take hold of,” explains Columbus, Ohio preacher David Reid. “In other words, Christ Jesus had taken hold of Paul and Paul wanted to take hold of that life he knew he could walk in. He says in the next verse, [13] Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, [14] I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

“He’s saying, ‘I don’t count myself to have apprehended; I’m not there yet. But this one thing I do, ‘Forgetting those things which are behind.’ The message is we need to forget the past.

“As we go through life there’s lots of things we can ponder on, and our minds can go in a million different directions. Have you ever said anything you wish you hadn’t said?

“I’ve done that a lot and there’s times after I do something that I think, ‘Well, I wish I could hit Control Z.’ You know what that is? That’s after you mess up the document and you don’t know what you did, you just hit Control Z and undo it. It’s one of my favorite functions because it just lets you get back to where you were.

“But you can’t get back the words you just spoke. You wish, ‘Why didn’t I handle this differently?!’ and if you dwell on those things, they’ll mess you up. You can spend all of your present—all this emotion and unending guilt because of that stuff in the past.

“Think about Paul for a moment. When Paul says he was the chief of sinners, he doesn’t mean he committed more crimes or had a bigger crime organization than anyone else. He’s saying he’s the leader of the persecution of the church. When you think about Romans 10: ‘How shall they hear without a preacher?’ . . .

“I will tell you this, what I think is the most wicked thing that can be done on the earth today doesn’t involve drugs or any of the fleshly sins we think of. The most evil thing that can be done today is to inhibit the proclamation of the gospel. The gospel’s the thing that delivers people from an eternal hell. So anything that’s done to inhibit that is the most wicked thing there is. That’s why Paul says he was the ‘chiefest of sinners.’

“Do you think Paul had some guilt issues? While he’s giving his voice, consenting unto people’s deaths, persecuting them even unto strange cities . . . In other words, he’s not just mad enough that, ‘Hey, the guys in my neighborhood preaching this false gospel need to be dealt with.’ He goes to the chief priest and says, ‘Hey, give me some letters because there’s people far away I’ve got to go find and persecute.’ Paul would look back at that and have guilt.

“We have our own things in our lives that we regret and you just have to let those things go. Life is full of spilled milk. What’s the saying? ‘Don’t cry over spilled milk.’ The point is, you’ve got to let it go. I think that’s incredibly liberating because you can rehearse that stuff in your mind forever and ever and ever.

“Now, when Paul says ‘forgetting the past,’ is that just the 'Power of Positive Thinking' or is it something greater than that? Look at Colossians 2:13: [13] And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses.

“If God the Father considers all of our trespasses forgiven, we need to agree with Him about that. We need to not let the past mess up the present. One of the things a lot of athletic coaches say is, ‘Get ready for the next play.’ If you play any sort of sports, you learn you can’t stew on whatever bad happens. If you sit and stew and mope, you know what? You’re going to miss the next play.

“When Paul says, ‘I press toward the mark,’ the issue is, ‘Where are you going?’ When Paul says this, he’s not talking about, ‘I’m doing this now so I can get all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in the future.’ Paul already has them and he can’t lose them. What he’s talking about is his experience of those blessings in THIS life.

*****

Micah 7:19 says, [19] He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.

Preacher Richard Jordan explains, “I love that statement, ‘He will subdue our iniquities.’ He literally will subdue. He’ll take care of your sin when you can’t. He’ll lick it. He’ll beat it for you. We sing that song ‘Glorious Freedom.’

“You couldn’t get freedom from your sin no matter how hard you tried, but God Himself promises to take care of it for us. When He says He casts it into the depths of the sea, that means never to be remembered. The extent of forgiveness in this regard is total. God doesn’t forgive piecemeal and He doesn’t forgive on probation. Forgiveness is an absolute thing. The sin is gone.

“Psalm 103:12 says, ‘As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.’ That’s total removal. If you said, ‘As far as the north is from the south,’ if you go far enough north, your compass will tell you that now you’re going south because of the way magnetic field in the earth is. But if you get in an airplane and you start going east, your compass will never tell you that you’re going west because east and west never meet.

“By the way, this is one of the verses that proves the earth is round. I can’t figure out the east and west, where they never meet, if the earth’s flat.

“When He talks about forgiveness, He’s saying, ‘I’m going to separate your sin from you so far away that you never meet them again.’ That’s what that word ‘remember’ means. Something that is a member of something is a part of it. If it’s sent away, it’s not part of you anymore. He’s saying, ‘I’ll never take your sins and make them part of your account again.’

“Isaiah 38:17 is another verse to help you. King Hezekiah is sick and recovering and says, [17] Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

“If something’s behind you, you can’t see it and when it says God ‘cast all my sins behind thy back,’ that means He’s going to take the sins and put them out of His sight where they don’t remind Him of anything. They’re not seen and they’re not things He’s going to bring up again. That’s just another way to describe the completeness of the forgiveness God provides.

“Isaiah 43:25 says, [25] I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. That’s what Acts 3:19 said: [19] Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.

“He’s literally going to remove the transgressions from the record. When you blot something out, you cover it over, you erase it, you make it like it wasn’t there anymore. That’s what the issue of forgiveness is.

“Paul uses the term ‘remission.’ I’ve heard people say remission isn’t permanent, but if I remit a check to someone to pay a bill that’s pretty permanent. They say, ‘Well, you can have cancer and it not go into remission.’ These are not medical terms in the New Testament and it’s not the same idea. The word ‘remission’ is an accounting term where a payment is made and it completely satisfies the debt and now the debt doesn’t exist anymore.

“Colossians 2:13 says He’s ‘forgiven you ALL trespasses.’ How many is ALL? That would be all of the past, present and future. Your forgiveness in Christ is total and complete.

*****

“I John 1 is a verse people like to use to tell you what you need to do is practice confession every day and keep short accounts with God, because every time you sin God watches and puts a mark on the board, and if you don’t confess it, then He comes down with a Coke bottle and bops you in the head and gets even with you and gets your attention. But when you then confess, He erases it. That’s exactly the opposite of all the verses we just went through.

“I John 1:9 says, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Tell me something, how many times can you be forgiven all of your sins? Once, or it wasn’t ALL of them. How many times can you be cleansed from ALL unrighteousness? Only once!

“By the way, he’s writing this thing to Israel. This is a circumcision epistle. It’s not for you anyway. This is no more about you and me as members of the Body of Christ then Genesis 6-7 is with its instructions for Noah to build an ark. That verse is a statement about how in Israel’s program they can have ALL their sins forgiven. That’s a salvation verse, folks.

“Romans 5:10 says, [10] For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

“To be reconciled is to be brought back, to have your status changed from being an enemy to being a friend. Reconciliation and atonement are synonyms.

"I Corinthians 7 says that if a man leaves his wife the two should be reconciled. They’ve got a split between them and then they’re brought back together. They’re put at-one together and in the English language the suffix ‘ment’ is the idea of permanence. They’re put back as one permanently. There’s a permanent rejoining, a permanent at-one-ment.

“That word ‘covered,’ if you go back in the Old Testament, is the idea of atoning. It’s the word ‘covering.’ It blotted out the sins and allowed God not to remember them anymore. When Noah covered the ark of with pitch, anybody who’s ever worked with creosote knows that that’s not temporary; it’s a permanent covering.

“That word ‘atonement’ occurs many times in the Old Testament to describe what the blood of bulls and goats did for them in type and picture. A propitiation is a sacrifice that settles the debt so people can be reconciled; they can be at one.

“Really, in the final analysis, forgiveness is the issue of freedom; the glorious liberty as we sing about, of sending the sin to the Cross and putting His life in its place.”

Christ 'writes' using Paul's heart as canvas

"Listen, when you sit and read that Book, that’s like God Almighty sitting across the table from you talking to you. Don't ever forget that when you read it! Now, if you won’t forget that, you’ll fall in love with that Book in a way you never did before. And it will consume you. It will pull and tug at you and you won’t ever want to get too far away from it."--Richard Jordan

Question: “Why are the words of Christ according to the Gospel records any more the words of the Lord Jesus than those recorded in Paul’s epistles?”

So asks Bible scholar C.R. Stam in his 1963 classic The Controversy. He answers, “Christ Himself left no writings behind. Does not Paul say again and again that his teachings are the words of Christ?"

Stam continues, “Our opponents’ quotation of I Timothy 6:3-5 to prove that we should put greater emphasis on the words of the Lord Jesus than on the words of Paul act as a boomerang for this passage is but another proof that the words of Paul were the words of the Lord Jesus. Referring to his own instructions to Timothy, the apostle says:

“ ‘If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing . . . ’

Stam laments, “. . . So deep is the antipathy of some religious leaders toward the Pauline message and those who proclaim it that they will simply lie low each time their falsehoods are exposed and await an opportunity to strike again. This is Satan’s strategy, for it is easier to believe a lie one has heard a thousand times than to believe a truth he has never heard before.”

*****

In II Corinthians, Paul is put in the position of having to defend himself when the Believers in Corinth conclude he’s an illegitimate fraud. He argues in II Corinthians 3:2, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men."

“The people are saying, ‘Prove it, prove it, prove it,’ and Paul says, ‘You’re it! You’re the letter of authenticity!’ ” explains Preacher Alex Kurz. “Verse 3:3 says, ‘Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’

“Paul is the canvas but who is the author of this particular letter? Jesus Christ, as the Author, has written something upon the canvas of Paul’s heart, which demonstrates the Corinthians are literally the letter of authenticity!

“Do you know when you write a letter, the author actually bears the character of the writer? Do you understand why Paul says Christ is the one who is manifestly declaring something? When Jesus Christ uses Paul’s heart, Christ is inscribing His own character upon the canvas of Paul’s heart.

“You know what Paul’s saying? ‘You read my life and my ministry and you will see the reflection of the character of Jesus Christ. You will see born upon my life the very thinking that Jesus Christ has toward you. That’s the letter of authenticity.’

“The issue isn’t the outward appearance. The issue is what Paul is doing and putting up with and sacrificing for a group of ungrateful Believers. The stamp of Christ’s hand, the finger prints of Christ’s ministry, the proof that Jesus Christ is working in Paul’s ministry is stamped on Paul’s heart.

*****

“God wrote on tablets, walls, in the ground--but did you know God also writes in the heart? There is a fascinating parallel in Jeremiah 17:1: ‘The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars.’

“What does it mean for God to inscribe? The point of a diamond can cut glass, but do you know what a pen of iron does? This is a description of God permanently inscribing and engraving the sins of a nation on their heart.

“Verse 13 says, ‘O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters.’

“In John 8 we cannot say with absolute certainty what the Lord Jesus is writing on the ground, but if we look at the context in chapter 7, we know what the Lord Jesus is trying to do. He’s constantly looking for faith in His messiahship. In Jeremiah 17, this might be the clue that could shed light on what Jesus Christ is writing on the ground.”

*****

Stam writes, “Those who would join with the Modernists in following the earthly Jesus should listen to the inspired apostle when he says: ‘Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.’ (II Corinthians 5:16)

“It is the message of the exalted Lord through Paul himself to which he refers when he says: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord (Colossians 3:16).' "

What the Christian life is--all in the appropriation

Paul writes in Ephesians 1: [13] In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

[14] Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

You know what an "earnest" is? When you buy a house, you give a down payment and you get the contract that says it's "earnest money." You're going to buy a $100,000 house and you put $10,000 down. It's earnest money and when it comes time for you to complete the sale that 10 was part of the 100, so the earnest is part of the whole, explains Richard Jordan.

God the Holy Spirit believes in what the Father's doing so much He was willing to give Himself as the earnest. He didn't just say, "I think it's right," He committed Himself to it, so much so that He comes to be the seal, the guarantor or our redemption. 

In the godhead, the life of the godhead is that everybody lives for the benefit of the other. Everybody lives with a confident expectation of what the wisdom and the plan is, and they all live in faith and in Word in the work of the Son. They all work together and that's God's life.

That's why Paul says in Ephesians 3: [12] In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.

It's "in whom" and it's "the faith of Him." For you and me it all focuses on the Word, the Son. The one who is the bridge for you and me. The one by whom we have access through the Spirit unto the Father. The Lord Jesus Christ is the mediator. He's the one who brings all of that life to you and me.

In Romans 8 there's a strangely wonderful verse. Paul says in verse 38: [38] For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

[39] Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Where is the love of God? It's in a person. It's in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and when you got saved, God put you in Christ and you participate in His divine life, His relationships. In all of the relationships Jesus Christ has with the Father and the Spirit, you share. "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Galatians 2: [20] I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

You see that? He's our life. He's the one who gives us the fullness and the access with confidence. Don't spend your life trying to become something God's already made you.

Spend your life living in the reality of WHO He's made you and walk by faith in the details of your life-- in every detail of your life because every decision you make, and every choice you face, and every obstacle you have to overcome, every blessing you can enjoy, in all of those He is our life and we carry Him into life as we walk by faith in the reality of who He's made us. That's what the Christian life is.

It's not tithing, religious ordinances, on and on. We're not trying to get something from God. That's why people do those things. We're just simply being who we are and we get to be that because of our faith in Him.

*****

When we’re talking about the "blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works," we’re talking about the love, the joy, the peace, the longsuffering.

We’re talking about appropriating into your experience the reality of what God has given you in your position in Christ. You have an identity in Christ. God has taken your sin and set you free. He’s taken the guilt and sent it to Calvary.

He said, "I’ll remember it no more. I’ll not connect it back with your identity again. I’ll do it permanently and forever. You never have to come and ask me to accept you. I already have. You never have to ask to please forgive me my sins. I already have. I’ve made you complete. I’ve blessed you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. Now all I want you to do is take what I’ve already given you and bring it into the experience of your life on a daily basis."

Colossians 2:10 says, "And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power."  But then look at chapter 4:12: [12] Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God.’

Wait a minute—I thought they were complete?! Why is Epaphras praying and laboring that they would BE complete?

Paul says in Ephesians 1, "You’re accepted in the beloved." In II Corinthians 5:9, he says, "Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him."

You say, "Wait a minute—I thought I was accepted!" That’s the difference between your standing and your state; your position in Christ and your practice in time; your identity in Him and then that identity living in your experience now.

If you’re complete in Him, there’s nothing to make your more complete. All you need to do is appropriate the completeness you already have—bring it into your experience. Have the practical, experiential possession of what already belongs to you.

That is to experience the joy of, "I am forgiven." Whew! That’s a wonderful thing. Let that inform your mind so that your emotions know how to relate to reality.

Now, there’s two things you have to have to appropriate anything. One, you got to know about it. You got to see what you already have in Christ. The key to the Christian life is knowing your identity, and you can never know your identity if you don’t study the Bible rightly divided. Dispensational Bible study is the most practical thing you’ll ever have in your life because it gives you the ability to know who you really are.

The other component is you not only have to know it, you have to be aware of your need of it. That’s because you’ll never reach out and appropriate into your experience something unless you know that you really need it.

Harmony at the molecular level

(well, sure enough, still working on new article and will post tomorrow now)

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16, [16] From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

“ 'Joined together and compacted by' is that, ‘You can’t get a molecule between us,’ ” explains Richard Jordan. “There’s this harmony and solidarity and it’s held together ‘by that which every joint supplieth.’

“The Christian life isn’t me having the brains to run things; it’s, 'He’s the head.'

"You got all these members in your body that work in harmony and, in what I think is the most fascinating thing, the more you go into creation the bigger creation becomes.

"You talk about looking at the stars and how vast it is. I’ve always been fascinated by how the more you get into the molecular level of stuff, where the atoms and molecules are, there’s a big world there, too.

“What they’ve discovered with your molecules is every molecule is like a little factory. It’s got an intelligence center; it’s got an action center, a motor center. It’s got mechanisms in it and they all function; they all tell each other what to do and respond.

“Imagine if all the different molecules that make up your body decided to do what they wanted to do and not what the head says. You see, this is where disease comes from.

"Most of the time disease is some kind of blockage that keeps the proper information from coming down to that gland or organ made up of the cells, and it starts working on its own thinking process. It will gang up with a few others and work on that thinking process and make a tumor or whatever.

“But the brain is what controls it all. It’s the boss; it tells it what to do. And when the brain is in control of everything, it works and functions in harmony.

“By the way, the head also supplies the power to do it. You see, your Christian life isn’t lived on your thinking process; it’s lived on HIS thinking process. It’s not lived in your power; it’s HIS power. It’s ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ It’s the working of HIS power IN us.

*****

“When we grasp that, then we can understand when Paul writes in Ephesians 4: [17] This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
[18] Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.

[19] Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

“Now that you are so radically different than who you were before, don’t walk like you don’t have intelligence.

“This passage, in verses 18 and 19, does what Ephesians 3:16 does, when he talks about being ‘strengthened by His spirit in your inner man.’ If you want to understand how reversionism works, where a saved man acts like he’s lost, there’s the inner mechanics.

“There in those verses is literally what goes on in your inner man when you, instead of walking intelligently in the wisdom God gives you, you go back and you substitute human viewpoint for God’s viewpoint.

“As a Believer, when you do that, it causes far more drastic consequences than it did as an unbeliever because now you’re not an unbeliever. You’ve been radically changed. Your spirit, soul and body have entirely different relationships between each other than they did before you were saved.

“Now, you talk about gumming up the works; throwing a wrench in the machinery and what happens then when you start walking in the vanity of your mind. All that you are is turned on its head!

“So he said, ‘You know what, you understand who you are. Be smart about life. Walk intelligent. Walk in the light of who you really are. Just let Christ be who He is in you.' That’s what the rest of Ephesians 4 is all about.

*****

“Now, when he says in chapter 5, ‘Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
[2] And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour,’ the ‘therefore’ is chapter 4:30-32.

“Paul writes, [31] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
[32] And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

“Wow, that’s almost like that verse in Titus, isn’t it? You see how being in Christ is designed to change the way you talk and think? The way you talk comes out of your heart.

“Jesus said, ‘Out of the heart the mouth speaks.’ He said to let all the anger and turmoil and strife and bitterness of that old life be put away. That’s not who you are! Here’s how you do that: ‘Be ye kind one to another.’

“Paul writes in Colossians 3, [12] Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;
[13] Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

“You can be forbearing, you can be kind and tender-hearted, but without forgiveness it will lead to bitterness. It will lead to all those things in Ephesians 4:31. The key that changes it all is forgiveness.

“Take the worst somebody’s done to you and I can tell you you’ve done far worse than that to God Himself. If God can forgive you, you can forgive them. There’s things you’ve done that you can’t even forgive yourself for and they come back in your mind sometimes and haunt you. You’ve done FAR worse than that to God and He forgave you.

“You know why you walk in love? Because you know what it’s like to be loved. That’s all there is to it. You know what it’s like to have someone love you when you didn’t deserve to be loved; when you were, of all things, unlovable.

“He said, ‘I didn’t love you because you were lovable; I loved you because of the will of my Father, and He loved you and gave Himself for you.’ I love that verse. Christ has given Himself for us for a sweet-smelling savor.

“He took a stinker like you and made you something that smells wonderful to the Father and He did it at Calvary. And He did it in spite of you, because of His grace. Now, you want to walk in love, think like that!

*****

“Psalm 119 says, 130] The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.

“When you turn the light out what do you get? Darkness. He said, ‘You used to be in darkness.’ You might be a nuclear physicist who can land on Mars and live there for a lifetime, but you were in darkness. A six-year-old Eskimo that never learned to count is brighter than you are if he’s come to faith in Christ, because now he’s got the light of life.

“For a person who’s been given light, don’t go living like you don’t have light! How do you put the light out in a Believer? You abandon divine viewpoint and go on human viewpoint. When you think you know better how to handle things than God does, you know what happens? Blackout. That’s what Ephesians 4:18-19 is talking about.”