Monthly Archives: April 2010

Introduction to the Trinity of God, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!

(Ver 1.4)  Today’s lesson is “Part 1” in an essential Bible series of truth concerning the revealed triune nature of the Godhead.   This lesson will be focused upon an essential introduction of the subject.  Because there are new Christians all the time,  I realized people are like me and do not know everything.  There are new people choosing to come into God’s family every day that need to learn the fundamentals of Christianity.  Furthermore, this seemingly simple subject can become immensely technical and deep.  So I will occasionally teach on basic Bible concepts that everyone should become intimately familiar with.  By building a strong foundation on the Word of God, you are better able to defend your faith to others who may raise questions to why you have chosen to place your hope in and believe in the Bible (1 Peter 3:15).  If you do not know anything the Bible says you are not able to share with others to help them enter into His truth.  So today I want to introduce another basic foundational Bible concept.  How can one God be viewed in three different ways?  It is really not too difficult to understand these three personalities of God, if you research them in your Bible.  They are easily seen, frequently named and usually only ignored by  people who do not want to accept them.  God is called first and foremost a Spirit (John 4:24).  Therefore every other manifestation of God must originate from His Spirit.  You see one manifestation of God is accomplished by Him giving Himself a new titled description for His Spirit.  God the Father is a title or a name for the Spirit of God who procreates and has covenants, a family and children.  God is the Father of all spiritual beings (Heb 12:9).  If you have a spirit (and you do), it came from only God’s Spirit given to you in your mother’s womb at conception.  This truth delegates the responsibility of all human spirits to acknowledge God to be the original Father of their spirit.

Then there is God the Son.  This manifestation of God occurred when the Spirit of God came upon Mary the virgin and she conceived a male child named Jesus (Luke 1:35).   The body of Jesus came about as a union of the Seed(Word) of the Father God and the egg in Mary’s womb.  The combination of these two (physical egg and Spoken Spirit Word) produced a child that was not God, but yet had the Spirit of God in Him.  It might seem rather confusing at first, if you have never been taught this way.  You see the Bible says that “No Man” has ever seen God (1 Jn 4:12).  But we know many men and women saw physical Jesus Christ when He was here on earth.  But they all technically just saw the body that contained the Spirit of God and they never actually saw God who is a Spirit as we learned from John 4:24.

The plot thickens however, because Jesus did say “when you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:7).  So Jesus did not separate Himself from the Father at any time.  Jesus repeatedly said that He and His Father were One (Jn 10:30, Jn 17:11).  So when Jesus walked the face of the earth and spoke to the people, whatever He said was God speaking, because Jesus was God in the flesh (Mat 1:23).  Or we could also say that the Spirit of God was in the flesh of Jesus.

BIBLE FACT 1: ONLY ONE GOD

I think I will begin this lesson by establishing Bible verses that clearly declares that there is only one true God who created everything.  There can be a potential problem when studying the trinity because of these three titles, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  These three titled manifestations of the God can easily lead some to believe we have 3 different Gods.  But this not true.  Only One God created everything we see and God gives credit to the operation of all three divine descriptions to have participated in creating us.  Let us start with a basic law from God in the Old Testament:

Deu 6:4  Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

This is a classic verse written in the Law of Moses.  God declares that He is One Lord!  The children of Israel widely accepted this verse and believe in this One True Lord!  However, when He visited them personally in the flesh, they put Him to death on a cross.  Why didn’t they recognize their God?  That is an obviously good question to consider and answer.  It seems the Nation of Israel is still stumbling over the same things as they did back then.  I have talked to Jews and they hate Christians and put them down as a false religion.  Little do they know that they are the ones now in the false religion of works that will not save them.

Mar 12:29  And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one  Lord:

Jesus, who was God in the flesh did not contradict the Old Testament law, but further confirmed that there was only one Lord God.  Many times people have a tendency to limit what God can do and put God in their very small and limited religious box.  God can do something so very radically different that the things we can think of with our simple natural minds.

In fact God has already done some very radical things that we are just now discovering in the Bible.  But, these people in Jesus’ day did not recognize their God, because they did not expect Him to be standing in front of them in this humble form.  Perhaps they had read about God in the burning bush speaking to Moses, or in the cloud on top of the mountain meeting again with Moses and they think that this is the way God always talks to men.  So heaven forbid if God does something so new or radically different to come in person in the flesh and stand before them and speak!  That just doesn’t make any natural sense for an omnipotent God to do, does it?  Of course the Jews were not privy to all of the facts either.  They did not know that the angel Gabriel had visited Mary when she was a virgin and said she would conceive a child by the Spirit of God.  They were not privileged to know that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of David and the prophesied birth place of their Messiah.

The Jews only knew that Jesus was a man from Samaria and a city of Nazareth.  They understood how, He had grown up like every other child in the region and nothing appeared to be different or unique about him.  They assumed Jesus was just like the other children in the family of Joseph and Mary and no different than His natural half-brothers or His natural half-sisters.  The Jews made wrong assumptions and never attempted to find out the truth by asking relevant questions.  They were deceived by Satan and they killed the God who came to save them.  Thank God, they did because we now are saved because of it.  Obviously, God foreknew how they would react and what they would do, since He purposely chose this specific time in human history to be born into the world.

Mar 12:32  And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:

Here is a verse of scripture that confirms what the Jews believed.  They knew that the Bible said there was only One True God!  This scribe declares that there are no other true gods except Him.  But, yet he was talking to Him personally and never realized it either.  That to me is a very sad story.

Jas 2:19  Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

The devils and Satan know there is only one True God!   They are extremely fearful of Him.  In fact they are doing everything they can legally and illegally do to try to keep the plan of God against them from coming to pass.   It is interesting to see how many men and women in the world are so passive toward God.  So many could care less if there is a God, they are consumed with their own agendas.  People’s priorities sure need to change, don’t you think?

Mal 2:10  Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?

Here is an interesting verse of scripture.  It tells us that there is one true Father God.  Then it also says there is only One True God who created us!  The Bible is a very complex book and tells us many things that are difficult to wrap our human thinking minds around.  The trinity of God is one of these concepts that is difficult to fully grasp for human thinkers not thinking in a higher spiritual God kind of way.  How can one God be manifested in various ways using different names and titles?  You see this verse calls God the One Father, but yet Jesus in John 8, in talking to the Jews said “ye are of your father the devil”.  So obviously Jesus did not see them as his true spiritual brothers.  Jesus clearly said that He had a different spiritual Father than they did.  This partly demonstrates an ongoing problem of many religions in the world today.  The Jews thought that God was their father, but Jesus declared something that was completely different than what they thought.  So they were wrong and Jesus was right.  Many people today want to be all inclusive and say every religion is just another path to the same god.  But, they are also wrong.  Let us look at another verse from 1 Timothy:

1Ti 2:5  For there is one  God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

You see the Bible declares something very different than what people think.  That is why Christians are many times accused of being hateful and narrow minded.  Those who see the truth, know that there are not many paths that lead us to the True God.  For example, this verse in 1 Timothy declares the opposite.  God says there is only one path way to God and that is only through the man Christ Jesus.  The Messiah Jesus was God in the flesh!  God came to the earth personally to accomplish everything that He needed to accomplish and He did it personally to insure that it was done correctly at the right time in the precise way.  The term “mediator” is an interesting Greek word so let’s look up the definition and see what it reveals:

From G3319; a go between, that is, (simply) an internunciator, or (by implication) a reconciler (intercessor): – mediator.

The word “internunciator” carries a meaning of someone who speaks on the behalf of someone else.  “Inter” can mean between and “nunciator” is someone who speaks.  So Jesus became the one in between man and God who is authorized to legally speak to each opposing party.   So a “mediator” is someone who is also a go between of the two parties often times in a legal battle.  Both of these titles fit the situation the human race was in.  We needed someone to be our legal attorney to plead our case for us, because we did not have a legitimate case without this help.  God provided Himself an intercessor, a spokesman for the human race when we had no chance of salvation.  Because God became a man, every man and woman now has a chance to talk with God personally.  Humans were incapable of saving themselves and we were in dire straits without a hope of any future.  God provided the way out of our dilemma, before we ever understood what a dilemma we were in.

You cannot be narrow minded when you read the Bible, if you are you will not be able to accept some of the radical concepts that God introduces you to.   God is One God, but comes to us in different ways for different purposes.

Remember that the Bible says that “No Man” has ever seen God, but that doesn’t mean we cannot come to know Him.  God being a Spirit, makes it difficult for natural men and women to grasp all of the hidden qualities of His nature and personalities.   What we must do is become spiritually open to what God wants to do and realize that whatever He does will probably be different than anything we could have imagined.  Learn the lesson of the Jews who did not recognize their God when He chose to walk in their presence in the flesh.  You see the Bible says God is not a Man (Num 23:19)!  That was a completely factual truth when these words were recorded in the Old Testament.  But that does not mean that God could not become a man if He choses to do so.  Jesus Christ was the Word (God) made to be a flesh body (Jn 1:14) and it was this human body that contained the Holy Spirit of God.  But I do not believe that this manifested physical body containing God limited God in His spiritually manifested form to only be in the body of Jesus.  In fact the Bible clearly tells us that every Believer who has accepted Jesus as their Lord now has the Spirit of God living on the inside of them.  So obviously God’s Spirit is bigger than the individual body of Jesus Christ alone.  Part of the Spirit of God is in me right now!  If you are a real believer, then a part of the Spirit of God is also in you!  Because the Jews put limits upon God and would not let Him out of their small mental box, they were unable to see Him clearly.  Do not be guilty of putting God in your small box and miss Him either!

1Co 8:6  But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

There are so many verses that declare and name God as being One!  This verse speaks of two parts of the trinity as both being this One God that we are learning about today.  God the Father, is the original spiritual father.  But, Jesus Christ, the Son of God is also this same One Lord God!  Notice that this One Lord Jesus Christ created all things.  So you cannot separate the two manifestations of God and say they are two different Gods or Creators, they are just two personalities of the same One True God.  Now let us shift focus from seeing God as being just Two to see how God claims to actually be Three in One.

TRIUNE = THREE IN ONE

1Jn 5:7  For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

This is one of the greatest scriptures in the Bible directly naming all “three” members of the unified trinity and calling each of them all One!   However, notice that the Son of God is called the Word of God in this verse and that is a revelation that you need to get a hold of.   In John the 1st chapter verse 1, God tells us very Clearly that God and the Word are One in the same.  Then in verse 14, God tells us that the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us”.  So we can now begin to understand how God could become a man called His Son in the flesh and still be God Almighty.  I guess I should address the fact that this verse is widely reported to be false because it is not found in every manuscript.  However, this is the ploy of Satan to attempt to delete these words to cause doubts in the minds of people.  You see you can find this basic information in several other verses in the Bible and therefore I am confident in all of these verses of truth.  Check in John 5:37  and see where God the Father is being a witness of God the Son.  Read about Jesus being called the Word of God in Revelation 19:13.  Look at 1 John 4:14 where it speaks of God the Father and God the Son.  Look at John 15:26 where Jesus the Son of God describes the Spirit of God coming forth from the Father God to “testify” of the truth of Jesus.  A witness in the Bible is always someone who can testify in a court of law under an oath, so again we see the trinity in very revealed self-evident terms.  There are many verses in the Bible like this but I’m not going to do all of your Bible study for you today in this introductory lesson, so please make the effort and go and search to find more of them.

CONCLUSION

So this has just been a quick and simple introduction to the subject of the trinity of God.  I concentrated mostly on scriptures that declare that God is One True God.  But, I also introduced you to the fact that God can do things differently than we expect, if He wants to.   It is interesting that God always worked in the Old Testament through a mediator, a go between.  Either Moses, or another prophet would go to God and get the message that He wanted them to hear.  God used this principle and pattern of a go between for literally hundreds of years.  But, when God became the “go between” in the form of the man Jesus Christ, the majority wanted nothing to do with Him.  God did something the same way that He had always done it, but implemented it in a different way and they automatically rejected Him because He was so different than what they thought.  Jesus Christ became the Moses mediator of His day on earth and God’s own people refused to listen to Him.  I guess being “narrow minded” applies to many people in the world.  Everyone thinks they know what they need to know and when God does something different, we like to criticize it and brand it as a false teaching.  What the Jews should have done was to search the scriptures and find out what God was going to do and then verify if what Jesus said went along with it.  Instead of thinking they knew what was right and what was wrong, they should have been open to some new viewpoints of truth.  We as Christians also need to search our Bibles and see what God is going to do and remain open to Him potentially doing something that we did not expect Him to do.

Finally, the Bible says that Satan will do everything that he can to deny the deity of Christ.  The antichrist we are told in 1 John 2:22 will deny that Jesus is the Christ and claim that God had no Son.  God says very specifically that this antichrist will deny the existence of both the Father and the Son.  There is a major reason for this denial of truth, which I cannot get into today in this lesson.  If it were not important God would not have warned you about this.  I will say briefly two major religions of the world deny God had a Son and these are the Jewish and Islamic religions.  That is very important for you to know if you miss the rapture.  It is clear to me that Satan will do everything in his power to deny the trinity of God and will cause many people to fall into deception to believe this lie that there is not a trinity.  You need to understand that this is why it is important to know and study this subject so that even you will not be deceived when this occurs.  Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us at Agapegeek.com.  God bless you and please share this lesson with everyone you know.  Press “Like” also and all of this will help others find us.  God Bless you until next time.

If you would like to continue reading in this series, please proceed to “Part 2” now.

The Sin Unto Death! Part 2 The Unpardonable Sin!

(Ver 1.3)  Today is Part 2 on the subject of “Once Saved, Aleays Saved”, “Eternal Security”, or “Unconditional Security” of the believer after salvation.  I will continue to talk about this subject today in greater detail giving you a new perspective on the subject that I call the introduction of the  unpardonable sin.  Does an unpardonable sin exist?  Can a Christian commit this sin and even lose their salvation?  In the first lesson on this subject I contrasted the teaching of some churches that is often called the doctrine of “once saved, always saved”, to a new but clear reference found in the Bible of what God calls the “Sin Unto Death”.  In that lesson I taught that God instructs us not to even pray for a person that has commited this type of Sin Unto Death.   If you did not read this first lesson, I would strongly suggest that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1” and then continue forward to today’s lesson. 

So what is the “Sin Unto Death”?  As you recall from Part 1 of this series I determined that man still possessed a free will choice and that they could decide at any point in time not to be saved.  This action would result in their rejection of the saving grace of God.  That which God has given to them for free can be freely given back to God at any time.  People will never lose the right to choose between good and evil, God and Satan, light and darkness even if it is an extremely stupid choice to make the wrong decision.  I do not think that the people who teach “once saved, always saved” have taken this reality into account.  They simply want to rely on the divine omnipotence of God to make all of their choices and decisions for them but God just does not do this.  There are several references in the Bible that indicate people must strive and contend for the faith (Jude 1:3).  That there is a struggle and an armed conflict raging in the spiritual realm (2 Tim 4:7).  We have a spiritual enemy doing all that he can to deceive us and cause us to turn back to our previous ways.  There are numerous scriptures that clearly inform us that people are not once saved and then can never make the choice to go back to their old life styles.  For example:

Heb 10:26  For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,

This verse in Hebrews is another prime example of someone who was saved by the shed blood of Christ and who has now wilfully chosen to go back to sin.  Wilfully displays a choice of their freewill.  This verse describes a Christian that has learned the truth of God’s Word, but now decided to ignore it.  I gave you another verse in the last lesson and it was interesting to see that this person was described as someone who has trodden or walked on the Son of God in verse 29.  This is a common Bible term that is used for when someone defeats an enemy.  So to this person, Christ is no longer their savior, but has become their enemy.  When a person turns back to this old way, you can read here in vese 26 that there is no more sacrifices that can save them.  This verse says that they had accepted the one true way to God but have now turned away from the truth and as a result have lost their salvation without any hope for salvation.  That is a clear definition to what an unpardonable sin is.  God clearly tells us that there is only one sacrifice for our sin, not two, three or more.  Christ died one time on the cross, so do not take it lightly, thinking that it is OK to walk away from Christ and that you can come back whenever you like.  This is the sin unto death that God is speaking of. 

Here is a new problem that I was recently introduced to.  One persons tried to explain away all of these verses in Hebrews 10 as not applying to Christians because they said this book was only written to the natural Jews or the Hebrews.  Wow, people can become so deceived, can’t they?  How ignorant do you have to be to not see this book was written to church?  That means it was written to me!  That means the scriptures apply to me.  If you used their logic then the book of Timothy only applies to Timothy and we should it ignore it also.  Using their logic the book of Romans was only written to the people in Rome so we should iginore that one also.  I could go on and on like this through every epistle in the N.T. and explain each of them away using some ignorant human reasoning.  I’ve seen this type of behavior by Christians and even seminary graduates repeatedly.  Whenever they do not want to embrace a truth as being applicable to them, they say it was written to someone else.  Heaven help them to see the truth!

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN

Now is the time to get into my new main subject verse that is very important for you to understand.  Here is another key verse of scripture that has great significance to our subject of eternal security and to what I have been teaching on subject of the sin unto death.  The Eternal Security Extreme Grace message is based solely upon the theory that there are no sins that are possible for a Christian to commit that will cause them to lose their salvation.  I mean that would be a radical message, if that is what Jesus believed.  However since Jesus didn’t even believe that I think I will not write off His words to believe in a false eternal security.  Look here in this verse in Matthew, and see that Jesus is speaking and that He says some things that are very hard to accept for my Grace teachers so they have to ignore them or explain them away:

Mat 12:31  Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

Apparently, according to what Jesus just said there is at the least one sin that will not be forgiven of anyone that commits it.  If you did not understand that this was an all-inclusive statement that leaves no one out, then you are not reading it correctly.  This verse would have to apply to all Christians as well as to all non-Christians equally since Jesus did not qualify the target audience.  Jesus informs us that there are a whole bunch of different kinds of sins and blasphemies that will be forgiven a man or a woman on this planet.  But, Jesus then says that there is one that will not be forgiven any man or any woman at any time and that is when they blaspheme the Holy Ghost.  Therefore, if there is just ONE SIN that is unforgiveable, then salvation is no longer unconditionally secured, but has been transformed by definition to a conditional salvation.  Remaining saved would then be totally dependent upon you not commiting the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost.  That clearly changes salvation to an unsecured CONDITIONAL event!  So let’s define this word blaspheme, using the Strong’s:

G987

From G989; to vilify; specifically to speak impiously: – (speak) blaspheme (-er, -mously, -my), defame, rail on, revile, speak evil.

Obviously, according to this definition, blasphemy is the spoken words of a person, that are directed against the character of God.  As you can see it implies that God’s character and nature is good and yet I hear men constantly speaking of Him in terms of being an evil being.  I would be very careful with what you say about God, after reading this verse.  If you walk about speaking of God as being evil or being the reason for evil you do not understand the Bible and are in jeopardy of being guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit of God.  I heard people speak of God being responsible for the 9/11 attacks of the terrorists and that to me is blasphemy.  I have heard people claim God is responsible for the earth quake in Haiti, and that to me is also blasphemy.

Satan uses whatever he can to try to deceive you.  I have been guilty of this in the past.  Because of my ignorance of the Bible, Satan used my ignorance against me to his advantage when I was young.  I remember when I was a kid growing up in church, a traveling minster came into the church and spoke.  I do not recall everything he was talking about, but I do know that he spoke about the “unforgiveable sin”.   Later in my life, as I was getting close to 21 years old, I was faced with a very hard set of circumstances.  I was recently married and my father fell unconscious in his living room.  It appears later that we found out that he had a stroke.  They rushed him to the hospital and he lay there for a few days still unconscious.   Now my father was a preacher a big part of my life.  He went to Bible school and had a church that he was the pastor of and seemed to me to be doing the right things.  One day as I drove by the hospital I was very discouraged and down about the situation and I said out loud “if this is the kind of God you are, I don’t want anything to do with you”.  You see we had many Christians praying and God was not appearing to answer.   What I did not know was all of the things that God had tried to do months earlier to get my father to change and fix the problem that was causing these results.  My father either out of pride or rebellion did not heed the warning given to him by a great man of God that tried to help him.  My father was sitting in a Bible class with this man one day and God showed the teacher that my father was going to die.  God told the teacher what to say to him and asked my father to come see him privately to talk about it.  This man prayed for my father in public, but did not tell anyone what he saw or what God said.  Months later this same man spoke at my father’s funeral service.  God put the responsibility of what happened to my father in my father’s hands and my father chose to ignore it as being unimportant.  You do realize that God leaves your destiny up to you and you alone?

So now the years went by and Satan used the fact of what I said to God to convince me that I had committed the unpardonable sin against God.   Satan used the words of a minster from my childhood to convince me that I could no longer by saved.  Ministers need to learn to be careful what they say to who.  If they are not careful they can affect someone just as easily negatively as they can positively.  There were times that I thought of suicide and had a desire to just end it all.  But, thank God for His mercy and His grace!  You see later in my life I had another situation come up that I had no other place to turn, but to God.   In crying out to God for help I started to seek Him to know Him better and to see if I could still be saved.  I learned from my mother that God had tried to help my father months before he died in that Bible class.  So it was not God’s fault that my father died.  So even though I blamed God for it, it was because of my ignorance of the situation that caused me to say what I did to God.  God as a result did not hold it against me and God could still and did forgive me.  One night with my wife, after I had been seeking for more of God, God came upon me and then filled me with His Spirit on the inside.  This was a manifestation of His Spiritual divine power like I had never experienced before or since.   God solved Satan’s plan of deception with an experience that left no doubt in my mind that God was real and that He was on the inside of me and I belonged to Him.  I now knew for sure beginning that night that I had not committed the unpardonable sin and that God cared about me personally enough to prove it.  So I cannot guarantee you that God will do for you what He did for me in the exact same way.  Rarely have I ever seen God do the same exact thing twice in the precise same way.  However, God knows how to reach you if you are interested in being reached.  If you believe in God, like I did you have half the battle won.  If you want more of God and are truly hungry and thirsty for more of His Spirit, you are on the right path to allowing God to work in you, however He sees fit to make Himself real to you.  God is sovereign and God is omnipotent.  But, God will not override your will or your choices.  God will remain hidden, until you make the choice to seek Him diligently.

So I gave you a mini version of my testimony and I usually do not talk about me in my blogs.  My blogs are not about me!  However, I think my experience might be able to help someone so I included it in hope that the right people would find it.

1Jn 5:16  If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.

If you are concerned that you have already committed the unpardonable sin, but are questioning it and reading this blog, you probably have not.  Satan is very tricky, he definitely uses what you do not know to hurt you and deceive you any way that he can.  Satan uses your thoughts against you.  He puts doubts and thoughts in your mind to mislead you into destruction.  Be hungry for the truth!  Seek God with all of your heart!  God will not let you down, He actually wants to show you how real He is.

Rom 6:16  Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

There will always be a choice set before you as long as you are on this earth in the flesh.  God will never take your ability to choose away from you.  You can choose to obey Him and His Word or select to go your own independent way.  This verse in Romans clearly says that you still have responsibility and the choice to make and this verse was specifically written to Christians.  There is still a “sin unto death” and this is also called by the synonymous title of the “unpardonable sin” that Jesus spoke of in Matthew.  If you still do not understand what these are you should go back and reread these lessons and look up every scripture in your own Bible and study them more until you get them on the inside of you.  I’m not through with this subject because God says many more things in His Word that we need to know about it.  So I will continue “Once Saved Always Saved” in the future.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading on the subject of Once Saved Always Saved you may continue with “Part 3“.

God In 3 Dimensions, God For Us, God With Us, God In Us!

(ver 1.1) The Bible speaks of God in many different aspects with various described characteristics.  The New Testament also states that we in the church today are now in a better covenant than the one that came before (Heb 8:6).  What makes our covenant better now than the one that was established with the natural nation of Israel?  I will not attempt to fully answer that question, but I will give you some pertinent clues to why I think it is better now.  In the Old Testament God was certainly for the nation of Israel.  God was certainly with the children of Israel.  But, I do not think that God was ever in the children of Israel.  God dwelt with the nation of Israel only in things that were built with the hands of men.  Moses made God a temporary dwelling place using tents.  Solomon built God a temple in Jerusalem.  But, all of these things were just temporary patterns made by men for something that was to come that was made by God.  Let’s examine the Bible today for God’s realities and why we have a basis of a better covenant now.

We will start with God being with us and look for Bible verses to establish God’s presence with His people.  What does it mean for God to be “with” us?  One definition of the term “with” is to be in the company of.  In other words to be in the same company.  God is said to be in our company.  You could say that God is said to be our companion.  Here is a Bible verse that appears to convey this thought:

Psa 46:7  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

God is the Lord of hosts and this verse establishes the idea that God was with the children of Israel in the Old Covenant.  We can read stories in the Old Testament when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, how God went before them in the day as a cloud and a fire by night.  So we can clearly see how God was present with them during their time in the wilderness.

Isa 8:10  Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us.

We can clearly see that there are implied benefits for God being with us as this verse says that God was with Israel.  This verse is speaking about the subject of spoken words and this verse implies that they can be weapons against us.  But, elsewhere in the Bible God also said that no weapon formed against us will prosper, so we can see this is possible because God is with us.  God is on our side, by our side and that is a very good thing.  We have specific benefits, because God is with us.

Mat 1:23  Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

This verse in Matthew is a little different than the others.  This time God is spoken of in terms of becoming a man like us and walking around with us on this planet.  God in the flesh, walking around looking just like us.  That is the powerful story of the salvation and redemptive plan of God.  If God never came to be with us, we would all still be in dire straits.  Let’s shift gears and look at the next dimension of God, God For Us!

Rom 8:31  What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

It is said that God is “for” us.  This is contrasted as an antonym to the word to be “against”.  I am certainly glad that God is not against us.  However, I think that many religious people struggle with the concept of God not currently acting as the judge, the jury and the executioner.  Whenever, 9/11 happened and terrorist flew planes into NY and Washington D.C., I heard many Christians try to say it was God’s judgment upon us.  However, these are ignorant Christians who do not understand that God is “For” us and not “against” us.  If God was “against” you and that was His judgment, no one would be alive to tell the tale.  There is coming a day of judgment, but that is in the future.  Right now Satan is responsible for all of the killing and murder going on in the world, not God!  Satan is against you, God is for you.  I could give you many more verses that speak to God being for us and not against us.  But, I want to move on to the third dimension of God that makes our covenant much better than the Old Covenant God had with Israel.  You see God was “with” Israel and “for” Israel, but never “in” Israel.  We have this gift of God and it makes our covenant much better than the old.

Rom 8:9  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

You see in this verse in Romans, God is saying that those who are born again, have the Spirit of God dwelling in them.  God further stipulates that the Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Christ.  You cannot separate Christ from God nor God from Christ, they are one in the same.  What is the difference between Old Testament prophets and New Testament Prophets?  Both have a prophets anointing, but the New Testament prophet has God living on the inside of them and the Old Testament prophet did not.  An anointing is like an outward pouring of the Spirit of God.  The Spirit of God comes “Upon” a human and is anointed to do a specific job for God.  David was anointed to be King by Samuel.  The prophet poured the oil over the head of David and this was symbolic of how the Spirit of God came upon him.  If David would have had the Spirit of God on the inside of him, David would have had to drink the oil.  Little details like these are often times missed when casually reading the Bible.

Rom 8:11  But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.

This is another verse in the same chapter of Romans, that declares that the Spirit of God dwells in the believer.  This of course is very hard to describe to someone who doesn’t believe.  I can tell them that I have sensed the presence of God within in me at times, in the past sometimes very strongly, like my insides were on fire.  Other times I have felt nothing at all.  But, regardless of the feeling or sensations that I perceived with my senses, I know He is there because His word says He is.  He said He would never leave me nor forsake me, so I know He is there all the time.  God can give you sensations that can be physically felt if He so desires and thinks that you would benefit from them.  However, it is dangerous to pray and ask God to do this, because Satan can also manifest to deceive you.  I never prayed or asked God to make me feel like I was on fire on the inside of my chest, God choose to do this because I guess He thought I needed it.  Be very careful what you pray for, make sure it is based upon scriptures.  I do not know of any verses that says God will give you any specific feeling in your flesh to confirm His presence.

Col 1:27  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:

There are many verses like this one that I could include, but they just go to confirm the fact that the Spirit of Christ now dwells in those that believe.  This is truly a mystery to the world and to the natural Jews.  They have never experienced this, but they do have the opportunity to participate in this great mystery if they choose to.  The free gift of life and salvation is open to whomsoever will.  What does it mean to have God dwell in us?  To dwell somewhere implies a place or a location that we live.  Say a specific address or a specific city.  I dwell in Dallas, TX, some might be able to say.  A dwelling also implies a home.  God has made his home in us.  We are now the new home of God.  Where we were not His home we have become His home.  This is really an awesome difference between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant.  The church is the New Jerusalem, the spiritual city of God’s new home.  We have become this spiritual city built up in Christ,  Jesus Christ the chief cornerstone, where in we all fit together being built up in the spiritual realm.

So God is For You!  God is With You!  and God is In You!  if you are a believer and have made Jesus your Lord and Savior.

Speak To Your Rock! Why Moses Didn’t Enter into the Promise Land!

(Ver 2.4)  If you have ever read my blogs you know that I can be controversial.  I say things that are new and different.  But, I can only say what God teaches me to say and I have learned that God is different than anyone else I’ve ever met.  So if I say what God says to me, it will probably be different than what most men say and teach.  Today I want to explore some scriptures that God taught me many years ago.  Why didn’t Moses get to enter into the promise land?  What kept Moses out from the promised end of God’s plan?  The examples written in the Old Testament are there so that we can learn not to repeat the same mistakes that they made.  If we can learn these lessons from Moses, I think we can apply them to our situations today.  We have a better covenant, established upon better promises, yet we do not possess them automatically.  Even though God had already given the children of Israel the Promised Land, they were required to do something to possess it.  This is an extremely valuable natural typology of a pattern that is repeated in the spiritual realm for the church.  So let’s examine what kept Moses out of possessing God’s Promised Land.

I want to examine verses in the book of Numbers.  In chapter 20 of Numbers, Moses has a big problem again.  He is attempting to lead the people of Israel through a desert, there is little to no water to drink and the people and the animals are all very thirsty.  Moses goes to God and asks for help and God responds with a set of specific instructions, so let’s now start reading with what God says to Moses in the desert.

Num 20:8  Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.

God gives Moses a very specific set of instructions with a limited number of steps.  These are not complicated steps, but yet people sometimes hear what they want to hear, instead of what God says and that get’s them into trouble in a very big way.  As we read through the rest of this chapter we find that Moses did not do what God said to do.  Let’s examine carefully the specific set of instructions that God gave:

  1. Take Your Rod.
  2. Get Your Brother Aaron.
  3. Gather the People before the Rock.
  4. Speak to the Rock.
  5. Give Everyone a Drink.

Five little things God told Moses to do.  There were five little specific steps of instructions from God.  Was this complicated?  No!  Was this different?  Yes!  God had never given these instructions to Moses before, so maybe Moses had a struggle with them or maybe Moses just assumed he knew what God had said.  Maybe he heard in his mind something different?  I do not know, I do know that it is interesting that Moses is the one that wrote this book of the Bible and if he made a mistake or didn’t understand it why did he write about his short comings?  Interesting question isn’t it?  What I learned from observing the instructions of God is that He rarely repeats exactly what He said for you to do before.  If God told you to strike the rock last time, then guess what you will probably be doing something different the next time.  I’ll talk more about that later.  Let’s read through Numbers and examine what Moses did, instead of following God’s instructions:

Num 20:9  And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him.

Num 20:10  And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?

Moses makes a great start to obeying God, but a really lousy ending.    Let’s examine what Moses did according to these two verses and list the steps that he took:

  1. Moses Took the Rod.
  2. Moses Met with His Brother Aaron.
  3. Moses and Aaron Gathered the People Together Before the Rock.
  4. Moses Then Said to the People.

The first 3 steps seem to be perfect matches to the instructions that God gave to Moses.  So when did God ever tell Moses to say anything to the people?  I know that you have to say something to them to gather them or assemble them before the rock, but when did God tell Moses to speak to the people after they were all gathered together?  Did God tell Moses to preach to the congregation?   Did God say to tell the congregation anything at all?  I do not think that He did.  This represents the beginning of the downfall of Moses.  As soon as you start deviating from the plan of God, you begin to miss it and you fall into disobedience and there is the root of his problem.  If we continue reading in the next verse we will see what Moses did next:

Num 20:11  And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts

Did you see what happened next?  Let’s continue our list of what Moses did and analyze them to see what they say to us.  We are now on step 5 of what Moses did.

5.  Moses Lifted His Hand.

6.  Moses Smote the Rock.

7.  Moses Smote the Rock Again.

8.  Moses Gave Everyone a Drink.

You can see that Moses did eight things to God’s 5 step plan of instructions.  How many things is that, too many?  Of course that is 3 things too many.  God never told Moses to raise his hand.  God never told Moses to strike the Rock.  Why did Moses have to hit the rock twice?  I think it was simply because nothing happened the first time Moses hit the rock.  I believe that God realized that Moses wasn’t going to follow the plan so He was merciful and gave them water to drink anyway.  Moses had to hit the rock twice before anything came out and I bet you that Moses was a little concerned after nothing happened the first time that he struck the Rock.  What we must realize is that even though God still gave the people a drink, Moses’ actions taken had grave consequences attached to them.  So what was God’s response to Moses and Aaron’s actions taken?  Was God pleased?  Of course not, God says something that is very profound:

Num 20:12  And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.

God reveals the reason Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock, as being a case of his unbelief.  Moses apparently had a problem with speaking to an inanimate object and expecting anything to happen from just your spoken words.  I’ll bet you a lot of Christians are still like Moses today.  God was trying to teach His servant Moses a valuable lesson about the spiritual law of words.  Words have authority and power behind them and God was attempting to raise Moses’ expectation level and spiritual awareness.  We know that previously in the wilderness that God had told Moses to strike the rock to bring out water for the people, but this time God changed the plan.   If you did not realize it, God hardly ever does the same thing twice.  By God’s instructions, Moses was supposed to speak to the rock before the people.  So while the people were watching, the people would have learned a valuable spiritual lesson also.  But, Moses failed and as a result God told him that he would not enter into the Promised Land that he had already given to them.  That is a sad lesson, but that is not the entire story.  You see you have not gotten the symbolism in this story found in Numbers.  It is very important to see that this story is covered with types and shadows of spiritual things to come.  The children of Israel are a type of the church.  Moses and Aaron are types of the leaders in the church.  The Rock is a type of Jesus Christ.  The Promised Land is a type of the Word of God, the promises of the New Covenant.  The wilderness can represent the time of trials or tests in the life of believers.  The water is most often representative of the spiritual drink of God’s Word.

1Co 10:4  And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

1Co 10:5  But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

1Co 10:6  Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.

So what are the lessons that we the church should learn from this one story in the Bible?

Let’s go back through the story again and this time look for the spiritual typology.   God tells Moses to take his rod.  The rod represents a symbol of power and authority.  It can also be a symbol of correction.  You can rule with a rod of iron and that would represent a strict control of intolerance or of a swift set of consequences for disobedience.  However, God never tells Moses to do anything with this power symbol.  God then tells Moses to get with Aaron his brother.  I feel like this represents church leadership talking together and working together for a common goal for the good of the people.  Then God tells these leaders to gather the people.  The people represent the church and they should be meeting together to witness the example of the leadership of God’s plan in order to learn what God is doing.  Now, here is the real lesson from the story.  I believe that we can see and learn a lot from the next instruction that God gives to Moses.  Step 4 God said for the leadership to “speak to the Rock”.  What did the Bible say was the Rock?  The Rock represents Jesus Christ.  So what is Jesus Christ?  Jesus Christ is the answer to your every problem.  What was Moses’ problem?  No water or angry upset rebellious people?  Obviously Moses’ problem was his own people.  You need to understand this, because it is very important to see.  People are the biggest problem in any church.  If it weren’t for people, church would be a great place to be.  People are the biggest challenge any minister faces.  People like to talk, gossip, complain, criticize and many other ungodly things.   People will start divisions, confrontations, internal fights, and just complain about anything they think that doesn’t fit with what they want to see happen.  People will start petitions, call for church meetings and votes to try to run the show and all along disregard God’s appointed leadership, his anointing, His plans and His purposes.  God has placed leadership in the church.  Pastors and teachers are called by God and appointed by God to do a specific job in a specific way.  Most of the time God deals with the leadership of the church and tells them exactly what to do and say to the people.  This is a significant learning point from the patterns found in the story of Moses and the children of Israel.  God never addressed the congregation or spoke to anyone in the congregation directly about how to run the the group or what to do.  God always went through His chosen leader recognizing spiriutal organization and sturcture.  This is how a church is supposed to operate today.  In the church it is a little bit different in that God is inside of every believer and He will speak personal direction to each individual believer.  However, God still recognizes spiritual order and He will not tell anyone in the church how to run the church other than the pastor.

Where was Moses’ downfall?  What was the first thing that Moses did that was not on God’s instruction list of 5 specific steps?  If you recall the downfall came when he started talking to the people.  This is a critical lesson for preachers as well as for the congregation members to take note of.  Here is the principle that Moses failed in.  Moses had a problem with the people in that they were thirsty which caused them to be rebellious.  Why didn’t Moses just speak to the Rock and get the answer to his problem?  Instead of speaking to the Rock and getting the answer, Moses called the people “rebellious rebels”.  Here God is trying to teach Moses a lesson concerning a spiritual law of speaking the answer and Moses chooses to speak the problem instead.  Wow, did you just hear what I said?  That was more than worth your time reading this lesson if just you understood that one very important point.   This is a critical lesson to learn and apply to our situations today.  God never said to speak to the people, and speaking to the people who were the problem was not going to bring Moses the answer.  You know if you tell someone who is a thief that they are a thief, it will never cause them to come up higher and change?  If you speak to rebels and say they are rebels, they will never learn to change.  Speaking to your problem and saying they are your problem will cause them to continue as they are and they will remain your problem because of your words spoken over them.  The people of Israel never learned any lessons from this experience.  Moses never learned any lessons either.  God told Moses that he was not going to lead the people into the Promised Land because of his unbelief.  Moses was probably one of the greatest Old Testament prophets of God and he came far short of the destiny that God had intended for him.  Can’t you see how his example of failure applies to you and can it help you not to repeat his mistake?   If you can, it will radically change what you say to who and when.  Many times it would be better to keep your mouth shut and not say anything than to speak the problem and remain in unbelief and miss out on God’s answer to your problem.  God told Moses that if he would only speak to the rock, that the rock would obey his words.  That statement boggles most Christian’s religious minds.  God will do what I say?   If you would only study the Bible and what it says about the words that you speak, you would certainly change many of the things that you say.  The problem is that most Christians fall into the same unbelief category and continue to speakto and about their problems.  Earlier in the book of Numbers, God revealed two things to Moses and Israel that have a direct bearing on everything that I just said about Moses.  You see it would be unjust if God punished Moses for doing something that God had not already told him to do and explained to Moses how things will work.   If we go back and read we will discover that God had already given Moses two spiritual laws to learn and to follow.  Take a look at what God says in these verses:

Num 6:22  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

Num 6:23  Speak unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children of Israel, saying unto them,

Num 6:24  The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:

God taught Moses and Aaron, that they could bless Israel with the words that came out of their mouths.  By Moses speaking these positive good words over the people, God was able to bless them and cause them to prosper.  As you read down in this chapter, Moses and Aaron are supposed to say several other words of blessing and then in verse 26, God concludes that “I will bless them“.  Here is the principle given, you speak blessings and I will bless them!   Did you get that concept?  That is exactly the opposite of what Moses said and did.  Moses looked at the people and called them “Rebels”.  Can God bless these words?  What you find is that Moses ended up cursing his own people with his words and that is a major problem.  God cannot bless Israel because Moses did not follow the instructions of God and the spiriutal laws of God.  To emphasize the point even clearer to Moses in couple of chapters God tells him directly something that is very hard to misunderstand:

Num 14:28  Say unto them, As truly as I live, saith the LORD, as ye have spoken in mine ears, so will I do to you:

These words were spoken directly to Moses and Aaron, the leadership of the nation of Israel some 6 chapters earlier than the “speak to the rock” chapter in Numbers 20.  God reveals to Moses a spiritual law concerning his words that he speaks.  This spiritual law applies across the board to everyone in the congregation as well as the leadership.  God tells Moses that I will do whatever you say.  This verse tells me that God listens to the words that come out of your mouth.  Whatever you say, that is what God will do to you.  I know most Christians do not believe this.  That just doesn’t make any sense does it?  Why would God do that?  I do not know, but yet it is exactly what the Bible just said, isn’t it?   I guess Christians think these people in the wilderness were different than us today.  They were not really examples that we can learn anything from.  I guess people do not realize they are our examples and we better learn from their mistakes, or we will be doomed to repeat their failures.  There are many other Bible verses that I could go into right here to confirm what I have just said.  You can study them for your selves and see if they are there, or you can simply ignore them all and think they do not apply to you.  I’ll give you one confirmation to the words that I have just taught on and this is information found in the book of Psalms:

Psa 106:32  They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes:

Psa 106:33  Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.

As you can read this is God’s commentary on the story of Moses that we just studied.  In these verses God tells us that the children of Israel made Moses angry.  God calls this the waters of strife.  By making Moses angry we are informed that his spirit was provoked to speak unadvisedly with his lips.  You can clearly see from this verse that it was what Moses said that was his problem and not his striking the rock.  You should learn that what you say is also potentially your greatest problem area and learn to control your tongue even when angry or being upset.  You can clearly see a connection of what you say coming from your spirit inside of you.  This is an extremely valuable lesson to see and to learn from.

One of the most important subjects in the Bible to study and to understand is that about your spoken words.  God tells us that He is listening to what we say and that He will do to us whatever we say.  If we speak evil, that is what we will get.  If we speak good things, that is also what we will get.  Your words only affect your outcome and what you get.  Because, the children of Israel, murmured and complained to God about their situation that is what they got.  The older generation did not enter into the promise land, except for Joshua and Caleb.    What made Joshua and Caleb different?  What caused Joshua and Caleb to enter in where the other people their age all died?  You should go back and read that story very closely and see what Joshua and Caleb said, when the others said the exact opposite.  God did to Joshua and Caleb what they said and the others also got what they said.  This is a prevalent reality found throughout the Bible, from cover to cover.  You can read practically any story in the Bible and you can observe very closely exactly what they say, then read ahead and see what they got in life.  It amazes me when I study the Bible like this and see what God’s response is to what people say.  I know there are other spiritual laws in the Bible also; this one is not the only spiritual law that affects what people get in life.   But, this one is certainly one of the ones’ that people do not have a clue about.  Elvis Presley said he would never live to be older than his mother and he did not.  My grandmother said that a crazy driver would be her end and two teenagers racing ran into the side of her car and killed her.  If you look at what you have today and analyze it with what you said in the past, it will almost always add up to the same results.  Learn to be careful what you say even in jokes.  I’ll try to do more lessons on words in other blogs, but I have gone long enough today.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading this series on words, you can go to “Part 2“.

Bible Creation Revealed! Pt 4 – The World that Was PT 2!

(Ver 1.1)  This is now Part 4 of a series of advanced Bible study lessons about the creation timeline using God’s perspectives.  If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1“.  In my last blog I introduced you to the “World that Was”.  There are numerous Bible verses when viewed correctly, that reveal to us a civilization on our planet that was completely destroyed by God.  This previous world system helps to explain the age of the universe, dinosaurs, and other factors that science conflict with what some Christians seem to teach about creation.  You cannot look at a star in the night sky and say that it is only 6000 years old.  It took significantly longer than that for the light from that star to reach where we are so that we can see it.  Astronomers and scientist using radio telescopes, the Hubble telescope and other methods can look out into space and can view things that occurred millions, even billions of years ago.  I have heard some Bible teachers claim that God only created things with the appearance of age.  In other words they were saying God was a deceiver of mankind.  Create a world that looks really old but call it new.  Is this what your God would do?  Does this fit the character of God’s integrity?  I do not think so!  So we have to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly to see what God reveals to us about creation in the Bible and that is what I have been trying to do.  I am attempting to put the puzzle pieces given to us in the Bible to discover the truth of creation.

There are many Bible verses that we need to see that speak to us and give us clues about creation and Genesis.  Let’s look at some additional verses found in the Bible that at least imply other worlds existed other than our present world.  Here is a verse that has clear implications written within it:

Gal 1:4  Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

Do you understand that you do not need to qualify the noun “world” with the adjective qualifier “present evil” if this is the only world that ever existed or ever will exist?  What we see is an implied reference to both a world that was before our current world and a world that will be after our present evil world.  You have to be smart enough to see what the Bible says.  Think about this, if there are only two world systems, the evil world and the good world to come, you do not need to add the word “present”.  You only need to add the word “present” world if there existed a “past” world.  Otherwise, you could differentiate our world from the good one to come by the one adjective “evil”.  Do you understand this logic?  The Bible is very tricky that way.  God is so much smarter than us and He knows exactly how to say something so that you can gain a tremendous amount of information from just a few words, while making it difficult for you to see at the same time.  If you can see all of this it will help you to understand other Bible verses.  Here is another Bible verse that is more direct about the world that is to come:

Eph 1:21  Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:

You have to be blind not to see that God is telling us that we are living in a temporary world system right now that is not going to be the same world system in the future.  God will implement a change and recreate the world system.  God calls this a new heaven and a new earth in Revelation.  If there will be a new heaven and a new earth and a new world system that is to come, you have to admit that it is at least possible that there existed an older world prior to our current world also.

Eph 2:7  That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

Here is one more verse that speaks of a world to come.  This is the same Greek word translated in other places as “world”.   It speaks of a coming time where God will bless those who are in Christ Jesus.

Heb 1:2  Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

We have seen several verses now that imply there is or was more than one world created by the Words of God.  In this verse in Hebrews 1:2 we can again see a reference to us being in the last days of our current world.  We can also see that Jesus created this world.  But, since the word for “worlds” is plural in the KJV Bible as it should be, we can understand that not only is there another world that will come in the future by the Word of God, we also know that there was a previous world that was also created by the Word of God in the beginning.

Heb 11:3  Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

I believe I gave this verse earlier, but I want to emphasize the plurality of the word “worlds” in this verse.  Some might try to say that this is only speaking of our solar system and the other solar systems in the universe and that is the plurality.  That is an interesting misinterpretation of this Greek word.  If you recall there are two words translated as “world” in the New Testament.   One meaning an “orderly arrangement” and the other meaning an “age”.  This word in Hebrew 11:3 means “ages”.  As in multiple slices of time.  We are living in a current world age, there is a coming world age and we have clearly seen that there was previous world age before Genesis 1:2.

So what happened to this world system that came before Genesis 1:2?  Who destroyed it and why?  We are not given a lot of clues in the Bible, but we are given some clues so let’s look at some of them:

Isa 14:16  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

Isa 14:17  That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

These verses found in Isaiah are widely believed to be a description of Satan.  I firmly believe that is exactly who these verses are talking about.  But, then you also have to notice what they say about Satan.  They are not prophetic words of any coming events, but they are more like the words of a news report of a past historic event.  These verses speak of a catastrophic event that occurred within earth’s history.  It speaks of a complete and utter destruction of a world system.  A system with inhabitants, with organized cities, and all of the other qualities that we possess now.  A city implies roads, buildings, walls, safety and security.  It implies an organized government and the rule of kings with kingdoms.  All of these things were destroyed between the verses of Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 because of Satan.  Let’s back up in the chapter and view the conformation to who this is speaking about and what God reveals to us in his description:

Isa 14:12  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Let’s analyze the first part of this verse.  It declares that God is speaking about a spiritual “fallen” being named Lucifer.  The Hebrew word for “fallen” means “to cast down”,  “to perish”, “to overthrow”, and “to die”.  We can clearly see that something happened to bring Lucifer down.  This Hebrew word for Lucifer is also a fascinating word with a specific and direct meaning.   It implies “brightness” like the sun.  It also has the literal meaning of “the morning star”.   The morning star is not Venus or some other bright star like object in the night sky.  The “morning star” is our sun that rises in the morning.  This is a very significant name and title.  This verse calls Satan the “son of the morning”.  I hope that you understand that the word “morning” means “early light”.  God is giving us a very significant clue to the identity of Satan.  God is calling him his son.  We know in the New Testament that it declares that God is Light!  So being called the son of the “early light” implies a son of God from a very long time ago.  This verse has direct implications of being a long time ago by the word “early”.  This implies “first light” or the time when light begins to form in the sky before the actual sun rises.  If you have ever witnessed the sun rise, you can learn a very important lesson to what God is telling us about Satan.  Satan was one of the first, if not the first creatures created by God.  He would have been the equivalent to Adam the first creature of our world.   Lucifer would have been a pattern or a model of Jesus that was to come.  If you search your Bible you will find that Jesus gives us the same information in the book of Revelation for the name of Lucifer.  Jesus informs us in Rev 22:16 that He is the true “Bright Morning Star” because He is the root and offspring of David.  What Lucifer use to be, is what I really am, says Jesus.

Heb 1:5  For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?

This verse in Hebrews is an interesting contradiction to what I just said or is it?   If you look closely at this verse God is speaking about angels.  We know that Lucifer was the chief angel.  So God is making and demonstrating a major difference between angels and His Son Jesus Christ.  God did not become a natural Father to any creature except to Jesus.  Because of the virgin birth of Jesus, Jesus has become the only son of God born of a natural woman.  This makes Jesus radically different from Lucifer doesn’t it?  Lucifer was never born naturally, so while he was a spiritual son of God, he was never a natural son of God.  Jesus was both a spiritual and natural son of God and this makes Jesus the true “morning star”.

1Jn 3:8  He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

For this reason Jesus Christ came to the earth, to undo the works of the devil.  What works were these that caused God himself to come to earth to undo what had already been done?  That is an amazing question to ponder.  This verse in 1 John tells us that Satan had been sinning from the beginning.  Now that we have seen evidence for another world system that Satan caused to be destroyed, we can begin to understand why God created another new world system and came to earth personally to make sure it worked this time.  So we can assume that Satan was sinning from the beginning of time and not just from the foundation of the current world.  We must begin to understand that these two events are different times and different worlds.

Here are some more verses that are specifically related to the subject of the Bible account of creation.  These verses that I will show you will further confirm the existence of the previous world and what happened to it.  We will begin to read starting in chapter 4 of Jeremiah and verse 23:

Jer 4:23  I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.

I hope that you can see the significant similarities of this verse with Genesis 1:2.  If you do, you will see they are directly parallel descriptions speaking of the exact same time period.  This verse is God’s commentary to Genesis 1:2 and gives us additional information that is related to what happened to cause this condition of destruction.  We can also see the declaration that the earth was covered with darkness.  It is assumed that there is something blocking the sunlight from penetrating to the surface, something like very thick clouds or very deep water or both.   We can clearly see that this verse is directly speaking of Genesis 1:2 and 1:3.  In Genesis 1:3 God says “let there be light”, this would be God’s answer to the problem of “no light”.  Let’s move to the next verse and see what else God is describing to us:

Jer 4:24  I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.

I am not really sure how to take this verse, it says there were mountains, but yet it declares they were moving lightly.  To me that would seem to indicate that the currents of the oceans caused them to move and shake.  But, here is the verse that I want you to start taking note of for what it says:

Jer 4:25  I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

Now we have a major clue that God is talking about Genesis 1:2.  God says in this verse that there was no man or no Adam.  The Hebrew word “man” is the same Hebrew word for “Adam”.  God is saying there is no Adam yet and all of the birds that were in the sky have vanished.   Why would God speak of birds vanishing before there was no man named Adam in the same sentence?  Adam was created on the last part of day 6 of the recreation account in Genesis 1.  The birds and other animals come on the 5th day of God’s recreation.  So we can clearly see that whatever time God is speaking of is before both of these have occurred.   Yes?  There must have been birds back in Genesis 1:1 that all disappeared with the rest of God’s creation.   There really is no other logical explanation for this verse.   Now it is really going to get good, let’s read verse 26:

Jer 4:26  I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the LORD, and by his fierce anger.

So what cities is God speaking of that was before Adam came along?  Again we have to be smart enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly, but this is a major clue to what happened in Genesis 1:2.  God declares that the world that was changed from a fruitful place to a wilderness.  God specifically says that in this world there existed inhabited cities.  The Hebrew word for “city” in this verse means a place that is guarded by a watch.  This implies a government, organization, leadership and a lot of inhabitants.  But, God also informs us that these were all broken down.  This Hebrew Word for “broken down”  has the following definition:

A primitive root; to tear down: – beat down, break down (out), cast down, destroy, overthrow, pull down, throw down.

Isn’t that what God said to Lucifer?  How are thou “fallen”.  In this word it clearly means someone destroyed these cities intentionally.  They were leveled as if they had never existed.  God declares that He was extremely angry and this is why that world was destroyed.  Because of the sin and ungodliness that existed in that time God had to destroy it.

Jer 4:27  For thus hath the LORD said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.

In the next verse, God is still speaking of the time before Adam and says that world was completely destroyed and perished.  The Hebrew word for “full end” can mean “completeness”.    What God is saying is that just because that world perished, it was the not the end of all time.  There was more to come, a new world that Adam would be given.  All of these statements were given to us as clues to what happened in Genesis 1:2 before Adam was put on this planet.  God specifically speaks of a destruction that occurred that caused the world to be “void” and “without form”.   These are the descriptive terms given to us and they help us to see that these verses in Isaiah and Jeremiah are God’s commentary on the Bible creation account found in Genesis 1.

Because many people do not understand how God wrote the Bible, they do not know how to look for the hidden clues in the Bible.  The Bible is not in chronological order, nor does it have all information on any given subject in any one location or book.  God spread out clues in the Bible in widely dispersed random patterns, hiding them in and around verses that are not always related.   God can jump from one subject to another subject using a wide perspective of time periods, people, natural vs. spiritual things, places and many other ways that He has used to conceal information from his enemies.

So all that I have been trying to do is to read the clues found in the Bible and put them together logically to help us understand what God is really saying.  It involves work, research, study and a major effort to find all of these verses and then additional effort to understand them and put them together correctly.  I know it is not easy to see, I know it can be taken other ways, I know there are many other possible interpretations, I know you can believe what you want to despite what I said.  God will always allow people to be wrong.  So I have presented a new perspective and at least given to you some new things to think about and to consider.  I pray that you will study to show yourself approved unto God and not rely on me to do your Bible study for you.

There are still many questions that come to my mind about this world that God describes as being before our world.   Here are some of my questions, maybe you can come up with some others.

  1. Why didn’t God come to the earth and offer salvation to that world?
  2. Who were these multitudes of earth inhabitants that perished?   Angels?
  3. Did they all go to heaven after God destroyed this world?
  4. If the Bible says that death came by Adam, how could this world be destroyed and animals, birds and all the other creatures, plants and living organisms all have died?
  5. Why couldn’t God just throw Satan into Hell with his followers before He created our world?

There are just so many very tough questions to answer still.  Obviously the Bible is a very complex book full of answers if we can figure them out or better yet when God shows us in the Word what it all means.   I’ll end this blog with this verse of Jesus speaking:

Rev 1:8  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning  and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Jesus Christ is speaking and calls himself the beginning and the ending of all things.  The Lord that is, that was and the Lord which is to come.  We can again clearly see the significance to three different and separate worlds mentioned in this verse.  It says within the realm of time, Jesus existed in the world that now is, the world that was and the world that will be coming in the future.  The Bible has many verses like this all over it, if you can find them and relate them to the subject.  I never try to provide every scripture reference to a subject that I teach, that would be a very difficult task for anyone to do.   So I try to provide at least two or three good references to help establish every word that I teach from the Bible.  By doing this we can be assured that it is correct and then can go and try to find other confirming verses.  If you know of other verses that I did not include I would be happy to hear about them.  God Bless.

What in the World is God Waiting For? 3 Things God is Waiting for Before Jesus Returns!

(Ver 2.1)  Did you know that God is waiting for specific things to occur before Jesus comes back?  If you did not know this you could be a potential hindrance to when Jesus comes back.  I know that doesn’t sit well with a lot of religious minded people.  People widely believe that God is sovereign and because God is sovereign they believe that He also gets whatever He wants, whenever He wants it.  Nothing happens they believe unless God commits it or permits it.  If this was the way God really was, He would remind me more of an immature two year old who always wants their way and screams when they do not get it.  I do not think God acts like a two year old.   A two year old has no patience!  But, God is described to be the God of Patience in Romans 15:5.  You do understand that if God was not waiting for anything to happen, then God would have no need for the virture of “Patience”, right?  The association of God with the term Patience reveals that God waits for things to occur and that He does not cause these things to occur.  Of course it is more complex than this, because even the farmer has patience for his crops, but yet he is the one that planted the seeds to cause the predetermined future outcome of his crop.  This is really a better anaology for God’s patience also.  God awaits for His outcomes to come to maturity that He has planted and we will see this more clearly as we continue through this lesson.  I hope that you understand what I just said about the concepts of paitiece and what the word means.  You see, I do believe that God is sovereign, but I also believe that God has character, morals and principles that place self imposed limitations upon Himself to what He does and when He does it.  This is called self-control and this is a clear sign of physical and spiritual maturity.  Patience is also a Christian developed attribute or fruit that God is awainting to manifest in all of us. 

There is a popular church doctrine called preminence that states Christ’s return is emminent and at hand.  Meaning there are no scriptures left to be fulfilled in all of Bible prophecy for His soon return.  There is two erroneous assumptions dictated in this doctrine.  The first problem is that you assume that you know and understand every Bible prophecy and this is clearly a mistake from someone who has raised themselves beyond where they are presently in spiritual knowledge.  No one but God knows every prophecy and understands them all.  Are you God?  Then there are the verses in the Bible like the ones that I’m going to give you today, that these types of teachers must explain away or ignore completely to hold fast to their doctrine of preimence.   So what does the Bible tell us are the certain specific things that God is patiently waiting for to happen before Jesus returns?  Today I am going to discuss three things that God is waiting for.  When I read verses like these, I ask myself, if God wanted them to happen, why doesn’t He just make them happen?  That of course is an excellent question.  Apparently God is not in total control of everything like some people think He is.   Before we start let’s define waiting.  What is waiting?

WAITING:  remaining inactive in one place while expecting something to happen

According to this defintion , the word waiting means to sit inactive in one place while expecting something to happen.  Does God do this?  To think of God being inactive blows my mind, and I know it is hard for people to conceptualize.  However, you might be surprised that God does do this.  You should actually read your Bible more closely and pay attention to find out what God does and what God doesn’t do instead of just assuming you know.

1. GOD WAITS FOR THE PRECIOUS FRUIT OF THE EARTH

Let’s look at an important verse found in the book of James that clearly tells us something that God is patiently waiting for, before Jesus returns to the earth:

Jas 5:7  Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

What is this precious fruit of the earth that God is waiting for?  This verse is clearly saying God is waiting for something in relationship to a prerequisite requirement that must occur before Jesus’ return.  You do realize that God is the husbandman in this symbolic filled verse?  One interpretation for this verse is telling us that God is waiting for people to get saved before Jesus returns.  God wants everyone to get saved according to 2 Peter 3:9.  If you read 2 Peter 3:9 you will find the word “longsuffering” associated with God and this is again referring to God’s great patience in waiting.  If God wants everyone to be saved, why isn’t everyone saved already?  Apparently it is up to others to go tell people so that they can get saved.  Apparently people have to accept the free gift of salvation.  So apparently God has done everything that He is going to do to get people saved and He is now waiting on us to go into all the world and preach the gospel (Mk 16:15).  This verse in James tells us that God has “long patience”.  Did you know that patience is a sign of maturity?  If you do not make people do the right thing, then sometimes it takes patients to give people the opportunity to learn to do the right thing.  This is one of the greatest qualities of the Omnipotent God!  God wants people to get saved, but will not force anyone into making this decision.  So God is waiting with great patience for as many people to get saved as can.  There are many days on earth I look around and see all of the evil things going on and ask God “What about today?  Send Jesus back today!”.  But, I know there are so many more people who can be saved if we try to reach them.

The salvation process is also being called a farming process.  A husbandman is the owner of a field where a crop was planted.  The husbandman plants specific seeds into the field that He desires to see grow to produce specific mature crops and this created process always requires time to develop.  What does a farmer do after planting his crop?  Mostly a farmer waits for the crop to come up.  This is an inactive time befor the coming harvest season.  Is God’s crop ripe yet?  Has this planted crop fully matured?  You do know that the harvest season is upon us?

2. GOD WAITS FOR HIS ENEMIES TO BE MADE HIS FOOTSTOOL

So we have seen that God has long patience and can wait for what He wants to happen without forcing them to happen.  What else is God waiting for, before Jesus comes back?  In this next verse God informs us of something that is potentially controversial, yet I still believe what it says:

Heb 10:13  From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

God is waiting for His enemies to put under His feet.  A footstool is where you put your feet to rest them.  The coming time of rest is a 1000 year millennial time period that corresponds to the 7th day of creation when God rested from His work in Genesis 1 and 2.  God expects His enemies to be made His footstool before this happens.  Where are God’s feet?  The feet are in the body of Christ.  Christ is the head, but the church is the body of Christ so where is God’s feet?  Who are God’s enemies that He is expecting to be under our feet?  It is Satan and his demonic host of angels.  God expects them to be placed under our feet.  Jesus will not return until this happens and I know that is a very controversial part of my blog.  I have heard many preachers claim that Satan was put under foot by Jesus on the cross.   However, the Bible has so much more to say about that and I will not attempt to elaborate on all of these verses in this blog.  If you desire to learn more about this you can read my blog on “The Seed of the Woman, The Seed of the Serpent“.  So the Bible says God is waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool, when is this going to happen?  How is this going to happen?  What is God waiting for, is it you again?  I’ll give you a very quick overview to help get you started:

Rom 16:20  And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

I will close this section with this verse helping to prove Satan is not underfoot yet.  At the time of the writing of this book of the Bible, the Apostle Paul claimed that Satan’s head was not yet bruised.  Paul wrote this well after Jesus was raised from the dead and had returned to heaven.  The majority of preachers today teach that Jesus was the seed of the woman that bruised the head of Satan, but they have to ignore Romans 16:20 to adhere to that interpretation and that is a major problem.  Therefore we can easily understand that Satan has not yet had his head bruised.  If you recall this was a prophecy that God made in Genesis 3 speaking to Satan.  God told Satan that the woman and her seed would bruise his head.  Who is this prophetical woman and what is her seed?  If you read the Bible study above you have a good idea already that this is the church body.  The church is the bride of Christ called the coming woman in Genesis 3:15 and she is the woman that will bruise the head of the serpent.

3. GOD IS WAITING FOR THE MATURITY OF THE CHURCH

We are now at the third thing that God is waiting for before Jesus comes back.  Again, we have more controversy with these verses, because they are difficult for many immature Christians to accept.  It is many times like discussing Algebra with a 4 year old.  They are just not ready to accept it and do not have the basic understanding of all of the necessary subjects to discuss these advanced topics.  Nevertheless, here I go and I hope you will understand it:

Gal 4:1  Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;

Gal 4:2  But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.

There is a parallel being given to us in these two verses of scriptures.  They state that a child is not ready to rule until he or she has grown up and matured.   As long as they are still a child, it says they are no different than a servant, even though they are ruler of everything.  Children require teachers and governors so they do not hurt themselves or others either by accident or on purpose.  Children do not have the maturity God is looking for to put His enemies under His feet.  God is waiting for the church to grow up and to become mature.  Quit bickering and fighting over trivial childish things and become a mature Christian.  The church is the joint heirs with Christ that this verse is paralleling.  Even though we are these heirs, many Christians are still developing and in need of maturation.  God is waiting for us to grow up.

Rom 8:19  For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

God is waiting for the manifestation of His children.  Even as a natural child is born physically and needs constant care and attention, over time they begin to develop skills that allow them to take more and more responsibility over what they do and how they do it.  This is a natural process that corresponds to a spiritual process that God is trying to get us to see and understand.

1Co 3:1  And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

In this verse God says that He could not talk to the people in Corinth about spiritual things, because of their immaturity.  God is saying that every Christian starts as a baby Christian, but He expects them to grow up and mature.  An immature Christian is mostly concerned with carnal or natural things.  A mature Christian is more concerned with spiritual things.  This is one of the signs of maturity in the body of Christ.  Where does this put you in the spiritual growth chart?

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

God’s word is spiritual growth food for your spirit.  But, this spiritual food comes in two extremes of basic milk formula for children and strong meat for mature Christians.   A new baby Christian requires to focus on the very basic milk concepts of God’s word in order to grow.  God’s word has both basic milk simple subjects and complex advanced meat meat subjects.  These advanced topics are the strong meat that God is referring to and a baby Christian will choke if you try to feed them these subjects.  Just like little natural babies cannot eat any solid food for many months, spiritual babies cannot understand the strong meat of God’s word.  Natural babies are introduced to small quantities of soft non-milk food and they eventually will develop enough to be able to eat anything.  This makes it very difficult to teach any subject, since we are all in varying stages of spiritual development.  I have a tendency to teach advanced subjects, but some people do not understand them simply because of where they are in their spiritual growth. 

1Co 1:7  So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ:

So if you are like me, we are all waiting for Jesus to come back and take us out of here, but who is waiting for who?  You have to ask yourself what can I do to help this process along.  Is there anything God is needing me to do today?  Do I need to grow up and become more spiritually aware?  Do I need to mature spiritually?   Do I need to do anything to allow God to put His enemies under my feet?  Do I need to go and tell someone about Jesus today?  Do I have anything to do with when the return of Jesus is?  I hope that you see that you do.  Share this lesson with your friends today to help them grow and learn that there are things that God is waiting on patiently before Jesus returns for us and by us cooperating we could help God end this thing more quickly.  God Bless you and thanks for reading my Bible lesson today.

Biblical Significance of Water on our Planet

(Ver 1.1)  One of the primary reasons that we have the capability of life on our planet is because of the created existence of a vast amount of a water supply that makes available this life.  Without water there is no possiblity of life on our planet.  There are also many other complex factors that position our planet as an ideal place for life to thrive.  The sun and the distance of our planet from the sun are additional key factors for the existence of life on this planet.  If we were any closer to the sun, it would be too hot, if we were any further from the sun, it would be too cold.  It is what I sometimes call the Goldilocks creation principle, God created a place that was exactly just right for us to exist in.  I am a firm believer that God created things in our world in a manner that demonstrates God’s hidden qualities.  God is called light in the Bible (1 Jn 1:5).  God is called the Sun in the Bible (Mal 4:2).  God’s word is called seed (Luke 8:11).  God’s words is called water (Eph 5:26).  All of these are essential ingredients for natural life on our planet.  I believe these are parallels to spiritual truths that reveal that spiritual life is essentially tied to God also.  Let’s explore some scriptures that speak about water.  Let’s start at the end of the book and go backwards to some extent:

Rev 22:17  And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

We can understand that water quenches people’s thirst.  Water is essential for our physical well being.  The human body is approximately 2/3 water.  Without water we would not be here.  God calls water an essential ingredient to life.  If God calls it “the water of life”.  Do you think God is only talking about physical, natural H2O?   I do not think that is all that God is talking about.

Rev 22:1  And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Did you know that water can be undrinkable?  It can be contaminated, poisoned or have elements that make it harmful for us.  A key quality of good water is pure water.   The vast majority of water on our planet is undrinkable.  The oceans contain over 98 per cent of the earth’s water supply and they are deadly to drink.  That leaves less than 2 percent of the earth’s water as clean enough to drink.  What do you think that God is saying to us about water in the way that He created this planet?  God declares in Revelation that pure water comes from God’s throne, but what is this pure water that He is referring to?  I do not think God is speaking of natural water, but I believe He is referring to spiritual water.  After all God is a Spirit.  If God,  a spiritual being is the source of pure spiritual water, what is this water?  How does this water differ from other implied waters that are not pure?  You do understand that God is saying there are other waters that are not pure, don’t you?

Rev 14:2  And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps:

Rev 1:15  And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

Apparently God is giving us a key to the puzzle in these two verses.  If the throne of God has a river of pure water flowing from it, what does that water represent symbolically?  According to these verses, it is representative of the voice of God.  We have one verse that says a voice from heaven sounds like “many waters”.  Then in Revelation 1:15 it says Jesus has a voice of “many waters”.  Apparently spoken words are waters.   Here is a lesson of what Jesus told a woman at a well that came for some natural water to drink:

Joh 4:10  Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have askedof him, and he would have given thee living water.

Jesus clearly informs the woman at the well that if she knew who she was speaking to, she would ask Him for a drink of living water.  What was it that Jesus had, that He could offer her to drink?  Jesus had no pitcher, had not draw down in the well to get any natural water, but yet He still offerred her a drink.  We know that Jesus was God in the flesh, so we know that whatever he said were the key words of life (John 6:63).  These are the pure waters that Jesus was offering the lady at the well.  The words of God are the pure water and everyone else’s words are the words that are mixed with other potentially harmful things.  You see God is not the only person that speaks in the world or in heaven, is He?

Rev 12:15  And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.

The symbolic serpent is Satan and he has opened his mouth and a flood has proceeded from his mouth to destroy the woman.  You do understand these are words from the enemy of God and the church.  These words are intended to harm and to deceive.  These words are the only offensive weapon your enemy has against you.  If he can get you to say what he says, he has you.  The words from Satan’s mouth are not pure waters.  They are corrupted and poisoned with hurtful and harmful things designed to bring you down.  So who else has a mouth and speaks words?

Jas 3:11  Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?

You do realize that you have a mouth also?  You speak words, how do your words differ from God’s words or Satan’s words?  Who does your words resemble or sound like?   Are your words a model of the pure water from God or from the corruptible poisoned water from Satan?  If you study James 3 very carefully you will see that God is talking about the words that come from your mouth.   Your mouth is referred to as a fountain that can either put out fresh water or bitter water.  God is saying that your mouth can produce both of these, but not at the same time.  You are either speaking God’s word or you are confused with some other perverted thing coming out of your mouth.

Joh 7:38  He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

People in the world who do not know God, cannot do anything, but speak evil things.   But, to the people who know God and His word, Jesus Christ, we are told something should be different from what we speak and others speak.  Jesus informs us that out of our bellies shall flow rivers of living water.  If you recall that Satan spewed out a flood of water designed to destroy the woman in Revelation 12.  But, we are informed that our mouths should be different than his.  The living water is the same waters of life referred to in Revelation, isn’t it?  If God’s words are pure life, we should be speaking and saying what He says.  Only by learning what He has spoken can we can become these fountains that produce the pure water.  Pure water is what spiritually dead people are thirsty for to quench their spiritual thirst and the draught they have experienced.  This is speaking the truth in love so that they can tell there is a difference.

Water is a very powerful analogy of a spiritual truth that God is trying to get us to see and understand.   God’s words are the pure waters of life and all other religions and words of philosophy or human reasoning are words designed to corrupt you, deceive you, to bring you down to a level of defeat.  Like the earth’s water supply only a very small percentage is drinkable.  If we compare all of the available books of the world to the oceans and waters of the world we can see that there are only a very few that contain the actual words of God.  The Bible is the only word of God we have.  Then there are a few good books that have been written about the Bible.  But, the percentage of undrinkable water far outweighs God’s words.  We are inundated with books, magazines, TV, movies, the internet and other words that are an overwhelming distraction for most people.  This ocen of words are designed to distract you and eventually kill you.  These words are designed to keep your attention and your focus off of the pure waters of truth.   Wide is the path to destruction and many go that way.  Narrow is the path to true life and it seems to me today that there are few that have actually found this path to life.  What are you looking for?  Are you thirsty for life yet?  It is time to speak the pure words for others to drink and that is what I try to do.  God Bless and thanks for reading my Bible study.  I pray that it was a blessing to you.  If you enjoyed it share it with someone else and help me spread the Good News of a better way to live.

Bible Creation Revealed! Pt 3 – Introduction to the World that Was!

(Ver 2.0)  This is now Part 3 of a series of lessons on the Bible creation account.  It has been a little different, I know.  I recommend that you remain open minded and search your Bible to see if these things are so.  If you have not been reading from the beginning of this series I would suggest that you start with “Part 1“.  In the previous blogs, I talked about scriptures that established the beginning of time and matter and then I talked about the foundation of the world.  This present world that we live in was said to have had a beginning, a middle and a coming end.  I then showed you scriptures of a world that is prophesied to come after our present world.  Today I want to show you scriptures that teach us about a different world that use to be, before God created our current organized world system.  Some Bible teachers in the past have referred to this as a “PreAdamic” civilization and I guess that is what I am saying even though that word is not in the Bible, so I do not normally use it.  Before I get there let me review again that we are living in the last days of our present world:

2Pe 3:3  Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,

It is interesting to note how God reveals little clues about creation in randomly dispersed patterns in the Bible.  In this verse it declares that we are living within the “last days” of God’s timeline for His current organized world system.  These “days” of course could be figurative or symbolic words that are referring us to something else of much greater significance.  I do not believe they are literal 24 hour days, do you?  I have spent many hours studying this subject and I do believe that these days are symbolical representations for two 1000 year time periods.  The phrase “last days” in the Bible is almost always referring to the last 2000 years of the allotted time given to the church.  It might help you to see this by studying Genesis chapter 1 very closely and recognizing what happened on each day of creation.  During this time period of these 6 days of creation, God does specific things on specific days and these events are all prophetic works of God that are symbolic of spiritual things that occur within our human history.  According to the Bible God gives us another clue when He tells us that a “day” to the Lord is as a “1000” years and a “1000” years is even as 1 “day”  (2 Peter 3:8).  So when God tells us we are in the last days of time we can conclude that out of the 6 days of time given to man, the first two days represent a specific beginning period of time where there was no law and great sin.  The middle two days would represent another time period dedicated to the Old Covenant and God’s Law.  Finally the last two days would represent the end of the symbolic 6 days of creation and the New Covenant of God with the church when man finally comes to maturity in the spiritual realm.  This 6000 year time period of recorded Bible history, is why many Christian have been taught that the universe is only that old.  But, we need to see more in the Bible in order to make sure that is correct.

There are around 10 different verses in the New Testament that reveal the “Foundation of the World”.  It is almost always spoken of as a starting point and several of the verses in the New Testament also allude to the coming “End of the World”.  If our world had a start, then it also has a middle and an end that is reported to be a 6000 year period of time.  Could it be possible there was another world that existed prior to this time period?  I just wanted to start by asking you again, is it possible?  If you do not think it is even possible, why not?  What Bible verses do have that says there were no other worlds before ours?  If one world had a start, a middle and an end could there have been any other worlds with these same attributes and qualities?  If you still do not think so you again do not know what the Bible actually says on the subject.  Let’s explore some verses that Peter recorded for God that speaks to  us directly about creation and a world that use to be:

2Pe 3:5  For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

This is an amazing verse of truth.  It is clearly easily misunderstood so let’s analyze what God is telling us.  We can clearly see that creation was said to be a result of the spoken words of God.   It does not directly tell us when this event happened, but it also declares that the heavens that we can observe are very OLD and not a recent part of creation.  This verse would seem to refute the notion of a young earth and a young universe that many Bible teachers try to convince people of.  God would have had a great opportunity to confirm a young earth theory in this verse, but instead He tells us the opposite is true.  Next you can see a reference to Genesis 1:2, being stated, the earth standing out of the water and in the water.  It would appear that God is referring to the universal global flood found in Genesis 1:2 and I’ll explain why it cannot be Noah’s flood soon.  If you read the context of this verse you can see that Peter is talking about a group of people who claim that nothing in the world has ever changed.  These people seem to declare that everything has continued like it is now from the very beginning of time.  This almost sounds like some Christians professing a young earth.  In fact let’s go back and read verse 4 in this chapter to see what they were really saying:

2Pe 3:4  And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

People were scoffing and criticizing the disciples saying where is this Jesus you say is coming back?  These people believed that the earth had not undergone any changes since the beginning of creation.  Everything is the same since before our fathers died.  There is no resurrection, there is no coming messiah, there is no savior.  Everything continues just like it always has since the beginning of creation.  Did you notice that this time they did not say “since the foundation of the world”?  You can assume that these people thought that the foundation of the world and the beginning of creation were one in the same events.  They are specifically calling it young and making a clear reference to the beginning of all matter and time.  Was this only 6000 years ago like they thought it was?  God and Peter did not think so.  Go back and read verse 3 and see what God says that the heavens are very old.  God does not say 6000 years and God does not imply a young earth or universe.  God says very clearly and specifically that creation occurred a very long time ago.  This Greek word for “old” means “a long time”.  Is 6000 years a long time to God?  God wrote that in Revelation 12 that Satan is extremely angry knowing that his time is short.  Since God declares this almost 2000 years ago, we can easily conclude that 2000 years to God is a very short time.  So if 2000 years is a short time to God what is 3 x 2000 or 6000 years to God?  A little bit or a short time multiplied by 3 is still not much to God.  If you do not understand God’s perspective on the Bible you will be confused to what it means.  To God a long time would have to be millions or billions of years and not a few thousand years.   Keep in mind the author of the Bible is God and God wrote the Bible from His perspective and not yours.  We also have to observe what else God tells us in this chapter.  Let’s examine verse 6 and see what God is saying to us:

2Pe 3:6  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

This is God’s response to these critics that say nothing has ever changed since the beginning of creation.  God declares to us that there was a world prior to our world that was destroyed and covered with water.  The net result of this covering was the complete destruction of this previous organized system.  Remember that the Greek word kosmos translated as “world” means “an organized system” or “an orderly arrangement”.  The Greek word translated as “then was” means “at that time”.  We can clearly see that God tells us that time existed when this total destruction occurred.  So sometime after the creation of the earth and before Genesis 1:2, there existed an organized world system that was completely destroyed by water.  Many Bible teachers have attempted to explain this verse away calling it just Noah’s flood, but that cannot be so easily accepted as the truth, if you study the exact Greek wording very carefully.  The Greek word translated as “perish” in this verse means “to destroy fully”.  It literally means that this world being described was completely and utterly lost with no survivors.  Meaning there were NONE as in NOT ANY living creatures that existed after this flood event or anything that was saved from the destruction.  There is absolutely no way that we can make this fit the flood that occured during the time of Noah!  Noah and his family were all saved (8 people in total)  and they were all survivors of that flood.  Plus all of the animals on the ark also survived that flood.  After Noah’s flood God did not have to recreate any new trees or plants either.  Everything that was there before the flood of Noah came back as if nothing happened after the flood of Noah.  There was no utter destruction of the earth as described in this verse that speaks of the universal devestation of everything.  Go and reread Genesis 7 the flood account of Noah and see nowhere does God speak of utter or complete destruction.  God said in Genesis 7 that He would destroy the flesh of the earth, but this was not all-inclusive since God did not have to create any new flesh after the flood ended.

2Pe 3:7  But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

So why would God write about the “world that now is” being destroyed by fire if this universal flood was Noah’s flood?  You can clearly see the distinction that this world that we are now in, is NOT the same world that was destroyed by this flood of water.   We are now seeing a perspective of a world that existed that was completely destroyed by a universal flood of water.  So when was this cataclysmic flood that caused everything to perish referred to in 2nd Peter?  It has to be the flood that is mentioned to us in Genesis 1:2, where the earth was covered with water and darkness was on the face of the deep, it can technically be no other event that I have found in the Bible:

Gen 1:2  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

We can see a description of circumstances that is informing us that the earth as described in this verse was completely uninhabitable.  It clearly describes a universal flood situation that has covered the entire face of our planet.  It also states that darkness covers the earth meaning that the water was so deep that light could not penetrate to allow anything to live beneath the surface.  Did you know that this state of creation directly contradicts other clues that God gives us in the Bible that tells us that this is not how God created the earth originally?  This next verse is absolutely critical for you to understand:

Isa 45:18  For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

This verse found in Isaiah represents God’s commentary on creation.  God gives us some very important information in this verse and I guess many Christians do not understand the significance of it or just ignore it.  This is a valuable clue to understanding the Bible creation account so pay very close attention to exactly what God is saying.  We can see many of the same Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:2 repeated also in this verse.  This helps us to establish subject relevance and relationship.  In Genesis 1:1 it says “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.  This verse of scripture in Isaiah also declares to us that God created the heavens and the earth so God is definitely discussing the same event in both verses.  But here in IsaiahGod says that when He made the earth originally, it was clearly an organized system created in an inhabitable and a useful state of existence.  God clearly says I do not create anything in vain.  The exact same Hebrew word is repeated in this verse in Isaiah that declares the earth to be “formless” or “without form” in Genesis 1:2.  But, this time God tells us that I did not create the earth this way yet it was this way in Gensis 1:2 so we have a major problem that needs resolution.  Do you think that God is giving us a clue by revealing this information to us?  I think that God is giving us more than a clue, let’s review the Hebrew definition of this word found in the Strong’s:

H8414

From an unused root meaning to lie waste; a desolation (of surface), that is, desert; figuratively a worthless thing; adverbially in vain: – confusion, empty place, without form, nothing, (thing of) nought, vain, vanity, waste, wilderness.

This is a very strong word and leaves little to the imagination.  This word calls the earth a worthless state of confusion in Genesis 1:2, and it clearly implies that something occurred to cause it to become this way.  The earth is described in Genesis 1:2 as a place that is a wasteland, an uninhabitable planet, an empty place without any organization.  To be “formless” and “void” you have to agree that the earth is not a livable place.  Then you can clearly see that God says in Isaiah this is not how it was created in the beginning.  So now we have a problem, we can see that many people have attempted to teach that the earth and the universe is only 6000 years old, but God is telling us some very different things in the Bible.  We have to interpret the Bible using the Bible to get an accurate understanding of what it actually means.  Only by interpreting the Bible correctly can we ever attempt to agree with true science.  We can see that God is the creator and caused all time and matter to have a beginning.  In Genesis 1:1 God created these things to be livable and inhabitable, but by reading Genesis 1:2 we can clearly see that the earth is not inhabitable so we have to conclude that something happened to destroy the earth and the livable organized systems that God had originally created.  That is why we see in Genesis 1 the reestablishment of the organized systems of our current world.  By God recreating the world, we have a place that is again livable.

I recently had a man discount this verse because he claimed that after God’s 6 days of creation the earth was created inhabitable and thus he explained away what is stated in the Bible using his human reasoning.  This same man when confronted on another question said God created the universe with the appearance of age fully mature.  That logic is a contradictory position of two different ways to explain why the Bible says what it does to justify a young earth theory.  On one had he said the stars were created mature and on the other hand the earth was created without from and became mature or inhabitable.  This is clearly contradictory to what God says in Isaiah.  God specifically says I never create anything without form and since the earth starts out without form you must conclude God did not create it then.  Do you see the problem?  Genesis 1:1 says God did create the earth and Genesis 1:2 says it was without form so something else had to occur to change the earth from an inhabited starting point to an unimhabitable mess.  God would not have created something from chaos by starting it out as something in a state of confusion and then changing it into what He intended in the first place.  Everytime God said something during creation in Genesis 1 it occurred just exactly like He said.  There were no transitional periods of evolution occuring.  God spoke and there it was fully complete.  If God would have said earth be, the earth would have been created and formed in its fully mature state as designed.

Let’s think about what Genesis 1 actually says.   Many have tried to establish the 6 days of creation in Genesis 1 as being the beginning of all time and matter of our universe.  But, if you look at the chapter carefully, using other Bible verses that we have already learned about, that everything was made by the Word of God, we can begin to see what really happened.  Nowhere in chapter 1 of Genesis does God ever say “Let there be Space!”, “Let There Be Stars”, “Let There Be Earth” or “Let There Be Time”.  These are all implied in Genesis 1:1, but never stated explicitly.  However, approximately 7 times in the chapter God does say “Let there be…” something and it comes forth either into existence or back into prominence.  You see on day 4 of creation it could be wrongly assumed that the Sun and the moon are created, but God only uses them as a prophetic statement of information for the coming of Jesus Christ.  You see the Sun already has to exist for the earth to exist.  The earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.    The earth is not older than the sun.  Both of these have to come into existence simultaneously as part of God’s original creation.  Then there is the statement of the 3rd Day of creation, that God creates plants, grass, trees and they all come forth.  Do you know that sun light is an absolute requirement for the existence of any plant life on our planet?   If plants existed on Day 3, then the sun also existed on Day 3.   Without the sun, the existence of life on this planet would be impossible.  So we have to be smart enough to recognize when God speaks and when He does not speak and what He says on everyday of the recreation account in chapter 1 of Genesis.

Let me give you another valid question found in Genesis 1.  On day 1 of creation is a stated evening and morning day 1 of God’s timeline.   Morning and evening are both sun based dependent concepts of the earth’s rotation around it.  Because the earth rotates on its axis the sun appears to rise every morning and set every evening around the earth.  Therefore the sun must exist on Day 1 for there to be any reference to these events.  Without the sun’s existence we have no day or night, morning or evening nor do we have a calendar day.  These are major problems that most young earth Bible teachers ignore or try to explain away using God’s sovereign power or ability to superceede natural laws that God has created.  All earth time is based upon the existence of the sun.  Without the sun we have no hours, days, weeks or years.

Now let’s further examine what God tells Adam in Chapter 1 of Genesis.  In Genesis 1:28 God makes this very specific command to the man “Be Fruitful, Multiply and Replenish the Earth..”.   Now the word “replenish” is a very unique English word.  While there is no English word to “plenish”, to “replenish” carries a connotation of doing something again, and it still implies that the world was once filled with inhabitants.  God is now telling Adam to refill the earth with inhabitants again.  If God tells Adam to refill the earth, we can clearly see that something must have transpired to cause it to need this to happen.  If I asked you to replenish the cold drinks in the refrigerator that tells you that there were cold drinks there once, but something happened to them and we need to put more in to get cold.  This is not rocket science, so pay attention to what God is saying.  I have heard many Bible teachers attempt to explain away this statement  in terms that God is just telling them to fill the earth and not to refill the earth.  However, God gives us another very important clue to exactly what this means when He uses the exact same words later in Genesis:

Gen 9:1  And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.

So if after the flood of Noah’s day God tells Noah to replenish the earth we can clearly see that God is saying the earth use to have more people in it and I expect it to be filled again.  A vast number of people perished in the flood of Noah’s day.  God is giving us a clue into the Genesis 1:2 flood by repeating this exact set of instructions to Noah that God first gave to Adam.  God was telling Adam that the world use to be covered with people, cities, organized inhabitation and now we need to redo that again.  This helps us to explain and understand many things that science has been reporting.  This knowledge gets us several steps closer to agreeing with true science.


Here is another potential major problem and conflict that modern Bible teachers and scientists have attempted to explain away with a more recent flood event theory ignoring the ancient flood Bible truth reality.  You see there were two universal floods revealed to us in the Bible and many modern Bible teachers and scientists want to ignore the first flood in Genesis 1.2 in favor of a shorter duration flood event called Noah’s flood found in Genesis 7.  You understand that since we are not told the duration of the flood event of Genesis 1:2 it could have been a flood of millions or even billions of years.   Because I do not know how long it was I will not speculate to the given duration of time that occurred.  However we do very clearly know how long Noah’s flood was and when it started exactly because God does give us this information in detail.  There was 1656 years after the creation of Adam when the flood of Noah occurred and came upon the earth after it rained for 40 days a 40 nights (Gen 7:12).  We know this by calculating the ages of every man from Adam to Noah and then reading that the flood came when Noah was 600 years old (Gen 7:11) and his triplet sons were 100 years old.

Now according to Genesis 7:24, the flood waters during Noah’s flood prevailed on the earth for only 150 days and not many years.  This 150 day flood is what many ignorant modern scientists say caused the fossil record in the earth’s crust, all of the earth’s geological layers, water landscape formations and the fossil fuel layers miles beneath the surface of planet.  That is some very creative science in my estimation that all of this formed in a flood that lasted a very short duration and less than 4500 years from present human time.  People want you to believe that and these are baseless theories that are more imaginative than evolutionist’s theories.

There was a geologist named James Hutton that observed and studied the earth nearly 300 years ago and he came up with a theory then that many have said is the basis for modern geological science.  I have included exerts of his writings below and you should read them with the knowledge of both floods in your mind and then try to determine which flood fits the description of his observations more clearly from the Bible record given to us.  If you are open you should observe that only one flood event is more accurately described from the evidence presented in the earth’s layers.

The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores. Hence we find reason to conclude:


1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes.


2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And,


Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was than inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.


Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of the waters, two things had been required;


1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials;


2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean
.

I read this theory and thought this was more the description of the conditions found in Genesis 1 and never Genesis 7.  Nowhere in Noah’s flood does God separate water from water and cause the earth to rise above the level of the seas as He does in Genesis 1:6.  While I do not agree with every word that James Hutton wrote in his theory it has many things that are clearly important to understand in light of the evidence given to us in the Bible.  In the article that read about him it said this; he was more interested in the contemplation of the truth than he was in the praise of discovering it.  Why are Christians today not following his example of searching for the truth?  No, they are mostly searching for evidence to support their theories and this is fallacy and a misdirected effort to nowhere.  I’m going to say this one more time; true science and true Bible interpretation will always agree because both were created by the same Author God.

I have just shown you significant evidence found in the Bible for the existence of a inhabited world prior to our world.  This world would have had inhabitants, animals, cities, and other organized structure.  I do not know how advanced or how primitive this civilization was.   I do not know if the people were human beings like us, or more like angels.  I would guess that this world was very primitive, but yet later I will show you verses that seem to imply some advancement in culture and organization.  This information does help to explain dinosaurs and the fossil records that would indicate an old earth.  Many Bible teachers have great difficulty trying to come up with a logical reasoning of where the dinosaurs went in the last 6000 years?  Perhaps they just didn’t fit on the ark of Noah’s day?  However, once you begin to understand that the earth is very old and that there existed an older civilization on this planet then you can begin to understand the Bible creation and how it fits with science.  In this world that existed prior to ours, God declares that it was utterly destroyed, nothing was left from it and we can see this in Genesis 1:2 as being the state of our planet and the basis for God’s recreation in the remaining verses of Genesis chapter 1.  I have heard some Bible teachers who claim a young earth say that dinosaurs were here with man at the same time.  They have found fossils that include dinosaur footprints with human like foot prints inside of them.  They would have had to exist together in order for the fossil to form and harden and preserve them for us to see.  However, these Bible teachers have simply discovered evidence for the world that was and not the world that is.  They prove nothing and still do not have an answer for where did the dinosaurs go in the last 6000 years.  There must have been a tremendous number of dinosaurs, plants and other animals on our planet based  upon the amount of fossil fuel we have beneath our surface.  Oil and gas came as a result of a large biological decomposition of living things.  How did these dead biological things get to be so deep beneath the surface of our planet?  If you consider that the earth was completely destroyed in Genesis 1:2 and covered with water completely so that no life could exist you can begin to understand where these fossil fuels came from.  Otherwise you have great difficulty in coming up with a young earth answer to the problem.  God does not tell us how long the earth was covered in water in Genesis 1:2.   It could be a few days or millions of years.  Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 do not have any time periods specifically attached to them.  After these two verses God starts talking of the 6 days of the earth’s recreation.  But, before that there is no time table mentioned.  Because it does not say we would be foolish to guess without either a specific Bible verse or some very strong scientific evidence.

In my next blog I will show you further scriptures that speak of directly of this world that was.  If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 4“.

Bible Creation Revealed! Pt 2 – Introduction to the Foundation of the World!

(Rev 1.6)  This is now Part 2 of a series of advanced lessons on Bible creation.  If you have not read from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with Part 1.  Today, I want to introduce you to a potential new Bible concept.  Maybe this is something that will be totally new to you or maybe not.  In my last lesson I talked about the universe having a starting point with the origination of both time and all matter through the spoken Word of God.   I basically tried to teach you that we do not know when this event occurred based upon the evidence given to us in the Bible.  You cannot find the words “God said Let there be the universe and Let there be the earth in the Bible anywhere”.  Since these events and creative words are not included in the Bible then we must conclude that God omitted them for a purpose and the rest of Genesis 1 is a separate event.  Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept called the “Foundation of the World”.  I think many Bible teachers have jumped to the erroneous conclusion that the “Foundation of the World” and the “Beginning” are one in the same events and that they occurred at the exact same time.  But, I think you should reconsider that thought and try to see what else that the Bible actually has to say about both of these separate unique realities.  After studying the Bible on the subject, I am convinced that they are two completely different historical events within the timeline of creation.   Let me ask you a simple question that has a not so simple answer.  Why would God refer to the same event in the Bible using different titles, names, descriptions or characteristics?  If you have ever studied the Bible you should understand that this is a common technique used by God throughout the Bible.  God, calls the same thing, by many different titles, names, descriptions, symbols and other identifying characteristics for some unkown and unstated reason.  The net result of this technique is that it makes it very difficult for anyone to see what God is really talking about.  It also makes it very difficult to associate them together and to relate them to each other correctly.  You many times find yourself asking “Is it the same thing, or is it a different thing?”  How can we tell if two different named things are the same thing or different things?  What if there are two or three different named things, events, times or people and man thinks they are all the same?  Again it makes it very difficult for us to figure out when God is talking about the same thing and when He is not.  So here is our challenge for the day.  Is the “foundation of the earth”,  the “foundation of the world” and the “beginning” all the exact same events within time, just called by different names or are they just God’s way of describing completely different events?

Since we have already looked at verses about the beginning, let’s start today by looking at scriptures in the Old Testament that speak of a “foundation”.

Exo 9:18  Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.

 2Sa 22:16  And the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were discovered, at the rebuking of the LORD, at the blast of the breath of his nostrils.

Psa 18:15  Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

Job 38:4  Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

Psa 18:15  Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

These are just a few of the examples of verses found in the Bible that speak about the “foundation of the earth”,  “the foundation of the world” and just the “foundation” in terms of an architectural building process.  I hope you understand how houses are built.  A laid foundation is always the beginning of a building process that implies there will come an ending to the process later in the future.  When God provides us information that the earth and the world had a foundation, it means that they also have implied endings.  Furthermore, when God’s builds one building foundation, God is also implying that He can build another building foundation and another and another.   What do people do on the earth?  If they don’t like an old building, they tear it down and start over to build a new one.  This is a Godly principle and characteristic work that man learned from God.   You need to understand what I just said, it was very important.  So we need to go through the Bible now and see if the “beginning” and the “foundation of the world” are the same events.

Mat 13:35  That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.

Jesus is described as the God who speaks things that were hidden from man and Satan since the “Foundation of the World”.  This Greek word translated as “foundation” can also mean “conception” or to “conceive”.  This is of course a term that would result in a pregnancy in a natural woman.  The next word to inspect is the Greek word “kosmos” which is translated as “world” in this verse.  This word from the Strong’s means “an orderly arrangement“.   Anything that has this characteristic of a “kosmos” contains organized structure that is free from chaos.  I want you to keep this word in your mind as we continue to discuss the chaos found in Genesis 1:2.  Was the world an orderly arrangement in Genesis 1:2 or was it a ball of confusion, destrution and chaos?  Do you understand what an orderly arrangement means?  Look at my picture and see how the blocks are arranged in an orderly fashion and this is how the world was created according to God.  That is a major Bible clue that God is giving us to correctly interpret the creation account found in Genesis.  I have had some young earth theorists try to tell me that just because the eart was chaos in Genesis 1:2 it ends up as an organized structure by the end of the chapter and thus we are just observing God’s work methods to create our world.  However, I want you to go back and reread Genesis 1 again and you tell me if you ever see God creating any transitional works.  Does God not look at the darkness and say light be and light was in Genesis 1:3.  There is no transitional phases of darkness to light.  What God says happens exactly as stated.  Do you see the major problem developing with a young earth theory?  God would have never created the earth in a chaotic format to begin with.  God is not stupid He know exactly what He wanted and He would have said earth be and there the earth would be formed exactly as envisioned in the mind of God.   This is another key reason why the young earth theory is full of holes.  God never in Genesis 1, not one time says “earth be” and the “earth was”.  Uh oh?  That is a problem isn’t it?  If earth is defined to be dry land as I showed you by God’s definition in Genesis 1:10 then there is no mention of the earth being created other than the reference of Genesis 1:1 that said this occured sometime in the beginning.  I have taught you that the Bible says the worlds were formed by the Word of God.  Since we have no recorded words of God in Genesis 1:1 of God creating the earth we must conclude an implied stated reality that God said “earth be” somewher back in the time of Genesis 1:1.  Then we must also conclude sometime after Genesis 1:2 God has to recreate the dry land again by dividing the waters because something happened to cause the chaos.  I know this is proably some very new things that you have never heard before, but don’t throw them away until you confirm that is really not what the Bible  says.  For now just keep studying and reading.

This Bible verse in Matthew tells us that the world that we now live in also had a beginning.  A foundation in natural building terms represent the start of the construction project.  The foundation is therefore the beginning of the rest of the building.  The current world system was conceived by God and spoken out of His mouth into existence as we have seen in several previous Bible verses.  But, who said the “beginning” and “the foundation of the world” were one in the same events?  God hasn’t told us that, so don’t even try to assume it to be the same events and close your mind to what God wants to teach you.  I want you to read another verse found in the New Testament that also speaks about this “Foundation of the World”:

Heb 9:26  For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

This is a great verse to examine more closely.  It actually has two different Greek words that are both translated as “world”.  The first Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos again and it is still defined to be an “An Orderly Arrangement”, but the second Greek word translated to “world” is aion and it means “an age”.   Here is an example of why English translations suffer grealty.  An age is representative of a period of time.  It almost never is used to describe all of time, but rather only a specific slice of the whole time pie.  You could say that an “age” is a piece of the pie and not the entire pie.  You can see this by science referring to the “Ice Age”, as a time period in past history where ice covered the majority of the earth.  Knowing this we can derive some implied meanings to the term given to us as the “end of the world”.  The “end of the world” in this verse is referring to the termination of a slice of the allotted time period and not the end of all time.  I want you to grasp this concept because it is significantly important.  This verse is referring us to the end of our current world, but that is certainly not the end of all time because we know reading later in Revelation that there will exist a time period of 1000 year where Christ will rule on the earth and then the new heaven and the new earth events take place and that is when time ceases.   In other words we still have a lot more we need to learn.

You can see some very complex works of Christ being described in this verse in Hebrews 9:26.  It declares that Jesus did not come to the earth in the beginning of the current world (age), because He would have had to offer Himself repeatedly for the sins of mankind.  But, then it makes a statement that is also very difficult to comprehend.  If the world (age) had a beginning, then it is also logical to conclude it to have a middle and an end portion.  Like in any natural building project, the foundation is laid first and the roof is one of the last exterior parts of a building to be built.  So as in every building project, it has a beginning, a middle and an end.  This verse says that Jesus came nearer to the end of the world, so that he would only have to offer one sacrifice for all sin.  So how can you say Jesus came at the end, when it has been close to 2000 years since He was here and died and was raised from the dead?   To us and our perspective of time 2000 years is a very long time period, but is this how God views it?  To understand the Bible correctly many times it takes a shift in natural perspectives to a spiritual perspective to see things as God sees them.  Since we can mathematically calculate that it has been approximately 6000 years since Adam was placed on the earth and we know that Jesus came to the earth nearly 2000 years ago and that God said that this was near the end, we can subtract 2000 from 6000 and get 4000.   Using this simple logic to calculate time periods, what would have happened if Jesus came in the year 2000, God would have been able to say that Jesus came near the beginning of the world (age).  If Jesus would have come in the year 3000 it would be in the middle of our world’s history.  But since Jesus came to the earth at year 4000, God calls this nearer to the end of the world (age).  Think about that for a while and let it sink in and you will soon understand what I’m trying to say.  According to young earth theologians all time has been 6000 years since the beginning of creation and here is the problem that starts to emerge.  Why did God call it the end of the age and not just the end.  God does know the difference between an age and the begining of all time why does God use different words to describe these events?

1 Peter 1:5  Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Here is another witness to the fact that during the time of the early church, God considered this to be near the end.  If that was near the end back then, how close do you think we are now to the end?  I think we can begin to see we need to change our perspective of what time is to God.

1Jn 2:18  Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

Again we see another verse that claims the early church was within the time that was near the end.

Rev 10:6  And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

This verse contains confirmation again of creation having a starting point.  Prior to this starting point this verse implies that time did not exist.  It is also a prophecy that this state of living outside of the dimension of time will come again.  You can see that when it declares that there will be no more time, it also implies a clear ending to the world as we know it now.  There is coming a change and an end to the world that we know.  But, I do not anticipate the end of time for at least another 1000 years.  If you recall from Genesis God created the world in 6 days, but on the 7th day He rested.  We are informed of a coming day of rest and commanded to strive to enter into it (Heb 4:1).  This would imply that there will be another 1000 years of human history on this planet prior to the creation of a New Heaven and a New Earth.  Time would still need to exist and continue like it does today for at least another 1000 years before God eliminates it.  Let me briefly introduce you to the new age that will come:

Heb 6:5  And have tasted the good word of God, and the  powers of the world to come,

Here in this verse in Hebrews there is a reference to a coming aion (age) that has not yet started.  Here is a new concept that is given to us that we are in an aion (age) that is coming to end and there is another aion (age) that will follow that is not the same aion (age) that we are experiencing.   The Greek word translated as “world” is the exact same word “aion” that we have already seen before.  God is teaching you a brand new important concept about ages in the spiritual realm.  If you can have one slice of the pie God is inferring there is potentially many more slices in the pie of time.

I have probably gone long enough in this lesson.  Today I introduced you to two new concepts called the “foundation of the world” and these were the kosmos and the aion.  Are both of these the same as the beginning?  Are there any other worlds (kosmos or aion) either before ours or after our current world described to us in the Bible?  I also showed you scriptures that prophesies an end of time.  An end always implies there was a beginning of time.   A coming ending of the kosmos and aion also implies there will be another new beginning.  We have only scratched the surface to what we need to learn on this subject so we will continue to discuss more Bible verses that reveal the definition of what a world is in relation to the beginning in my next lesson.

If you would like to continue reading in this series please continue with “Part 3

How Satan Uses People to Set Traps for You!

(ver 1.3) A trap is the hidden trick of an enemy to take you captive or prisoner. To trap wild animals, some have used a spring like device that usually has a concealed danger with an enticing lure or some type of tempting bait.  Many times people would dig a big hole in the ground and cover it with branches and leaves so that others do not recognize the pit fall dangers as they travel in that area. People have walked down this path being unfamiliar with the danger and many have fallen into it and were caught. Whether you realize it or not, you are walking down a figurative trail in life and Satan has placed many concealed traps in your path in order to take you captive. We must learn to recognize these potential traps.  In order to do this I believe that we need to become familiar with the examples found in the Bible of what Satan has used on other people.  Only by learning and studying the devices and methods of our spiritual enemy, can we even begin to become familiar with the certain impending traps that will be presented to us.  Only when we learn to recognize the traps can we learn how to avoid them.

Job 18:10  The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a trap for him in the way.

While natural traps are hidden dangers to your physical well being, spiritual traps are hidden pitfalls that are intended for your spiritual harm.  Since Satan is not physically present in this world (at least until the anti-christ is revealed) and it is illegal for him to be in physical manifestation to harm you, he has adapted and changed up his attack and trap methods.  Satan uses physical people in the world to set traps for other people.  Satan works very hard to deceive everyone, but many times he concentrates on a select few which are easier to be deceived.  These types of easy targets are usually the most ignorant of the truth found in God’s word.   Satan then traps them into believing his lies and then uses them to deceive the others through their enticing baited words of partial truths.  Let’s go through an example of this in the Bible:

Exo 23:33  They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

Here we have a great example of the deceived people on the earth deceiving God’s people.  Many people have been deceived into believing that God has provided many religions and many paths that lead us to Him.  However, God did not EVER say this, this was only man’s reasoning based upon them buying into Satan’s deception.  Just because many religions exist in the world today does not mean that God started them, God endorses them, God accepts them or God subscribes to them.  That is just a common planned trap of the enemy.  Flood the world with the false to counter the True from God.  In this verse in Exodus God warns the Nation of Israel that these foreign gods found within the other nations they encountered would become a “snare” to them.  In other words this snare was another technique of their enemy to take them captive.  By serving their false gods, God’s people would be deceived from knowing the truth and even depart from it.  By serving the false, they would be led captive away from their true living God.  So evidently every religion is not the right way to God!  Clearly God was warning His people that these people did not know Him or His ways but were put there to be traps for them.   God was clearly revealing the methods of entrapment and this information can still be applicable to us today in the church.  Let’s take a look at another verse in Exodus:

Exo 34:12  Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

By associating with the wrong people and joining themselves together as one nation, God informs Israel that if they were not careful to avoid this, they would again become trapped into a situation that they do not want to be in.  This is again speaking of a spiritual snare, a trap that the enemy has presented them using natural people.  These people since they are not God’s covenant people would present themselves as friendly and introduce them to new ideas, concepts and things that God declares would become a trap to deceive them.  This is a spiritual principle and a method that Satan still uses today with Christians.  Become friends with the wrong people, hang around the wrong people long enough, and what they do and what they say will eventually become what you do and what you say.  The bad influences in life will always drag you down to their level and you will not be able to pull them up to your level so beware of this trap.

Let me talk about another aspect of what this verse is saying.  A covenant is a marriage in the eyes of God.  You can learn this by reading Malachi 2:14.  God reveals to us it matters who we marry.  When a Christian marries a non-Christian they usually regret it.  Many times a Christian lady will marry a man thinking he will change and go to church with her and this is usually a vast disappointment when this does not occur.  The man may even promise and say the right things right up until the wedding day, but after the wedding the bride has joined herself to an unbeliever and become deceived.   This is a common deception revealed to us in the Bible and if you learn now before you get married, you will avoid this trap.

Psa 38:12  They also that seek after my life lay snares for me: and they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the day long.

The traps of the enemy are many times laced with enough truth and good that it appears to be something desirable.  If you wanted to kill an animal you would not throw it just poison and hope that they ate it.  No you wrap the poison in a steak, or something that is very desirable to the animal.   This is a common practice of the enemy.  They usually do not start with the blatant obvious lies, they always start with the truth and mix in a few lies here and there.  By doing this they have disguised the lies and made them harder to recognize and easier to accept.  This verse in Psalms tells us that Satan uses people to hurt people.  This could be a physical pain or an emotional pain as this verse is talking about.  By using words from one person to hurt and offend another, this is a common trap that people fall into, even in church.  It could be an intentional hurt or an unintentional hurt, but the result is often times the same.  Satan is working day and night to get to you and he will use anyone that he can to do this.  It might be your pastor or your best friend, but do not fall into the trap.  Recognize what it is and pray for them, do not confront them personally or you may be repeating the offense in a reverse attack.   Do not let Satan use you to get back at someone that did you wrong.

Psa 119:110  The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy precepts.

Here is a prevalent method of the enemy.  To try to distract you from the truth of God’s word.  All the enemy has to do is to get you interested in something else.  Cause something else to become a higher priority than God’s Word.  By distracting you, you become interested in the wrong things.  It could be movies, it could be books, it could even be doing good things like feeding the poor.  Whatever, it takes to distract you from what is suppose to be most important to you, that is what Satan will use to set a trap for you.  The Psalmist says that he stayed focus on God’s Word and did not take the bait that was presented to him.  Recognize where your priorities are right now.  Evaluate yourself and examine what you think is important.  Prioritize your life and make God and His Word number one and strive to keep Him at the top of your priority list.

Traps and Pitfalls, Common Mistakes in Bible Interpretation!

(Ver 1.4)  In today’s Bible lesson I will discuss some of the common mistakes thattoo many  people fall into when attempting to read and understand the Bible.  If you can grasp these concepts it will help you tremendously in understanding the true meanings found in the Bible.  I will give you a list of six or seven things that people tend to do that results in erroneous interpretations.  By avoiding these common tricks, traps and pitfalls that the enemy Satan uses to distract, deceive and confuse us, we can help to avoid being tricked into the common pitfalls of deception and then we can continue to strive to walk in the paths of rightly diveded truths to learn what God desires for us to know today.

NO PRIVATE INTERPETATIONS

This is probably the number one pitfall to erroneous Bible teaching.  It is absolutely esstential to let the Bible interpret itself.  In the Bible, God tells us that no verse of prophecy is open to  any private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20).  God was smart enough to include explanations and interpretations to everything that He wanted you to know about a subject in the same book.  So when you are reading through the book of Revelation for example, use the Bible to figure out what God is talking about.  If you conclude that a reference is somehow a modern day empire and attempt to classify it as being the Roman Catholic church or the Pope, you are applying a private interpretation to the Word of God.  Stick with the Bible and what God says and you will never be wrong.  Come up with your own reasoning and logical explanations and you will be wrong 100 times out of 100 attempts.  I’ll give you one more example that I’ve heard teachers attempt from Revelation.  In the later part of the book there is a reference to a city surrounded by 7 mountains.  This city is called the Great Whore of Babylon and many Bible teachers have attempted to associate it with Rome since it has seven prominent mountains.  However, this again is a private interpretation, there is no Bible verses that I have found that say the city is Rome or that describe the region around Rome.  So we have a problem, don’t we.  When I searched the scriptures I was shocked to find 7 mountains mentioned in a specific region of the world, surrounding a specific named city.  Since I don’t want to stir up a huge controversy in this blog, I’ll let you do the research yourself and see if you can find the same thing.  I won’t tell you the name of the city, so good luck in your search.

THE BIBLE IS NOT TOTALLY SEQUENTIAL NOT IS IT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Joh 5:39   Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

We know that the book of Genesis contains a lot of God’s account of creation , Noah’s flood, the rise of Abraham and the nation of Israel.  We further know that the book of Revelation contains prophetic verses of the coming of the end of the age.  All of the books in between these two while they are generally in time sequence, they can contain information that can be all over the board and anywhere in that timeline past, present or future.  This is why Jesus told the Jews to search the scripture to find Him.  If everything was obivously laid out, it would not be necessary to search to find anything in the Bible.  There are verses in the New Testament that speak about both Adam and Eve and describe valuable information about the first man and woman and the fall of man.  These are clearly out of time sequence with Genesis, but yet they give us some extremely valuable additional information that we must use to correctly interpret the verses in Genesis.  If you only read the book of Genesis for the creation account, you will miss out on many of the details that explain key facts, events, participants and times.   You have to understand that teaching the Bible involves researching your subject topographically.   By examining the Bible by subject you gain a broader understanding of what God wants you to know.  Not realizing that the Bible contains a widely dispersed random patterns of information on every subject, will cause you to miss a lot of the key points that you needed to know.  Use key word searches to look for related verses.  Many times God will purposely use the same exact Hebrew or Greek word to reveal to you related verses of scriptures.  Other times, God will use completely different words or terminology to make it harder to find related scriptures.  Let me give you one quick example about Abraham.  His name is found 160 times in the Old Testament and 70 times in the New Testament.  It is very obvious to me that if you want to study about Abraham you need to read all of these verses and see what God says about the man every where.  If you only read Genesis and left out the other verses then you would miss around half of the total information given to you about Abraham in the Bible.   Just know and understand that the information is spread out over the entire content of the Bible and not isolated to any specific one place.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS AND MAKING WRONG ASSUMPTIONS

Jumping to a wrong conclusion or making an incorrect assumption is one of the most prevalent errors that ministers and laymen make when studying the Bible.  The Bible calls this private interpretation of the word of God.  It is so easy to do, but yet it results in the spread of lies and confusion.  Obviously confusion is what the enemy wants.   Let me give you an example again of jumping to a conclusion or making an assumption.  In the 12th chapter of Revelation we have a woman described as being pregnant with a male child.  I know I’ve used this example before, but it is a classic example of what not to do.  The conclusion has been made repeatedly that this woman is Israel because they assume the male child is Jesus Christ.  Logically it doesn’t make sense that a symbolic woman is giving birth to a physical man Jesus Christ.  I would say if the woman is symbolic, then the child is also symbolic.  This is an example of both types of errors being exhibited from a single chapter and only a few verses.  You know if someone could back that woman and child up with other scriptures showing their true identities I wouldn’t have a problem with what they were teaching.  But, since they never give any verses to backup what they teach I categorically reject that as C.R.A.P. (Christian Reasoning Applied Poorly)!  Please forgive my language and frustration.  Most teaching on the book of Revelation that I’ve listened to is littered with private interpretations, assumptions and erroneous conclusions.   People should stick with the Bible and leave their opinions out of the message and we would all benefit greatly.

USING MAN’S DEFINITION OF BIBLE WORDS INSTEAD OF GOD’S

God has given to us specific information in the Bible and once you see it and understand it, the true spiritual meanings can change Bible word definitions dramatically.   What we must attempt to do in correct Bible interpretation, is to always seek God’s definitions for the words and subjects that we are studying.   One huge mistake that many Bible students make is to look up words in Webster’s dictionary and think they know everything that a Bible verse is talking about using a man’s definitions of the words.  Often times we read a Bible verse and think we know every word that is given to us and therefore we conclude that we understand everything that is being taught.  What we do not realize is that God’s ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  Unless you have completely renewed your mind you are normally thinking naturally.  God most of the time is writing to us in spiritual terms, using some natural and some spiritual words interchangeably.    The Bible is so much more complex than you can imagine and one way to insure correct interpretation of the Bible is to always look up God’s definitions of every word and subject that you encounter in a Bible verse.

TAKING “A” TRUTH AND TRYING TO MAKE IT “THE” TRUTH

Here is another prime example of a common error of incorrect Bible interpretation in action.  While private interpretation is probably the number one problem with a lot of Bible teaching, this one is probably number two on my list of things to avoid.  I’ve seen people do this so many times across the board in every denomination.  So what does it mean to take a truth and make it the truth?  It basically involves jumping to a conclusion again that is true in and of itself.  But that truth is not the complete truth on the subject.  Some people want to take a well known Bible fact and attempt to say it is this way and no other way.  The mistake is made that they ignore all other viewpoints on the subject in favor of the one they like the best.  To be fair to most, I would say the problem is rooted in the fact that they just haven’t seen or even aware that other views exist because they are so focused on the one thing that they do know.  It doesn’t discount what they know as being in error, unless they say that every other point of view is wrong and only we are right.  This is predominantly the root of every denominational war through the centuries.  We are right and everyone else is wrong.  I’ve got bad news for you only God is right and everyone else is at the least a little bit wrong.

I once heard it put into an analogy of climbing a mountain.  If you are on the north side of the mountain you have one view, the south side a different view, the east side a different view, the west side as yet another view.  Everyone is trying to say only our view is correct and yours must be in error.  People we are climbing the same mountain, understand and know there are different ways to view the same thing.

I use this example, but I don’t name names of who said it.  If you know who said it, please ask him to forgive me.  I heard a teacher say the church is the body of Christ and not the bride.  Search the scripture and you won’t find anything that says we are the bride of Christ.  What an idiotic statement of arrogance and ignorance.  I wrote a blog series explaining how the church became the body of Christ so I won’t attempt to repeat that lesson here.  What we have though is an example of someone taking a truth and trying to make it the entire complete truth.  You see I don’t have a problem with the church being the body of Christ, I can see all of the scriptures that tells us, that is what we are.  But, I asked another question and that is, how did the church become the body of Christ and I found the answer explained in the Bible quite literally and explicitly.  So most people who make this mistake of taking a truth and trying to make it the truth, have probably not asked enough questions.

So taking a truth and attempting to make it the truth is based upon an accumulation of other errors and mistakes that people make of which could be one or more of the following:

  1. Jumping to Conclusions.
  2. Making Wrong Assumptions.
  3. Using Man’s Definitions instead of God’s.
  4. Not asking the right Questions.
  5. Insufficient Knowledge.  Not knowing enough of the facts (or all of the facts if that is possible)
  6. Not having sufficient understanding of the subject

What we all need to realize is that there is more than one truth in the Bible.  These truths fit together and work in conjunction with other truths.  We should all be striving to understand as much as we can about what the Bible says.  We should all strive to correctly divide the Word of Truth.  We should also all give others who make mistakes some extended effort of forgiveness.  Jesus while hanging on the cross said Father forgive them for they know not what they do.  People today are the same as they were back then and they still do a lot of stupid things and think they are so right in doing them.

THINKING YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING

This obviously goes back to people having the wrong attitude and approach to Bible study.  I’ve seen some people that are extremely arrogant in what they say and think.  While some might try to confuse confidence with arrogance there is a difference.  You can be confident in what you believe and still be humble enough to admit you might have been wrong.  No man is God and knows everything.  If you have studied the Bible for 50 years and think you have arrived and know everything that you need to know you have been deceived:

Gal 6:3  For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

Compared to what God knows, what you and I know would not fill a thimble.  Any man or woman that has a teenager type attitude of thinking very highly of themselves  and their knowledge has already deceived themselves.

INTERPRETING VERSES OUT OF CONTEXT

This is what I think I mean by this.  I once had a minister say that the Bible says “Judas went and hung himself”.  Then he quoted a part of another verse that said “Go and do likewise”.  This was a humorous attempt to show a mistake many have made with Bible interpretation.   People many times attempt to take two or more unrelated verses or just part of them and put them together and make them say something that they never really said.  Sometimes I watch late night comics and during the presidential election they would take the words of a candidate making a speech and re-edit them and put them together so that when played all together they would say something that is completely false and sometimes funny.  Well preachers and teachers have been guilty of doing this and using it to promote some false teaching that God never came close to endorsing. Find out who the verse was originally written to.  Find out why it was written.  Figure out if the verse has any implied references, double references, symbolic references, etc and only after going through logical reasoning can you actually justify putting together two verses and organize them correctly.  Remember Bible study is like a puzzle, and the pieces of the puzzle must fit together correctly and always show the right big picture which is most always Jesus Christ.

Bible Creation Revealed! Pt 1 The Introduction to Basic Bible Concepts!

(Ver 3.4)  This will be an advanced Bible study of God’s supernatural divine creation.  This study will involve an in depth analysis of the information given to us by God from within the pages of the Holy Bible concerning the events surrounding the creation of our universe and our world.  And those are two different events in our history as we will learn.  This series may or may not be what you currently believe to have occurred, but it will be what the Bible says, if we will seek to find the truth, to see it and understand it.  I have been criticized because I pull verses from all over the Bible and put them together in a logical way that helps to reveal their hidden meanings.  I did not write the Bible so I cannot help to explain to you why the clues found in the Bible are in such widely dispersed and random patterns.  I cannot fully explain why a single verse of information found in John, Isaiah or Jeremiah can reveal something that was hidden by God simply by the words being omitted. , I believe that in the first chapter of Genesis, God gives us truthful and factual information designed for a specific introduction to the subject of creation.  But I further believe from studying the Bible that Genesis 1 is incomplete information.  I found that God wrote about creation from Genesis to Revelation and these other creation verses were written by God’s prophets and New Testament writers hundreds or thousands of years later.  Because people do not understand how God designed the Bible with an enumerable number of hidden facts and clues, they simply criticize and like to call things heretical when they do not understand them or just because they are something new that they have never heard before.  Coming into this lesson with a preconceived prejudice will cause anyone to close their spiritual eyes and ears to anything that God wants to say.  But, that of course is an old religious spirit that got the Jews in trouble when Jesus walked among them, and they killed Him for no good reason.

There is a major debate raging in the Body of Christ about the age of the universe.  Because science has declared the universe to be billions of years old, Christians have suddenly determined they need to believe in a young earth and universe and they have gathered their own scientists to counter what they view as a naturalistic perspective for the existence of all matter.   The young earth proponents have developed a semi-convincing theory but it is really full of holes not unlike the evolutionist’s theory that is equally full of holes.  As you can tell I do not endorse either theory.  I am a proponent of letting the Bible interpret the Bible and that will be my goal in this series of lessons.  What we need to do is start out by asking ourselves is our God a deceiver?  I asked some young earth believers this question and they ignored it and tried to explained it away.

What is deception? According to the Bible deception is appearing to be who or what you are not. You can find this in the story of Jacob in the book of Genesis when he dressed up like his brother Esau and went in to get his brother’s blessing from his father Isaac. Jacob was fearful of being called a deceiver if his father discovered his acts deception. Wow, is that a lesson in itself.  Again in another story of Genesis we find the deception of Tamar who dresses up like a prostitute to make Judah give her what was promised to her. In both of these stories clever deception was used by taking on the appearance of what they were not in order to gain what they felt they deserved. Ok, what do these stories have to do with creation?  The problem with the young earth theory is that the scientists in the world can clearly see that light takes 2.5 million light years to reach earth from the galaxy of Andromeda. When a Bible teacher comes to us and says that the earth and the universe are only 6000 years old, they have in effect made God to be a liar and a masterful deceiver. They claim that God created something that looks very old, but that is actually very young. That is an act of clear deception no matter how you want to slice it.  If the earth is not old then God is the primary contributor that has deceived many people into believing it not young.  That is a major problem upon our reflection of the character of God, the nature of God, the love of God, the truth of God and I could go on and on.  Rather than ignore this problem like Christians want to do, I’m going to address the problem in this series to see if God solves it in His Word.

If the universe has the appearance of millions or even billions of years and it is only 6000 years old God has deceived a tremendous number of people.  Is that your God because that is not my God!  The young earth theorists like to explain this by saying that God created the world and the universe in a mature state.  They have concluded that creating light rays that take on the appearance of age is not and impossible feat for an omnipotent God.  You know I understand that logic, God is certainly omniscient and omnipotent and He is certainly able to do anything.  But, just because God is able to do anything does not mean that God has done any of these things that people give Him credit for doing.  I’ll ask a new question. If God is able to do anything then can He lie? We all know from reading the Bible that it is impossible for God to lie. Keep this in mind when studying creation.  If the universe was created 6000 years ago and the speed of light is 186k miles per second and it takes light from many galaxies billions of years to reach us we are clearly viewing events that took place a long time ago.  This would be very clear deception and lies and this is impossible for God to do.   However, we must find Bible verses that confirm our beliefs or we will find we are just believing in someone’s opinion.

As a foundation for this mature creation belief my young earth theorists have stated that Adam was created a mature man and thus this helps us with our beliefs of a mature universe creation.  They have also further concluded that all the trees were created as mature entities.  They have further concluded that all animals originated as mature entities.  You know I absolutely agree with at least part of their reasoning for the necessity of maturity.   You see if God would have created Adam as a newborn baby he would have died and never survived without a mother caretaker.  Therefore, I believe God chose by His sovereign will to create a mature man, a mature woman along with mature birds, fish and animals.  But here is where their theory begins to fall apart if you really start to analyze logically that type of thinking.  Why didn’t God create a mature earth in Genesis 1:1?  Instead of a fully mature earth God describes an earth that is uninhabitable and chaotic. This new earth had to be changed into an inhabitable planet by the end of the chapter in order to support life. That is the complete opposite of creating a fully engaged human male from the beginning.  Isn’t it? Please answer the question, if you are able.  Why didn’t God create a fully mature earth that was fully sustainable for all the soon coming life?

You can clearly see that there was no life on the earth in Genesis 1:2 and then at the end of the chapter there was organized structured inhabitation.  Why didn’t God create it the way that He wanted it to begin with?  What we are going to find out by studying the Bible is that God did create it this way and something major happened to destroy it in Genesis 1:2.

So I want to start this study by establishing Biblically that the universe that we currently exist within, had a stated beginning or a starting point somewhere in time past.  Modern scientist have predominately ascribed to the notion of a historic concept that they  refer to as the “big bang”. They say this occurred somewhere in our distant past probably close to13.8 billion years ago.  They have concluded this based upon scientific observation of our rapidly expanding universe. The universe can be observed to be expanding in every direction around us and thus reversing this reasoning it can be logically deduced to have had a single point of origin.  By reversing where we are right now and putting everything back to its original point of origin, science has concluded that there was a beginning point of all matter and time.  Something occurred at this point in this beginning point of time to cause all matter to appear and to be accelerated into a widely dispersed explosive pattern of a powerful fashion that fast-tracked the chunks at astronomical rates of speed outwardly.   Did you know that is what the Bible tells us also, that the heavens are expanding.  Look at this verse found in Isaiah:

Isa 40:22  It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

You can again see that true Bible interpretation and true science will always agree.  The Bible recorded that the earth was a spherical circle long before man could prove the earth was not flat.  Early religious leaders would excommunicate a scientist who thought the world was round and not the center of the universe.   They had in their minds how it ought to be and if anyone disagreed they would reject them.  Who was right back then?  We are experiencing a very similar behavior in parts of the church today.  Many claim the earth to be only 6000 years old and scientists today say the complete opposite.   Knowing that the light that we see from distant stars took much longer than 6000 years to even reach us to see, who looks foolish?  How can we attempt to reach a secular man with the salvation message who obviously knows more than we do about creation?

Then there is the “who spreads out the heavens” in that verse.  This verse claimed that the universe that we can observe is expanding long before anyone had an idea that it was.  The Hebrew word here means to “stretch out” to “spread out”.  God told us that the heavens were expanding long before anyone could prove it.  This verse also claims that the heavens are like a curtain of fabric.  A fabric has closely joined threads that are woven together and this again describes the condition of what many scientist have reported.  The fabric of space and time is a widely publicized scientific discovery.  God wrote about it 1000’s of years before any man came up with this idea.  So we must learn what the Bible really says and learn to accept God’s words as the truth.  Here is another verse found in the Bible about the earth being round that was written long before man discovered it:

Pro 8:27  When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: 

This verse says the “compass” of the depth.  The word “compass” means a circle.  So again God declared the world to be a circle long before man discovered it.  This verse was written by King Solomon hundreds and hundreds of years before Christ was born.  How was Solomon smart enough to write this information if it was not given to him by God.  Here is another verse about the expansion of the universe:

Job 9:8  Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea.

Again we see a reference to the an expanding heavens.  This is the same word that means to stretch forth and to spread outwardly.  This is clearly words that were written down for our benefit to see and understand the nature of creation and its harmony with the true scientific observation and study of many.

Job 26:7  He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

There are many Bible verses that can be found that say things that only a creator God could have written.  In ancient times, many men believed that the world was held up by a god named Atlas and on his shoulders the world revolved.  This was clearly a fantasy attempt to explain what they did not understand about the power of God to create the gravitational planetary and solar system that we live within.  When the Bible declares that the earth hangs upon nothing within the time space continuum it clearly was written by someone who knew more than any man in the past could imagine or make up.  This verse is clearly factually accurate based upon scientific observations of men and it was written in the oldest book of the Bible.  You cannot deny that these facts not found in Genesis are truly amazing.

Now you can either be an ostrich Christian and bury your head into the ground or you can look and see if the Bible also says anything that will match the well-known scientific observations that are being taught today.  What we must embrace as true Christians is the fact that true science and the true interpretation of the Bible will always agree.  You might ask me, why do these have to agree?  Because God created both of them and God does not make any mistakes nor does He ever contradict Himself.  So what God says in the Bible must match what we find scientifically from what God has created and vice versa.  Too many times I have seen preachers and theologians teach something that is 180 degrees opposite to what science has reported.  I therefore, know that  one of these two positions is wrong and potentially both are incorrect.  For example, many scientists embrace a theory of evolution for the existence of the human race and all living things in our world.  However, I know this directly contradicts the Bible and so the theory of evolution is man’s attempt to explain away the existence of a God as a creator.  This is an example of Bible teachers being right and ignorant scientists being wrong.  However, I have also heard many Bible teachers teach that the earth is only 6000 years old and scientist have estimated the age of the earth to be in the billions of years.  There is a major difference between these two positions again and this time I tend to agree more with the scientists and not the ignorant Bible teachers.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the earth is only 6000 years old!  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the earth was created 6000 years ago!  If you think it does, you are ignoring a lot of scriptures that says otherwise.  This is a religious man’s attempt to prove a theory of young creation by not reading what the Bible actually says about God’s creation.  We must make true science and true Bible interpretation agree or we will be viewed as ignorant men and women.  So I have given you two examples of the debate between Bible vs. Science where each side is right one time and wrong one time.  So let’s find some more scriptures that speak of the existence of a beginning and for now we won’t worry about when this occurred.

Isa 40:21  Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the  beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

In this verse found in Isaiah we can see that God is clearly telling us of a starting point.  Two direct references are established.  The beginning and the foundation of the earth.  The foundation of the earth would imply the beginning of our planet.  A foundation would also imply a structure that holds everything else together.  So who created this structure and this system of the time and space fabric that holds it all together?

Joh 1:1  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

This Bible verse states that the universe had a point of origin.  This Bible verse implies God existed prior to the existence of time and space as we currently know it today.  This Bible verse gives us some insight into the creation of the world by this Supreme Creator.  This creator God is called the Word.  God is described in a paradoxical term, being both the Word and God simultaneously.  How can God be the Word and the Word also be with God?  I think that is one of the mysteries of God and I do not have a good explanation for it, I just accept it as being true.  This Word God is said to have created everything that we can see in this next verse of scripture:

Joh 1:3  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

All things were made by Him!  Who is Him?  It is the Word of God!  God gives us some amazing information to how things were created in the world around us.  By God speaking, things suddenly appeared.  Do you understand that things were not created from nothing?  I’ve heard preachers claim that everything appeared from nothing, in other words nothing became substance and now exists in the physical dimension of time.  But, this is not what the Bible says happened and I believe we should become very picky to see exactly what God is revealing to us in the Bible.

Isa 48:3  I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, and I shewed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass.

The Bible declares that the universe was made by the Word of God.  God spoke and it came to pass.  Things sprang forth from the words that God had spoken.  So, if you can read you can see things were made by Words and words are not nothing.   The earth and the stars in heaven were made from words.  Let’s explore another verse about this important subject of God’s Word:

Heb 11:3  Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of  things which do appear.

We have to understand what this verse is saying.  It implies that all of creation was accomplished by God’s Words.  It does not say that the things that we can see came from nothing.  It actually technically says that the things that we can see came from things that we can’t see.  Have you ever seen anyone speak?  I know you can see their mouths move, but, you do not actually see any words coming out of their mouths do you?  These sound waves are things that you cannot see with your natural eyes.  The voice of God caused all matter that we can see to exist in the natural realm.  Sound waves from God are the basis of all of creation.  In this verse the Greek word translated as “worlds” comes from “aion” which means “an age”.  This word refers to a span of time, either in the past, the present or the future.  Time can always be viewed within one of these three descriptions, even though Einstein claimed this to be a convincing illusion.  Einstein believed that all time occurs simultaneously, past, present and future.  But our view of this illusion is that we have all had a past, we live in the present now and tomorrow is our future.  In my next blog on creation I will expand this word for “worlds” and explore it with additional scriptures.  But, for now let’s continue to look at the beginning of creation.

The verse in John 1:3 says that nothing that we can see came about by evolution or by accident.  This verse implies an intelligent design by a very highly intelligent creator God.  I have heard some scientists who have tried to analyze and  prove the most rudimentary makeup of the elements in our physical world and heard what some now are saying.  These scientist have split atoms, and examined parts and components of the most minute levels that they can measure and observe, and guess what they have said makes up every atom that we see in this universe?  Sound waves!  I have actually heard some report that it appears that sounds hold all things together.  Did you know that this is what the Bible actually says?

Col 1:17  And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

This verse in Colossians again states that Jesus Christ existed before all things that we can see in our world.  We can again conclude that this means there was a beginning.  Jesus Christ was called the Word of God in John and other places in the Bible and we can see that in this verse in Colossians that Jesus Christ causes everything that we see to exist.  This Greek word that is translated as “consist” in this verse means “to set together” or “constitute”.   This verse is telling us that the world and the universe is held together with God’s Words.  God’s words are the rudimentary component to everything that we can see around us.  Let’s discover an additional verse concerning God’s Word holding things together.

Heb 1:3  Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

In this verse in Hebrews we can see that God is revealing to us the source of all of His power.  This verse is primarily about Jesus Christ, but it also says that God is causing all things to be held together by His Words of Power.  God’s Word is the source of all creation and everything exists because of sounds that came out of God’s mouth.  These sounds represents God’s power and they surround us in everything that we can see, touch, taste, smell, perceive and sense around us.  Words created all of the universe that we can see.    I hope you understand this concept, because it is a very important part of the Bible to know.

Gen 1:1  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This is now the third Bible verse that I have given you today in this lesson that states the earth and the universe had an observable origination point also known as a beginning.   In this very first verse in Genesis, we can see clearly that God is again referred to as the creator of the things that we can now see.  It very clearly says that there was a defined starting point of all matter and time.  Now here is where Bible teachers start to get confused and make many wrong assumptions.  They have concluded that because you can mathematically calculate the duration of time from Jesus backwards to Adam that the world is now only approximately 6000 years old.  What they have done is assumed that Genesis 1:1 goes with the rest of the chapter in a relative short time sequence.  However, they do err, because they ignore what this verse says and many other verses found in the Bible that shows us other information and clues to a much older history of creation.

I want to point out one key Hebrew word in this verse that is very important to understand.  The Hebrew word translated as “earth” is a word that means “to be firm”.  It is used in the Old Testament in over 2000 verses.  Therefore it is a widely verifiable word that can easily be understood by reading God’s usage of it.  Over 1500 times in the Old Testament it is tranlated as “land” as in the land of Egypt.  Therefor God is informating us that in the beginning He made our planet earth with inhabitable dry land.  We can actually get God’s definition of this word earth simply by reading down in the chapter in verse 10:

Gen 1:10  And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the  waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was  good.

The same Hebrew word is given to us that we observed in Genesis 1:1 and it is again transalated as earth but this time God defines what the word earth means.  God called the dry land earth and the water He called seas.  Why is this so important?  If you read Genesis 1:2 you will begin to discover why this is so controversially important.  The planet as described by God in Genesis 1:2 is said to be fully covered in water.  There is no dry land mentioned in verse 2.  Since we understand and can read in Genesis 1:1 that God states explictiy the earth (dry land) was created in the beginning, we have a major contradiction that needs resolution in a young earth theory.  This little detail is simply ignored by most young earth theorists because they cannot explain it.  To ignore God’s definiton of the words forces them into inventing their own definitions and this is why they are so vastly confused.  If God says “earth” is dry land, then earth is dry land and I refuse to call it anything different.  I guess you are free to do what you want and that will be between you and God.

Genesis 1:1 tells us clearly that there was a stated beginning and God created everything, but it did not say when this occurred.  If you assume something and base your faith upon your assumption, most of the time you will be wrong.  We must base what we believe only upon the scriptures found in the Bible and correctly put all of the clues together to see what God has been trying to show us.  Unless you can find specific Bible verses to support your young earth theory, then I would reccomend you use wisdom and look for the truth.  The Bible does not tell us anywhere the age of the universe and that is where Bible teachers start to fall into error.  Teach only what the Bible says and quit guessing on what you think it means.  I also started teaching you the imortance of getting God’s definitions to the words that are used in the Bible and this will greatly assist you in learning what they mean and what they say.  So far we know from the Bible that there was a beginning of matter and time at some point in our past.  We know that God created everything by speaking it into existence.  But, we do not know when this occurred so please stop telling people that you do know.

So far let’s review the facts that we have learned about creation:

  1. God is the Creator!
  2. God Created Everything By His Word!
  3. God is the Word!
  4. The Universe had a point of Origin.
  5. All matter exists because of God’s Word
  6. Time had a Beginning!
  7. God Existed before Time!
  8. We do not know when the beginning of Time and Matter occurred!
  9. God defines earth to be dry land!

These are the basic concepts from Bible creation that you need to know for now!  In my next blog I will talk about some new concepts and introduce you to some very new things to consider, but for now review what you have learned and go find more scriptures that talk about these 9 things that you learned today.

If you would like to continue reading in this series you can go to “Part 2“.

Are You Pretty In Your Prison?

(Ver 1.2)  Did you know that a prisoner will never escape a prison when they do not know they are in one?  If you grew up a free child and were wrongfully convicted of a crime and sentenced to a life behind bars after becoming an adult, would you want to try to be free again or escape?  I believe that you would think about it every day.   However, let’s say you were a baby born in a prison, raised in a prison, never saw the outside and the free world and did not know anything but prison.  Would you still want out and try to escape?  I don’t think so!  You see this is the case that most of the world is in today.  They have been born and raised within a spiritual prison system that has captured them, held them and they do not even know it.  Because these people do not know any better, they are not looking to escape it.  They exist in a state of unawareness of the spiritual reality of freedom that is available all around them.  These people are consumed with the natural things that they see and can touch.  They dress up in fine clothes and go out to clubs and party like there are never any consequences.  These people do not understand they are in a prison, being held captive and controlled by an unseen spiritual force.  They go about their lives living like today and right now is all that counts.  People in the world are captives to a spiritual system that they do not see and are the servants of that system.  To be a servant is the same as to be a slave and they certainly do not know it.  When Jesus walked the face of the planet in the flesh, He gave us some insight into why  He had to come in person.  This is one statement where He quotes an Old Testament prophet and informs us of what He was doing here:

Luk 4:18  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

This verse says many things, but I want to focus on the part that I underlined for us to see.  Jesus said “I came to preach deliverance to the captives”.  What is Jesus talking about?   Who are these captives that He is declaring freedom for?  Did you know this Greek word translated as “captives” means “prisoner of war”?  You do understand what a prisoner of war is, yes?   Jesus is speaking in spiritual terms about a spiritual war, which has spiritual prisoners.  There is a spiritual warfare being waged even today as we observe the events happening around us in our natural world.  Jesus came to free us from our flesh, sin, Satan and death.  However, Satan is still the ruler of the darkness of this world (Eph 6:12).   Satan no longer rules those who are saved and who are true Christians.  But the others are still his prisoners.  Those that have not been saved live within this domain and in the confines of darkness as slaves to sin and are held captive by Satan.  So why did Jesus say He was here to preach in Luke 4:18?  I thought He was here to save us?  If we understand the Bible we also understand that no one gets saved unless someone preaches.  This is God’s selected method for salvation.  Someone goes to the world, tells them the good news of freedom from prison and they have the right to believe it and get saved or reject it and stay in their spiritual dungeon and prison of darkness.   This verse in Luke is of course a quote from Isaiah, where Jesus opened the scroll and found the words to read.  Here is what the original verse actually says:

Isa 61:1  The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent1 me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

We can again see that Jesus is quoting a prophetic verse that He was here to “proclaim liberty to the captives”.  It then speaks about these same people in another statement that is definitely related, “to open the prison of those who are bound”.   You see Jesus has opened the doors to let people out of their prisons, but because these people do not know they are in a prison, they do not make any effort to come out of this open door.  People live in a state of blissful ignorance and contentment .   They are satisfied with what they have, because they don’t know there is anything better.  This is true of many natural people in the world today who are raised in a specific set of circumstances and are content with their current state of being.  But, even as it is true in the natural, so it is also true in the spiritual realm.  Ignorance of the open door and the way out of their prison keeps people bound.  Here is another prophecy from Isaiah that speaks to us on this subject:

Isa 42:7  To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.

Jesus was anointed to fulfill the plan of God and this included setting those in the chains of darkness free from Satan’s kingdom.  This verse also speaks of people being blinded by Satan.  Blindness is the inability to see the light.  We know from the Bible that Jesus said He was the Light of the World, so those who are sitting in the darkness are unable to comprehend and see Jesus.  The prison house is a place of darkness where Satan holds his captives hostage by their ignorance.  If you do not understand Spiritual darkness and light I would suggest you read the lessons on “Understanding Night and Day”.  Here are just a few New Testament verses that speak of this bondage and slavery to sin:

Gal 4:3  Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:

Gal 4:9  But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?

Gal 5:1  Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

2Pe 2:19  While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he( brought in bondage.

2Ti 2:26  And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.

People in the world are being held captive against their will, but yet do not even know it.  They have been deceived into believing that their prison of sin is normal and good.  They are attracted to the darkness by the lusts and desires that keep them prisoners in their hearts.  Even though they dress up and party to have a good time in their minds, the fun is all limited within the confines of the four grey spiritual walls of their hearts.  They do what their warden Satan wants them to do, when he wants them to and they do not even understand the process.  So we can dress up and look pretty and be the best looking man or woman in our spiritual prison cell.  Or we can make Jesus our Lord and walk out of that dead end through the open door that Jesus Christ has given us for a new life of freedom.  I would recommend that we choose this Life of Freedom!