Monthly Archives: May 2011

Understanding Prophets in the Bible! Introduction to the Bible Concepts of Prophets! Part 1

(ver 1.2)  This is a totally new subject for me and one that few people have studied.  However, this is an essential subject to understand for many reasons. I recently got a comment from someone who brought up the subject and I thought it would be good to clarify what a prophet of God is and what they can and cannot do using the Bible.  You see we have recently had a string of several false prophets that have proclaimed things to the world that are clearly false.  But, these false prophets have had at least a few people who have easily fallen for their deception and that is what concerns me.  Jesus actually warned us in the Bible that there would come false prophets (Mat 7:15).  Therefore we should become smart enough to recognize the difference between the real and the fictitious.  If we do not learn about real prophets, Jesus also warned us that even the very elect could be deceived by their trickery (Mat 24:24).  Clearly Jesus had a lot to say about the subject.  Yet there are still an extensive number of followers of the false who obviously do not see the deception that is taking place.  One current false prophet said that the world was ending on May 21, 2011 and this obviously did not occur but I’m sure he had some good reason for this error.  This man was sent millions of dollars that came from people who had given him their money and they were clearly lied to.   It could be that this man who predicted the end of the world truly believed that he knew something or he could have been a charlatan who intentionally duped people for their money.  I do not know if either of these is true, so I do not judge him.  I do however see clearly that his message was false based upon my knowledge of the Bible so I was not deceived.   Obviously this was not the case for many other people in the world.

Today we are going to explore Bible verses about prophets and see what God reveals to us about them.  Here is a verse found in the New Testament that applies to my subject today directly:

1Co 14:29  Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge.

Here we have God giving us some specific instruction and directions of the correct order within a church service.  If prophets speak in church let it be limited to only 2 or 3 and then let the rest present judge what is said.  This is pretty plain to me.  It tells me first off that prophets still exist even in the modern church of God and that we do not accept the words of any one prophet just because he said something.  This verse implies that there should be other prophets with the same witness.  That is an interesting concept to consider.  Did God always send more than one witness (prophet) to a city or a nation with the same message?  I personally believe that God did do this.  But, it would take hundreds of hours of Bible study to prove it.  If you have knowledge in this area, I would appreciate hearing about it.  If you look at the obvious Bible examples, I found several places where it would appear that God always sent more than one prophet with the same message.  For example the prophets Isaiah, Jonah Nahum and Zephaniah all mention the city Nineveh.  Of course they do not have to prophesy at the exact same moment in time, it could be during different times with the same general message.  Then there is Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who say a lot of the same things about the city of Jerusalem.  I believe these are examples of God following His own word, which I believe God always does. God says “In the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be  established” (2 Cor 13:1).  What is a witness?  A witness is someone who has seen something and can testify of it in a court of law under oath.  Guess what a prophet is called many times in the Bible?  A prophet is called a “seer” (1 Sam 9:9).  A seer is someone who is a witness and can see or has seen something that will happen in the future.  How does a prophet see into future things?  God does this using many methods.  Sometimes a prophet gets a message from God by visions.  Sometimes a prophet gets messages from God by dreams.  Daniel and John the Revelator were both sent an angel from God with the message.  Sometimes a prophet will hear the voice of God like Moses on the mountain top of Mt Sinai or the voice of God from the burning bush.  Elijah taught us that God spoke to him in a still small voice in his spirit. It really does not matter right now how the message came, I believe that it primarily matters if there was more than one witness with the same message.  I believe this is a very important concept to apply to modern day prophets.  If a man stands up in the world and proclaims the end of the world will be on May 21, 2011 that is only the words of one man and that should be an automatic red flag warning that it is a false message.   I’ll try to talk more about the concept of more than one witness with the message as I continue in this lesson.  I want you to take away from 1 Corinthians 14:21 that we should be able to judge prophecy and that God has established rules to help us to know how to do this.  One rule is to let every word be established in the mouths of 2 or 3 prophets and not just any one.  Another rule of prophecy is no words of prophecy are open to private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20).  This rule implies that God will interpret the prophecy and we cannot make up meaning using human reasoning or logic.  These are two laws of correct Bible interpretation that cross over into the realm of prophecy since God has given both by His Spirit.

Another interesting fact of the New Testament is I do not know of any scripture that God says we as Christians should be led by prophecy or the words of a prophet.  This of course is a challenge because I believe things have changed from the Old Testament into the New Testament on how God deals with His people.  In the Old Testament, God gave the law written on tablets of stone, but in the New Covenant God has written the Law of Love upon our hearts.  Clearly these were two different approaches with one being totally natural and the other being completely spiritual.  God constantly used prophets in the Old Covenant to get the attention of the people of Israel.  But, the church has God inside of them and God can speak directly to our hearts.  The words of a prophet are not our God and they should not cause you to do anything that God has not already told you to do by His Spirit that is inside of you.  The Bible clearly tells us as Christians “Those who are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God” (Rom 8:14).  That means the Spirit of God will tell you personally what you should do, when you should do it and anything else that is important for you to know.  This of course requires that you know how to hear the voice of God and that you will obey what He says.  If you are a born again Christian and you refuse to listen to the voice of God, God just may send you a prophet to warn you that you are about to die for your lack of willingness to change.   I heard the testimony of a man who was sent by God to another preacher to warn him that he needs to examine himself, but the preacher ignored the warning and as a result died a young man.  Now a modern prophet can also come to you and confirm what God has already told you, but you will not hear it first from a prophet and then figure out if you should ask God if you should do it.  However, this also does not mean we do not need to study the Bible and the words of the prophets to gain the understanding of God.  I believe that we should definitely study the Bible and the words of God’s prophets.  Here is another similar truth that is important to know.  Christians are not to be led by prophecy, but you are supposed to be a doer of the Word of God.  I’m not sure if you really understand the difference?  I have heard of people in the world who have read about the coming war in Revelation and they have decided to be led by that prophecy to buy guns to help Christ defeat His enemies.  This is clearly a misguided approach to being led by a prophecy to do something that God did not tell you to do.  Just because God tells you what will happen in the future does not mean you are involved in causing it to happen.  Get it?  It is God’s responsibility to cause things to be fulfilled as He has spoken and not you.  Jesus taught us that we should do what is written, but this was not an all-inclusive statement.  If you tried to repeat everything that was written in the Bible you would do some very wrong things that God never told you to do.  Being a doer of the Word of God requires that you know how to rightly divide the Word of God and also that you know the difference between good and evil.  These are probably some of the most important things that I will say today, so I hope you understood them.

In order not to become deceived, it is best to become educated with as much of God’s truth as you can.  Today we will look into the Bible to discover, what is a prophet?  How does someone become a prophet?  Can a person choose to become a prophet or is it God’s choice?  How does God use a prophet?  When does God use a prophet?  What can a prophet do?  Are there still prophets today?  Does a prophet know and see everything?  Can a prophet actually predict the future?  If so, where does this knowledge come from?  Is it from God or is it the prophet’s ability?  If a prophet prophecies a coming event, can it be changed?  These are tough questions to answer but they are all relevant to find the answer so that none of us will be deceived by someone who comes along and predicts an event that obviously contradicts the Bible.  I’m not sure if I will be able to answer all of these questions today, but I will get it started so that you will begin to learn some of the basics.  I have already tried to answer a couple of them in the introduction so let’s continue to learn.

I searched the Bible for references to prophets and found there were many.  The Bible speaks of many men and women who are called prophets and prophetesses of God.  Several of the prophets are named and many others are never named.  I technically believe that there are more that are not named than those that are named, but it does us the most good to study only those that are named for now.  There are actually too many references in the Bible for me to give you all of them so I will only focus in on a few of them.  It is also interesting to note that a prophet is not isolated to the Old Testament only.  There are many men and women even in the New Testament that do prophesy and speak for God about coming world events.  Let me give you a few examples of the named prophets that I found in the Bible:

Bible Prophets:

  1. Enoch (Jude 1:14)
  2. Abraham (Gen 18:17, Gen 20:7)
  3. Isaac (Luke 13:28, Heb 11:20)
  4. Jacob (Luke 13:28)
  5. Moses (Genesis – Deuteronomy, Psalms)
  6. Aaron (Exo 7:1)
  7. Joshua (Joshua)
  8. Balaam (2 Peter 2:15-16)
  9. Eldad (Numbers 11:27)
  10. Medad (Numbers 11:27)
  11. Samuel ( 1 Sam 3:20)
  12. Gad (1 Sam 22:5)
  13. Nathan (2 Sam 7:2)
  14. King David (Psalms, Acts 2:29-30)
  15. King Solomon (Song, Lamentations)
  16. Obadiah (Obadiah)
  17. Eliezer (2 Chron 20:27)
  18. Hosea (Hosea)
  19. Amos (Amos)
  20. Micah (Micah)
  21. Elijah (1 Kings 18:22)
  22. Elisha (2 Kings 2:15)
  23. Jonah (2 Kings 14:25, Jonah)
  24. Isaiah (2 Kings 19:2, Isaiah)
  25. Joel (Joel)
  26. Nahum (Nahum)
  27. Habakkuk (Habakkuk)
  28. Zephaniah (Ezra 5:1)
  29. Jeremiah the mouth of the Lord (2 Chron 36:12)
  30. Ezekiel (Ezekiel)
  31. Daniel (Daniel, Mark 13:14)
  32. Shemaiah (2 Chron 12:15)
  33. Iddo ( 2 Chron 13:22)
  34. Haggai (Ezra 5:1, Haggai)
  35. Zechariah (Zechariah)
  36. Malachi (Malachi)
  37. Mordecai (Esther)
  38. Chanani (2 Chron 19:2)
  39. Oded (2 Chron 15:8)
  40. Jehu ( 1 Kings 16:7)
  41. Ahijah  (1 Kings
    12:15, 1 Kings 14:18)
  42. Zacharias (Luke 1:67)
  43. John the Baptist (Luke 7:28)
  44. Caiaphas (John 11:49-51)
  45. Judas (Acts 15:32)
  46. Silas (Acts 15:32)
  47. Agabus (Acts 21:10)
  48. John the Revelator (Revelation)

Bible Prophetesses:

  1. Miriam (sister to Moses) (Exo 15:20)
  2. Deborah (the only female among the Judges) (Judges 4:4)
  3. Huldah (2 Kings 22:14)
  4. Noadiah (Neh 6:14)
  5. Abigail (1 Sam 25:3-32)
  6. Esther (Esther)
  7. Anna (Luke 2:36)

Jesus called himself a prophet in Matthew 13:57 and John 4:44.  The people of Israel called Jesus “the Prophet” in John 7:40.  This was a reference to another prophecy of Moses that said “God will raise up a prophet from your brethren” spoken by Peter in Acts 3:22 when he quotes Moses from Deuteronomy 18:15.  So when a man comes along and claims to be a prophet I always go back and judge what he says by what the greatest prophet Jesus has said.  If the words of a modern day prophet contradict the words of Jesus, I run away from the modern day prophet very fast.  Yes there are real modern day prophets of God.  Yes they are called by God, appointed by God, anointed by God and used by God still today to bring out a new message or even a new revelation.  But their words will never contradict the Bible, they will only reveal it.  These modern day prophets are in existence and differ greatly from the false prophets and you need to understand the differences so that you are never deceived.  My recent commenter quoted this next verse to me twice and it can easily be misunderstood so I will address it now:

Amo 3:7  Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.

As you can clearly see this verse seems to contradict another verse that I taught you recently that Jesus said in Matthew 24:36.  You may recall that I told you Jesus said “No man knows the day or the hour” and yet we have a prophet of God saying God does nothing without revealing it to His prophets first.  Which one is it?  Or can they both be true at the same time?  Here is where you can fall into error very fast, if you are not careful.  If Jesus told us that no man will know when He returns to the earth and the prophet Amos seems to imply that God will not send Jesus back unless He first tells His prophets we have a major conflict that needs immediate resolution.  The only way that I know of to solve this dilemma is for us to go into the Bible and actually see what God tells us about prophets and what they know and this will enlighten your confusion dramatically, I hope.

Let me start by asking you this question.  What if Albert Einstein came to you about 70 years ago and said, “I am going to split an atom and with this act I will unleash such power that no nation will be able to withstand you”.  At this point in time there were no nuclear weapons in the world.  There were also no nuclear reactors and no one has a clue what is going to occur or how it is going to happen or even when it will happen.  Nor does anyone have any comprehension to the hidden power that is about to be unleashed upon the world.  Did Einstein not tell you exactly what he was going to do but, yet you would still be in the dark to what he was saying to you?  I mean come on, are you a nuclear scientist?  Do you have the understanding of how to split an atom?  Back in the 1940’s when this was happening you certainly did not.

I believe that this is exactly the situation the human race was in whenever God came to them and tells them what He was going to do.  You might know exactly what will happen, but how it will happen, when it will happen and the impact of why it was happening would cause you to still know very little.  You have to understand that God’s intelligence is so far above your intelligence that He could tell you exactly what He was going to do and in your mind you would not be able to comprehend much of anything but the general concept of what might happen.  Let me give you a direct Bible example of something that God told the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah was told by God that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel (Isa 7:14).  Nowhere did God tell Isaiah how this would occur, when this would occur or why this would occur so Isaiah was given some very important but limited future facts with a very limited capacity of understanding what any of it meant.  No one had ever seen a woman have a child without the involvement of a human man, so this was a foreign impossibility.  If you think that Isaiah knew more than this or understood more than this, you would be greatly mistaken.  Isaiah was clearly one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and he was told many things but only in limited quantities and he understood almost none of them.  He wrote down what God had said to him but there is absolutely no way that you can say Isaiah understood what was written.  This is the nature of how God works.  If God told you everything, you would not need to walk by faith because you could walk by sight.  If you knew everything you would not need a God who does know everything.  Interesting concept, isn’t it? But, since God teaches you a little bit here and there you are forced to use your faith and believe the things that He has told you without understanding how they will occur or even when they will occur.

Take the book of Revelation written down by John.  John prophesies many complex things that will soon occur, yet this book of the Bible is clearly the most misunderstood and controversial book that I know of.  The numbers of opinions that surround this book are so vast that it is humorous to search the internet to see what people are saying and thinking about it.  It is obviously very clear that God gives us a lot of information in this book while not telling us much of what it actually means on the surface.  This is the nature of the prophet!  A prophet is a messenger that brings to us words from God, but that does not mean the prophet knows everything about what God said or meant.  If John knew more than he wrote in the book of Revelation then he must have withheld the keys to understanding what he wrote.  So a true prophet is a man with a message from God that he possibly does not fully comprehend.  You need to see that a prophet can bring a word from God, but the message may be a riddle, a puzzle or a hidden secret that needs to be revealed by God in order to be accurately understood by men.  This is one of the key reasons when I see someone giving us a prophecy of an exact date and time that I can say they are not a true prophet of God.  I think I am going to prove these statements using the Bible to give you examples of how God uses a man to be one of His prophets.  In this way you will hopefully see that I am not teaching you my opinion, but that I am teaching you what God has said in His Word.

Have you understood my points so far?  Just because God tells the prophet what will happen, it does not mean God will have to tell the prophet when it will happen.  Nor does it mean that God has to tell the prophet how it will happen.  You cannot find this in the Bible.  If you try to make Amos 3:7 say that you are clearly overstepping what the verse says and making it say something beyond what was actually stated by God. You must get very nit-picky when you read the Bible and you must pay attention to every word and then you must not add to them to make them say something additional.  Here is a further confirmation to what I am attempting to teach you today about a prophet of God:

1Co 13:9  For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

Here is Paul calling himself a prophet.  Paul tells us that people only know part of the whole truth and therefore they can only prophesy about the small part that they know.  If a prophet can only prophesy in part then there is a great deal of information that is not known and not spoken of by the prophet.  Do you understand this concept?  A prophet of God is not God and therefore they will not know everything.  A prophet will only know what he has been told and God is not going to tell one man everything.  Let’s go back to the example of a witness to a crime that is called to testify in a court of law.  Can a witness testify about the whole crime or only the part that they may have observed?  Hopefully you can understand that if a witness testifies about anything that they did not see firsthand that their testimony becomes hearsay and speculation and it is invalid for them to speak in that area.  This is how a prophet works also.  They either will say what God says to be true or they will say what they want to say and this makes their words invalid.

Let me try to show what else the Bible says about prophets and I want to show you what the prophet Jesus says again on the subject because I believe these words take precedence over all the other words in the Bible and I don’t have time to explain that statement fully today.  You can read the words written in the Bible in Red Ink as if they were not any more important than the rest if you want to, but I will not approach the Bible with this attitude.  Jesus was God in the flesh, personally here on the earth physically for the first time.  Never before had God made Himself known first hand to man in this manner.  Sure the Spirit of God would speak to men and even tell them what to tell others, but this time God does not send an angel with a message, God does not tell a man a message to tell others, but God sends Jesus to speak firsthand.  Since, I learned that God was so much smarter than I am, I learned that I better pay attention to what He said while He walked among us.  Read this verse very carefully because God is speaking here directly to us first hand:

Mat 13:17  For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.

Here is Jesus speaking to His disciples about Himself and what did He say to them?  He says the prophets desired to see what they were seeing.  Obviously this means the prophets did not see what the disciples were seeing.  You could take this to mean the physical manifestation of what they prophesied would come, but I believe this statement goes way beyond that.  The Greek word translated as “see” in this verse is much more diverse than just physical sight.  This word is more three dimensional and it has a spiritual and an intellectual side to it that is very profound.  It actually means “knowledge” and “understanding”.  To know something is a profound subject found in the Bible that conveys sexual intimacy.  Adam “knew” his wife and she conceived a son.  You see Jesus was telling the disciples that the prophets did not understand what they were told to prophesy about.  It was over their head and beyond their capacity of spiritual and intellectual knowledge.  Jesus came into the world to bring us light.  It was only after the light had come into the world that men began to understand in part and come out of their darkness that they lived in.  The Bible says that Jesus came and taught things that were kept hidden from the foundation of the world (Mat 13:35).    These are clearly the things that the prophets and righteous men of old wrote about and desired to see but, were totally incapable of understanding because they were still secrets of God.  Let me give you another witness to help establish the truth.

1Peter 1:10  Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:

Again we can see Peter this time writing about the prophets who searched diligently for what?  Do you see the implied meaning within these words of God?  The prophets of old prophesied about the coming Grace of God, but yet they did not have a clue how it would come or when it would come or even who it was to come to.  If you do not understand that this is the way God operates with a prophet then you still have a lot to learn from the Bible.  This is why many people are easily deceived in the world today.  They do not understand that God does not tell His prophet’s everything, so when a man comes along saying I am a prophet and I have been told by God that the end of days will occur at 6 PM on May 21, 2011 they fall for it without seeking to know the real truth.  They can easily misapply Amos 3:7 to say I am this prophet who knows the end.  However, if the message contradicts what the other prophets of God have said you better run away from him fast.

Let me teach you an Old Testament example that is critical for you to understand how the prophets of God work.  We are going to the book of 1 Samuel and read about the prophet Samuel and hopefully you will be able to see how God speaks to His prophet and what He tells them and more importantly what He does not tell him.  We will begin with chapter 16 after Saul was anointed by Samuel to be king, but rejected by God for his failure in his character and other factors that I will not get into.

1Sa 16:1  And the LORD said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.

God tells Samuel to go to Jesse’s house and he will anoint one of his sons to be the new king of Israel.  Here is God speaking to the prophet and telling him what He was going to do before He did it as Amos 3:7 said to us.  However, notice what God did not say!  God did not tell Samuel which son was to be king.  God does not name him or tell him what to look for or give him anything specific that I would think would be absolutely critical to know in order to fulfill the prophecy.  Why does God leave out such important information as who is to be anointed as the next king of Israel?  Did God not know or did God purposely choose not to say?  I personally believe that Samuel was required to walk by faith and not by sight?  Faith is a requirement in order to please God (Heb 11:6).  Faith dictates that you must believe something without having the evidence to prove its existence.  Samuel was required by God to go somewhere and believe that God would show him which son would be king.  Obedience is another key factor.  If Samuel had not gone to Jesse’s house there would have been no King David either.  So Samuel is obedient and goes to Jesse’s house by faith:

1 Sa 16:6  And it came to pass, when they were come, that he looked on Eliab, and said, Surely the LORD’S anointed is before him.

You can read every verse if you like, but I’m going to skip down to verse 6 next to show you that Samuel the prophet of God still did not know who the right son is yet.  Samuel looks at the son named Eliah and thinks that this one must be him, but you will soon see that it is not.  Truly the prophet of God is still walking by faith waiting for God to reveal the right son, but he almost made a mistake and got into the flesh.  Samuel almost began to walk by sight by thinking he had found the new future king by observing his external appearance.  But, God tells Samuel something very important:

1Sa 16:7  But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.

This is the profound wisdom from God.  As Christians we should all learn the lesson being given.  We should then apply it to how we elect a president.  Ignore how he looks externally, what color he is, or how tall he is, or how skinny he is and see what kind of spiritual fruit that he is producing.  I guess I won’t go there today, but you get the idea, I hope and pray.  You can continue to read down in this chapter and see that Jesse sends his sons to the prophet one by one from the oldest to the youngest.  Seven sons in and seven sons rejected by God.  It sure would have saved a lot of Samuel’s time if God had only told him the name of the son that was to become king.  Samuel looks at Jesse and asks are these all of the children?  Jesse says the youngest is in the field watching the sheep.  Sound’s familiar doesn’t it?  Was not Jesus also called the Good Shepherd?  What I want you to observe is the fact that the prophet of God is not told every detail and was required to walk by faith in order to please God with his obedience.  God finally fulfills the original prophecy but it does not occur because of Samuel’s knowledge it only happens because of his faithful obedience.  This is a very important key factor for anybody that is called to be a prophet.  This is how God operates with every prophet.  God never tells the prophet everything that He knows.  God only tells the prophet enough to take him to the next step of faith.  Faith is one of the most important subjects found in the entire Bible and people want to ignore it to try to figure out how God operates with people.  You just cannot do that and correctly interpret the Bible.  If you have read my other Bible lessons then you have probably heard me say this before, that there is more than one truth in the Bible and you must use them all to come up with the correct interpretation of God‘s Word.  I’m going to keep saying that until everyone gets it.

So I have been going on in this lesson long enough today.  I’ll end this lesson with this question.  Who is a prophet and how do they become one?    Let’s read from the words of the prophet Moses and see another great Old Testament example that is important to understand:

Num 11:29  And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!

This verse tells us that it is the Spirit of God that makes a man or a woman a prophet.  Therefore they cannot make themselves a real prophet without God’s involvement.  Just because someone calls themselves a prophet does not mean they are one.  I found this fact crosses over to other offices of God in the church.  There are people in the world that call themselves an Apostle and clearly this was a self-appointed title.  Others assign themselves to be teachers and clearly they are not.  But, let’s get back to Moses.  You may remember that God selected Moses and Moses did not select himself to be a prophet.  If you read the context of this verse in Numbers 11 you will find a man coming to Moses and complaining of others who were prophesying for God outside of Moses.   In other words a man under Moses thought this should not be happening because Moses did not authorize it.  It did not go in the proper chain of authority.  It is funny that God does not have to follow what men think in order to do something new, especially if one of them is questioning God.  In this chapter you will find that God was making a point to Moses.  God told Moses the prophet what to say to the people and Moses questioned God’s ability to fulfill what He had spoken.  You can read this in Numbers 11:18-22 and the surrounding verses.  You need to figure out this was a major problem with God for Moses to question His ability.  Moses did not want to walk by faith and he wanted the explanation of how God could possibly give the children of Israel flesh to eat for a month.  Here is another example of how God desires faith from even His prophets.  Since Moses refused to walk by faith God withdrew His Spirit and placed it upon other elders of Israel and they began to prophesy for God.  Anyway that is a separate valuable lesson and another conformation that God does not tell even His prophet everything.  But you can see what Moses’ reaction to the complaint was.  Moses wished that God would put His Spirit upon everyone so that they all could prophesy and become prophets of God.  I actually believe this was a prophetic statement of what God intended for us, the church.  The prophet Joel actually says this:

Joe 2:28  And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:

This prophecy began to be fulfilled in Acts 2 when the Spirit of God was poured out on the first 120 church members in the upper room and it actually continues to be fulfilled even to today.   To prophesy is the action of a prophet and this tells us that it was God’s intention that all could potentially do this.  Wow, I do not know if you understand what this is saying.  To me it is saying you do not have to be directly labeled a prophet in order to prophesy.  If you have the Spirit of God on you and in you, you have everything that you need to prophesy.  Wow, that is a tough concept for many Christians to accept and this is probably because they have the Spirit of God in them, but not on them and there is a major difference between these two experiences.  If you do not understand that, I’m sorry I do not have time to explain it.  Let me review some of my major points about prophets today:

  1. A prophet knows in part and prophesies only in part.
  2. A prophet is required to walk by faith.
  3. A prophet is required to be obedient.
  4. A prophet may tell you what will happen, but will probably not understand how it will happen, why it will happen or even when it will happen.
  5. A prophet is just one man and not God and does not know everything.
  6. The Spirit of God upon someone causes someone to be a real prophet that can prophesy.
  7. A real prophet’s message is always from God and not from a man and thus will not contradict any other real prophet or the Word of God.
  8. The words of a prophet should not be taken in isolation, but there should be two or three witnesses (seers) to the actual reality that agree with each other.
  9. The Bible says we have the capability to judge all prophecy to see if it is legitimate.
  10. Jesus warned us that there will be coming many false prophets.
  11. So not everyone that says they are a prophet is a prophet.
  12. God says look not at the external things of a man, but examine his heart to determine a real prophet.
  13. There are many, many prophets in the Bible.
  14. If you can find two or three of them that agree then believe what they say even if you do not understand how it will happen or even when it will happen.
  15. In the church we are not to be led by prophets or prophecy we are led by the Spirit of God instead.

These are the beginnings of some very important concepts to remember and to learn to live by.   In a future lesson on prophets we will explore some more scriptures to expand our knowledge on this subject.  Until next time, may God continue to bless you to see and understand His Word!  If you have any questions or comments about prophets you are welcome to post them and I will try to respond to each of them.  God Bless.

A Deceived Christian Example To Avoid! Part 2 – Beware the Chicken Little False Prophets Who Proclaim the End of the World is Today!

(Ver 2.1)  This is “Part 2” in a Bible study series concerning modern negative Christian examples to avoid and not to follow or become.  If you would like to read the series from the beginning you may like to go to “Part 1” first.  But this lesson will be a blessing alone.  I was on vacation in the mountains when I wrote this Bible lesson.  I had not planned on posting anything that week.  But, then a national news report came on about a religious zealot in California, that I will not name and he has predicted the end of the world to occur May 21, 2011 at 6 PM Eastern Standard Time in the USA.  When a man calls himself a Christian and then ignores the Bible to teach something so ridiculous that it makes the corrupt national news media, it causes a negative perception to be reflected upon every Christian.  I have found that if the national news media is reporting a story, the it is either false or it is coordinated to make conservatives and Christians to look bad.  And one false prophet can be used by Satan to cause every real prophet of God to look foolish and not to be taken seriously.  What if God had sent a prophet to Israel and Israel had already heard 12 other men who called themselves prophets say something that is opposite or different than the real message from God?  Doesn’t this make it easier to reject the real message?  Sure it does!  I did notice in the life of Elijah that he called down fire that consumed the other prophets and thus God got His message out in spite of the false prophets who attempted to corrupt the truth.  I believe if you read Revelation 11 about how God will send two witnesses the first 42 months to the earth to get His message out, the same power that Elijah displayed will get the attention of many of the people of the earth.  Yet they will be killed and their bodies lay in the street for  3 1/2 days and people will be so happy that they will send gifts to each other in celebration.  Wow, I believe this is going to happen sooner than we think.

Well this man in California has supposedly studied the Bible for many years.  He is not a young man and he has many followers who have quit their jobs to travel to tell everyone about the prediction.  They have spent over a million dollars on billboards to warn the people of the earth.  The late night comedians in the U.S. have made light of this prediction in countless jokes.  Atheists are planned rapture parties May 23, 2011 at 6 PM to defy the message.  People had even printed T-shirts to say how they survived the rapture.  Christians are being mocked and ridiculed and are made to look like fools because of the actions of a deceived Christian man who is clearly ignorant of the Bible.

When God gives someone revelation of His word, it is never going to contradict any other previous revelation of the Word of God to cause confusion.   Real new truth will always build upon previous truths that we already know.  Therefore, we as Christians are forced to know the scripture for ourselves.  This man who predicted the end of the world on May 21, 2011 made a very similar prediction back in 1994.  Since this prediction did not occur it is very easy to see that he is a false prophet.  God never sent a Christian with the truth today prophecies of yesterday have failed.  A prophet of God should always speak the truth and what they say better  occur.  Of course there are exceptions in the Bible where the man of God’s words did not come to pass.  For example God sent Jonah to Nineveh and told them they would be destroyed.  But they repented and God did not destroy them.  That is just one example.  But this modern prophecy does not appear to match what occurred in this incident.

If anyone is following a man who has given a date when Jesus was coming to get us and it did not occur then maybe we should find a new Christian to learn from.   Also if we are following a man who contradicts another prophet of God or the written word of God it would be easy to fall into Satan’s deception.  This man claimed his calculations were off in 1994, but he is absolutely convinced that he has not made a mistake about May 21, 2011.  I wonder what thought about his prediction on Sunday, May 21 2011 since nothing happened.  I wonder what his followers thought on Sunday May 21, 2011 when they were all ready to go and nothing happened?  I know for sure what the world thought of his ignorant godless prophecy; they all laughed at him as they are doing at all Christians right now.  How can real Christians follow a man who is deceived?  It is amazingly easy if we do not know the Bible.  I knew this man’s prediction was not true the moment I heard it.  Any could, because his prediction contradicted the words of the greatest prophet named Jesus Christ.  He said this and I believe Him more than a deceived modern Christian who contradicts Him.

Mat 24:36  But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

Jesus implies that He does not even know the day or the hour that He is returning to the earth.  If Jesus does not know and the angels do not know, and this includes Satan, Michael and Gabriel, how then can this man know more than Jesus and the angels?  He would have to be Father God to be able to predict the end with accuracy.  I do not care what revelation that anyone has found in their Bible.  If you ignore the prophet Jesus to predict the end of the world you are deceived.  Sorry I can be very blunt and direct sometimes.  But, somebody needs to awaken Christians to see the real truth.

If somebody does not speak the truth, then everyone will follow deceived people tricked by Satan who can say anything.  If we are following a man or a woman who has set a date for the end of the world, you are as deceived as the deceiver.  It is the classic blind being led by the blind.  So to the deceived people of the world who predicted May 21, 2011 to be the end, I do not criticize you personally (after all I did not name any names in this message), I do however reject the false message of prediction.  If the world ends May 21, 2011 then I would have looked like a fool for countering your message.  However, since I base my prediction on the Words of Jesus I felt very confident that the world will never end on any day that a man has predicted.  I believe my God and His Written Holy Prophetic Word more than the words of just any human.  Please everyone that is a Christian let us all do the same.

This was just one modern day deception tactic of our enemy Satan.  But, we can all learn from it.  This is a very important trap of deception that will occur again.  If you hear of anyone setting an exact day for the coming of the LORD, know now that this could be a major reason why it cannot be that day.  Let us all avoid being a Christian that sets a date.  Also let us all be a type of Christian that studies our Bible and does not follow after a human that sets a date.

I will pray anyone that does either of these.  I hope that you will also pray for anyone that you hear of doing either of these.  Let us all pray that God will open their eyes of their understanding so that they are not deceived by to follow false prophets or to become one.  But to those who want to reject the Bible, the prophet Jesus and the truth to follow their fantasy, here is my heart is extremely saddened because of the deception that has blinded your mind. I pray everyone will learn their lesson and not make other Christians with real messages look like we are all as ignorant.  Let us all make sure we are following the Word of God that we know and we see in our own Bible what anyone else is saying and not follow blindly after the words of any teacher.  That includes me!  I hope this message helped someone today.  Thank you for reading, commenting and sharing these Bible lessons with your family and friends.  God Bless you all!

A PERSONAL APPLICATION

LORD, I pray that you will help me not be deceived.  Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Spirit.  Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit.  Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word and discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil.  Thank LORD for your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray.  Amen.

========================================

If you would like to continue reading in this series of lesson please go to “Part 3” now.

Understanding Deception in the Bible! Satan Sacrifices His Pawn Osama Bin Laden in the Chess Game of Life! Part 5

(Ver 1.2)  This is now Part 5 in a series of very advanced Bible lessons on the Bible concepts of deception.  Today’s lesson will be a little bit different than the normal, but yet it will challenge you to think about some things that you may have never thought of before about deception.  I have taught you a lot of new and very different things found in the Bible about deception and I pray that you have taken the time to read everything about this subject that I have posted.  If not, please go back and start reading this series with the first lesson Part 1” so that you do not miss anything important that I have said.   In the news a few days ago late at night a special report broke into the regular programming with a news bulletin that informed us “Osama Bin Laden was killed”.  I listened to these reports for nearly an hour and then the President of the United States came on and gave us the official announcement that it was true.  I do not know about you, but when I see things this significant happen in the world I look at them from a spiritual perspective and try to figure out why this occurred right now at this exact point in time.  You see I personally do not believe that anything in the world occurs by chance or accident.  Nor do I believe that God causes things to occur to fulfill His will or purpose.  Based upon my knowledge of the Bible, I believe there are multiple factors involved in everything that transpires on the earth and most of them are either human or demonic initiated rather than those events which are the occasional work of divine intervention.  God will intervene when people pray and ask Him to intervene.  However, we know from the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples that God’s will is not done on the earth unless we pray and ask for His will to be done (Luke 11:2).  This prayer also asks for the kingdom of God to come, so we know the kingdom of God was not already present when Jesus taught the disciples this prayer.  If you disagree with those statements, you should learn how to read and see what God says in the Bible before you demonstrate your ignorance and write me a comment about how I’m wrong.  The Bible goes on and tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan is the god of this world which implies that God is not the God of this world system.  Please understand that God rules in His Kingdom, but we are not living in His Kingdom right now.  Maybe you do not understand what I am saying.  If you are a Christian, you have the Kingdom of God inside of you, but this is not what you are walking around in physically in the world.  God is a Spirit and His kingdom is an internal spiritual Kingdom.  If God rules in your heart, then you can show people in the world the Kingdom of God in demonstration, but they cannot see it otherwise.  There is also the factor that God says that whatever a man sows, that is what he will reap (Gal 6:7).  So when things occur in this world suddenly you need to look at what seeds were sown to cause the things that we are observing to spring up.  I know for a fact that Ben Laden sowed seeds of death and I know he reaped death back this week. These are just a few of the factors that cause things to happen in this world.  Do you understand these factors?

I personally believe that Adam was created to be the god of this world in the beginning.  Then Adam sinned and allowed Satan to come in and now Satan is the god of this world system (2 Cor 4:4).   People are the cause of all of the manifested evil in the world as we can clearly see from the life of Osama Bin Laden.  But we are also told something else that is very important for us to know and to understand in the Bible.  God tells us in the Bible that people are not our problem.  Wow, that is not what I saw on TV this week.  We had a nation of people rejoicing at the death of a person who was nothing but just a man.  I also saw the President’s approval rating that was dropping, suddenly rise through the roof because the U.S. killed a man.  There were people in the streets of N.Y. and Washington D.C. that were clearly overjoyed that an evil man was killed.  Take a look at this Bible verse and you please tell me what it says:

Eph 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

What does this verse say?  Doesn’t God tell us that people are not our problem?   If we are in a spiritual battle as this verse implies, we need to understand who the enemy is.  Osama Bin Laden is not the enemy since clearly he was flesh and blood.  It is the spirit that controlled Osama Bin Laden that is our problem.  Guess what is going to happen now?  Since we just killed the U.S. number one natural enemy, Satan is going to promote another man to become the new number one.  Terrorism has not ceased just because someone died.  Satan is the terrorist maker and he is still alive and well on the planet.  God clearly tells us there is nothing new under the sun, the thing that has been is the thing that shall be again (Ecc 1:9).  Therefore, please do not be lulled into a false sense of security simply because one natural enemy was killed.  You can look down through history and see that there have been many evil men who have killed people in the world.  Every time an Adolf Hitler is killed a new man is raised up to become another of the same types of evil initiators.   Do you understand this?  Why does this happen?  It is because the same spirit will cause another man to be deceived into doing what the preceding one failed to finish.

The Holy Spirit woke me up early the morning after Ben Laden’s death in order to explain what is happening in the world and since God is smarter than me, I listened to what He was saying.  I am going to tell you what He said to me and you can choose to believe it or reject it, I personally do not care which one you choose.  God explained to me that our life and the world that we live in are like a spiritual Chess Game.  If you have never played the game of chess, you will probably not have a clue what I am about to tell you, but I’ll try to explain it so that you can gain the overall concepts.  Chess is a warfare game between two opposing sides, which is played on a board of 64 squares.  Sound familiar?  The Bible is divided into two opposing sides, God and Satan.   Each side in the chess game has 16 different game pieces.  One side is usually 16 black pieces and the other side is usually 16 white pieces.  But, this is not a racial game, just two colors that are opposites.  It really is a traditional good vs. evil type of game.  One side is you and the other side is the evil enemy trying to kill you.  You are faced with the challenge of defending your pieces while simultaneously attacking your enemy to take his pieces.  Does any of this sound familiar like in the war on terror that the U.S. has been fighting for the last 10 years?  In the game of chess each game piece has a rank and an order of value associated with them.  A pawn is the least valuable piece and the King is the most valuable.  You can lose every piece that you have except the King and survive.  However, power is another factor and the queen is the most powerful piece on the board and the pawn is the least powerful.  There is one unique factor of the game that a pawn can become a queen if it is moved to the extreme farthest square that it can move to.  The game of chess is a thinking game of strategy based upon a battle of wits.  Therefore, chess is a mental game usually for very intelligent people.  Which I do not claim to be one, since I never achieved to the level of a Grand Master in this game.  The more you understand about chess warfare the better chess opponent you can become.  Chess game players are usually rated based upon their win and loss record.  The higher you rating, the better a player you are viewed to be.  That was a very quick synopsis of an extremely complex game, but I am not here to teach you about chess today.  I am only here to tell you about just one strategy found in a chess master’s execution library that God says happened this week on the news.  Many times a Chess Master will use a deception technique called “sacrifice” that will allow his opponent to take one of his pieces, but usually this act of sacrifice is a hidden ploy to gain a future advantage.  In other words one side sacrifices one piece now to gain a greater advantage in the future part of the game that has not yet occurred.  Did you understand this concept?  It is a very advanced technique of deception and it requires extreme intelligence, forethought and planning.  In other words the Chess Master may have looked foolish for giving up a key piece right now, but as you watch the game develop you will see the strategy take place and the advantage will change.

You see this is exactly what Satan did this week with his pawn “Bin Laden”.  Satan gave up one key piece of his current game plan to gain a greater advantage in the future.  Keep in mind Satan has more than one game piece in play at any given time.  Satan is using a strategy play here with the sacrifice of Ben Laden.  You can tell this by the fact that if suddenly after 10 years of not being able to find Ben Laden we are now able to miraculously find him there was something that transpired to cause it to happen.  People like to think that it was the U.S. intelligence ability and that proves our superiority, but this is not the case.  Yes the killing of Osama was based upon intelligence work, but who let the information out to them?  I personally believe it was Satan and that this was not an accident.  If you can see the power of this play you will not fall into the deception that is being presented like many have already done.  If you do not understand chess very well then you may not be able to understand what I just said.

What does the world seek after more than anything?  Those in the world are seeking after peace.  However, Satan will never fully give anyone full peace, only the deception of peace will be presented.  People in Washington D.C., in New York and other parts of the U.S. have been jumping on a false security of new found peace and victory and this is what Satan is after.  The majority of the U.S. population is suddenly more united and feeling good about the world’s situation.  It is funny that nothing technically changed from a week ago, except that one man was killed but the attitude of accomplishment has promoted a single man back into political prominence and dominance.  Because there is a coming presidential election next year, Satan desires even Christians to feel like we have the correct man in this U.S. office.  You see after the elimination of America’s number one enemy this week, our president Obama went from a non-re-electable man to become a favorite front runner with a very high popular opinion.  My personal opinion of the president has not changed, but I am not deceived like many others.  I did not vote for the man in last election and I would not vote for him in the next either.  You see Jesus said you will know them by their fruits and whenever a man promotes abortions and homosexuality they are not a Christian or a Christ follower.  That is just the way it is, even if you do not like it.  Jesus said “Why call me Lord and do not the things that I say”.  Our president claims to be a Christian, yet his actions prove him as being far from it.

Be not deceived from the things that are external that mean little to nothing in the world.  Open the spiritual eyes of your understanding to see the high cost spiritual chess game of life that is being played out behind the scenes.  First, start by recognizing who the real enemy is in the world.  Satan is the only enemy that you should be focused on.  Then the Bible tells us to submit ourselves unto God and to resist the devil and he will flee from us.  Then begin to see and understand the world events more clearly in the light of God’s Word which also implies that you know God’s Word.  If you do not know and understand Bible prophecy, like the book of Revelation, you are an easy candidate for deception.  As long as there is a Satan in the world, we will have evil taking place around us and it will get worse as we go and not better.  Take a look at this next Bible verse and pay attention to the warning given:

Rev 12:12  Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

Once you begin to realize that Satan knows that his time is very short, you will soon see that his rage and anger will increase and he will move into desperation mode trying to kill everyone that he can take with him.  But in order to do this he is going to have to raise to power the people in the world that he needs to support his plan.  Satan does not want a Christian to be President of the most powerful nation of the world.  Satan will use any form of deception that is necessary to accomplish his plan.  There is a man of sin coming to the earth and he could be here already.  This man is called the antichrist in the Bible and he will oppose God, Jesus, the Bible and Christians and will do everything in his power to disrupt the plan of God from happening.  Satan will cause the antichrist to rise to power using these deceptive strategies that I have just taught you about in this series.  Deception will cause a false sense of accomplishment and a feeling of new found safety to come on people and this will cause them to look to a man on the earth to solve their problems.  I saw this attitude when people elected Obama the first time.  They saw him as a savior and exalted him based upon no accomplishments, just words.  Now people are doing it again, they have rallied around a president because they think he accomplished something when in reality he has done nothing to solve the root cause of the problem.  Satan would not have allowed Obama to find Ben Laden if there was not something else on the agenda.  There would have been no accomplishment for anyone to see if there was no dead evil man for the world to witness this week.

Ok, do not get me wrong.  I am not saying Obama is the antichrist, I do not know that and I would be crazy to try to speculate who the antichrist is right now.  I personally do not believe people will know who the antichrist is until it is too late.  But I do believe that we can look for certain clues based upon the Word of God.  The antichrist will come in like a man of peace looking like the world’s savior and this should be your first clue of warning.  So far this sounds a lot like Obama who was given the Noble Peace prize while never establishing any peace.  It just may be an amazing coincidence I don’t really know, unless God says something we will not know.  There are other factors, that also point against Obama and one of them is the prophecy in Daniel that seems to say the antichrist will be a homosexual.  Obviously if Obama is a homosexual he has us all fooled with a wife and two daughters.  So take into account every prophecy and not just some of them.  If you have not read my series on the “Antichrist” I would recommend that you do that.  I am not technically finished with that series, but since I lost my computer hard drive a week ago I will have to start over on it.

So should the U.S. be in a war on terror?  I personally believe that the U.S. had no choice but to enter this fight.  So I am not saying that we should have turned the other cheek and not done anything against Ben Laden the terrorists who attacked us.  I am not saying Christians should be passive.  Nor am I saying we should not defend ourselves.  Since there are evil men in the world and the only thing that gets their attention is physical force and power, I believe both of these, need to be demonstrated.  That is until Jesus shows up in the clouds and then things will certainly change and that will get their attention all right.  No I believe in guns!  I believe in using them when necessary!  But, I am also saddened to think a man is in hell right now and he has no opportunity to get out.  Eternity is a concept and proposition that we cannot really comprehend.  Being eternally punished just because you were tricked into believing a lie is a concept that many Christians do not want to believe that a loving God could do.  Yet the Bible clearly tells us that the path to destruction is very wide and there are many who go there.  This is exactly why I teach like I do.  I am plain and direct and I tell it like it is regardless of what it costs me, so that somebody may be able to see it and learn the truth.

When you begin to understand that deception is Satan’s only weapon against you, then you begin to understand you need to learn this subject extensively.  If people go to hell because they have been deceived you better make sure you know the truth and that you are not being deceived into this same eternal state that Ben Laden has found himself in.  Today’s lesson is a complex small part of the subject of deception but yet it is so powerful that I felt you needed to read about it and to understand it clearly.  A sacrifice of one evil man for the promotion of another evil man is how the antichrist will come into power.  I believe this with all of my heart.  How else would the entire world fall into the rapid deception of following a man, unless they could see him to be the answer to their deepest problems?  If a man’s popularity can rise dramatically simply because he killed an evil man, to me that is a sign of a clear act of hidden deception.  Since Satan is still the god of this world, we must realize then who is causing these types of things to occur and then figure out why.  If you want to believe they are caused by God, you can do that and be wrong.  If you want to believe they are just a coincidence, then you can do that and still be wrong again.  Please understand and learn to see things with your spiritual eyes and then perceive them with the spirit inside you.  Be sensitive to hear the voice of God and He will direct you to know the truth.

I began to learn the game of chess as a kid in 7th grade and I never mastered it.  However, I obviously learned enough for God to teach me something from it.  When I learned this game, a man named Bobby Fisher was the world champion chess master.  I remember reading about his games that he played in the pater and trying to learn the moves that he made and the try to understand why.  These concepts apply to Bible study and God if you understand them.  The more you know the more God can use to speak to you about.  It is a simple concept that God knows everything and we are just kids in His eyes.  Learn everything you can from God’s word but then use what you know to understand God, Satan and the world around you.  Thanks for taking the time to read my unusual Bible study and for listening to the words of God that He spoke in my heart this week.  Until next time, may God bless you and keep you until next time.

If you could like to continue reading in this series about Deception you can go to “Part 6“.

****************************************************************

If you want to know how to get saved and know that you are with confidence you can go to: How do I get saved?

Understanding the Hidden Spiritual Family of God! Part 4

(Ver 1.6)  This is now my second attempt to write and publish this article.  I had written and finished this article a long time ago, but I was waiting to publish it when my computer hard drive crashed last week and I lost many of my unpublished works that I had been writing.  Therefore, I am now in a recreate or recovery mode attempting to get back what I lost.  It is never a good thing when you lose computer files.   But, it is not an insurmountable obstacle, since I know it was God who gave me the information in the first place and I know He still knows what it all says.   Therefore, I’ll just trust Him to give it to me again, and I will retype it for you with a smile and I’ll be happy in my work for God.  Today’s lesson may not be the exact words that I typed before, but it will be close enough for you to see what He wanted to say.  One of the greatest frustrations with working with computers is when they do not work correctly or when they fail.  Since we live in a world that is deteriorating rapidly around us we just all need to become smarter in how we back up our work.  I learned this the hard way and I was reminded that just because a computer is not very old it does not mean that it cannot still fail and your work is lost.  Therefore, I have implemented a data backup plan that hopefully will fix this problem going forward.  But, enough about me and let’s move on to the Word of God which is why I’m here.  I have been doing a series of lessons on the “Hidden Spiritual Structure of God’s Family”.  This is now Part 4 in this series of extremely advanced Bible lessons and I know today’s lesson will contain more information that you have never heard of before.  If you have not read this series from the beginning, you really have no idea what I am talking about.   Therefore, I would strongly recommend that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1” to make sure you do not miss out on any important information that I have already covered.  I simply cannot guarantee that I will repeat everything that you need to know in every lesson.

In the first two lessons I taught about the direct family members in God’s spiritual family based upon patterns found in God’s created family of man.  I firmly believe that Adam was a pattern of Jesus who was to come and I also believe Adam’s family was a pattern of God’s family that already existed in heaven.  Since Adam had a natural wife that came out of his side, I believe that Jesus has a spiritual wife that came out of His side.  When the Roman soldier pierced the side of Jesus on the cross and blood and water flowed out, I believe this is a repeated pattern of what occurred when God took Eve from the side of Adam.  Certainly you can see the comparison that I am making and then you can choose to accept it or reject it.  But, hopefully you will see the significance of these two events given to us in the Bible as being something greater than just a coincidence.  I have also previously discussed that the theological doctrine of the Trinity of God directly identifies two males in the Family of God and these are God the Father and God the Son.  This foundational Bible doctrine of the Trinity of God further implies the existence of at least two females indirectly by logical association.  One female is the wife of the Father who is also the mother of the Son and the other female is the future wife of the Son of God.   You could go on and logically determine that the wife of the Son must also have a mother.  So we have at the minimum three unnamed and unidentified females that we will still need to try to ascertain.   People need to realize that when God created the natural world that the Bible says that He made these natural things to reflect and to reveal to us the things of the unseen spiritual world which I believe included His family.  We know this fact based upon Romans 1:20 and if you need to review this verse and see what God tells us, please do that.    So if God made them male and female in the beginning of human history, this must have been a reality that existed in the spiritual world by simple logical deduction.  We know that God is always called a male in the Bible so we are at the crossroads where we need to determine the existence of a spiritual female.   If she exists what is she, who is she and where did she come from?  The only way I can teach you this is to go into a lot of Bible verses that I do not have time to do today.  I will not be able to prove the spiritual existence of females to you in today’s lesson, but I will address this in a future lesson.  I know I sometimes say things that are hard to accept, but since you do not know everything that I know, you will either have to keep reading by faith or just stop here, go away and remain in your ignorance.

In the last lesson on this subject I revealed to you God’s hidden family prophesied to us from the Old Testament book of Micah.  Jesus took a seemingly isolated insignificant scripture from a very minor prophetic book of the Bible and revealed to us that this is one of the main reasons that He came to the earth in the flesh.  This statement was so profound that you do not even have a clue how important it is right now.   From this lesson I showed you scriptures in Matthew and Luke where Jesus reestablished the importance of this information without ever explaining it or telling you what He was talking about.  This is exactly why this information has never been revealed until now.  I believe that if God had not revealed it, it would still be unknown.   I hope that does not sound like I am trying to tell you that I’m anything important because He revealed it to me, because that is not what I am saying at all.  I am just a messenger who God chose and I did not ask for this revelation specifically, since I would have not known what to even ask for in the first place.  When I study the Bible, there are many times I do not know what I am studying until God shows it to me.   So it is always God’s glory for showing it to us, and never our ability that discovered it.  I learned this a long time ago and I believe that is why He gave it to me.

I think we should review the known facts for the spiritual family of God to make sure we understand what we know and what we do not know.  Let’s start by reviewing the family member titles given to us by God to see who they are called again and their relationships to each other.  If you would like to go back and reread these scriptures, you can go to Micah 7:6 to see the original prophecy or you can go to Matthew 10:34-36 or Luke 12:52-53 and see Jesus’ exact words on the subject.   Here are the family titles that were given to us:

  1. Son (the Man in Matthew)
  2. Father
  3. Daughter
  4. Mother
  5. Daughter-in-law
  6. Mother-in-law

We had 6 directly named family titles and these occur in almost any family on the earth.  However, Jesus reveals some other information that makes this family unlike almost any other family on the earth that I know of.   Reading from Luke 12:52-53 and Matthew 10:34-36 we came up with a short list of known facts and I will review this list for you so that you can refresh your mind on the complexity of this riddle:

  1. God is describing One Family.
  2. There are only 5 members in this 1 family.
  3. There are only 2 direct males mentioned by title (the son and the father).
  4. There are up to 4 direct females mentioned (daughter, mother, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law).
  5. This family will be divided 3 against 2 or 2 against 3.
  6. The Father will be divided against his son.
  7. The mother against her daughter.
  8. The mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law.
  9. A marriage is implied by the titles of “daughter-in-law” and “mother-in-law”.
  10. A man’s enemies are those of his own family.

These facts make this family so different, that it can only fit God’s family by design.  Hopefully you will better understand that statement as we continue.  I posted this puzzle on the internet over a month ago and still no one was able to come forward to solve it.  I suggested that you go through and read my other postings so that you could find some more clues, because I have all of the necessary information given and even a diagram of this family on my website and no one still could come up with the solution.  I can only assume that no one really extended any effort to solve the puzzle, so I am in a personal struggle to determine if I should do all of your Bible study for you and give you the answer or to just leave you hanging in the dark.  There are many times when I put lessons on the internet that I have to ask myself, am I casting my pearls before the swine that Jesus told us not to do (Mat 7:6)?  If a person does not see the same value of the Word of God that I do is that casting my pearl of great value to be trampled on?  To give away the Word of God for free is a perplexing contradiction.  Jesus seems to imply that some will value His Words and others will just trample upon them.  What I am teaching you today has opened up the Bible for me more than any other revelation of the Word of God that I have ever heard or learned about from anyone.  Therefore, I clearly understand the value of this knowledge, whether you do or not.  You need to decide what is valuable to you, if the word of God is not valuable, please stop reading my lessons and go away.  I know I said that already, but I am being very serious and I will probably say it again before I’m done today.  If you are an individual who sees value in what I am teaching you, then please be brave enough to tell me so that I do not decide to stop teaching because of everyone’s silence.

Since no one has solved God’s riddle, I will teach you how to solve it using Bible examples.  Today I want to start by exploring the first created family members and see what God describes to us about them in the Bible to help us to understand God’s spiritual family.  We will look at some of the children of Adam (but not all of them) to shorten this Bible example being described to us.  We know from the Bible that from the one created man Adam came every other human on the planet.  We know this based upon 1 Corinthians 15:22 since Adam’s sin was passed to every human.  Likewise we know that from the one woman Eve came every other human on the planet.  Eve is called the “mother” of all living in Genesis 3:20.  We do not technically know how many children Adam and Eve had in their 900+ years of life on the earth.  But, I personally believe that Adam and Eve had many children and I base this on a verse in Genesis where God says:

Gen 5:4  And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

If Adam lived over 900 years on the earth, he had to have had a lot of children.  The number of children could possibly be in the range of several hundred children.  Everyone likes to ask the question “where did Cain get his wife” and God tells you indirectly right here in this verse in Genesis that Cain and Seth married their sisters.   Since that was all of the women that existed on the earth in those days this was a permissible occurrence.  Later I will show you that this was a common thing in the early days of human civilization, where men would marry their sisters.   But, for now take note that God says Adam had many daughters and we will leave it at that.  I will now give you a limited family tree diagram of Seth one son of Adam.   We know from Genesis 5:7 and Luke 3:38 that the son Seth has another son named “Enosh”.  Therefore we must conclude that Seth married one of his sisters to have this son in the family lineage of Jesus.  Now look at this family diagram and see what it reveals to us:

I am only focused in on the one son of Adam named Seth and his wife and both of these children had to come from Adam and Eve.  So we have one mother, one daughter, one father and one son.  That makes 4 in one family doesn’t it?  If the son Seth marries a daughter of Eve (his sister), then we have the new addition of the mother-in-law title to the mother simply by the definition of marriage even though she is still the new wife’s mother simultaneously.  Just take note that one single woman can carry multiple family titles by definition and circumstances.  For example, any daughter can become a wife, a daughter-in-law, a mother and a mother-in-law and she can possess all of these family titles simultaneously.   In my picture of Adam’s family the daughter of Eve would also become Eve’s daughter-in-law when she married Seth her brother.  Again we see that one woman can possess two family titles and this is a major clue to resolving the puzzling fact that God’s riddle had 6 named titles but then He said there were only 5 actual individuals.  Therefore it is essential to conclude that one woman in the family of 5 must have two of the titles given to us in order to resolve the difference correctly.  Do you understand this logic?  Since the females are the only in-law references given to us in Micah, Matthew and Luke I have ignored the male role titles.  Hopefully you can see in Adam’s family diagram that we have all six titles that were given to us in the prophecy, but yet we only have four family members and this does not match the 5 in one family that God has revealed to us in Luke 12:52-53.  So we have a family tree that is close, but it is not accurate enough to solve the mystery.  So we still have a monumentally perplexing puzzle to solve.  Do you understand what I have said so far?  I pray that you do.  So let’s shift gears to a different family tree diagram of a modern day family and see how that compares to the information given to us by Jesus.  This week in the news Prince William of England married a commoner name Kate and this next family diagram could very well apply to this marriage.

The son in this diagram would be Prince William, the daughter would be the woman Kate and then the parents of each would also apply.  As you can easily tell, using this diagram it has added too many family members to satisfy the riddle requirements.  It further complicates the matter by introducing an additional second family and that does not fit with the given description that  Jesus gave to us either.  Now instead of the 4 family members of Adam and Eve’s family we now have 6 members like in my family tree.  This diagram has two fathers, one son, two mothers and one daughter.  We also have a daughter-in-law, a mother-in-law in this diagram and all of this information is only partially accurate to the complex riddle information.   What we have done is gone from one too few family members, to one too many family members.  We have also increased the number of families from one to two, so we have actually moved further away from solving the riddle with this diagram.   However, look again at the diagram, study it and see why we have too many family members and then try to determine which one family member we can remove to make a single family of five with the same necessary six resulting family titles?  To me it is very logical to see that there are “too many” fathers in this diagram.  Clearly from reading the original prophecy we know that there is only one father mentioned and one son so we must take away one father and this will resolve every problem to solve this puzzle.  Since we are talking about God’s spiritual family and there is only one God the Father in the trinity, this tells me that there are not two Fathers in God’s family tree diagram.  These are just some of the factors that make a riddle a riddle.  If you could solve the riddle without giving it any serious thought then it would not be a riddle.  Looking again at this diagram of the 2 two families with 6 total family members, how do we remove one father and still leave two mothers that results in one family?  Wow, I think I just gave you a very major clue.  If you only have one father, he is always the head of one household and everyone that comes from him is still in the same family regardless of who the mother of the child is or how many wives he has.  You can see this logic found in the O.T. Bible in many places.  David had more than one wife, Solomon had way too many wives, and even Jacob had 4 wives that birthed the 12 tribes of Israel.  So we have just made some huge strides to solving the puzzle.  Are you getting it?  According to the Bible, a man is the head of a family and no matter how many wives he has had, they are still all in one family.  Please do not think that I teaching polygamy.   Wow, this is really getting tough isn’t it?  God as you will soon learn chooses to do something that was permissible in the Old Covenant but that is not permissible in the New Covenant in order to accomplish the ultimate hidden plan of God.  You see before the human race existed, I believe that God had a monogamous relationship.  We will learn in these lessons that God had more than one wife for an interim period of time.  Remember what a covenant is?  A covenant is a marriage to God according to the Bible.   How many covenants are there mentioned in the Bible?  You probably do not know that answer to that question and I do not have the time to tell you about them today.  However, we will find out some more information about this very soon as we continue.

I believe that after the plan of God is complete that He will end up with another monogamous relationship in the end with only one covenant being in effect.  I believe that this covenant is the one that was implemented by His Son Jesus and I pray that you can see it.  However, in the in between time in order to implement this New Covenant plan, God chose to do something that He would not have normally chosen to do.   We know that God is opposed to polygamy by the nature of creation.  Jesus taught us that in the beginning did you not read that he made them male and female (Mat 19:4)?  In other words God said that He did not make them male and females (multiple wives) or male and male or female and female.   Do you see how smart God is, with His riddle and His words?

I guess it is time to reveal the family of God to you.  There is only one family diagram that I could come up with that solved this riddle exactly and amazingly enough God uses this pattern as His family diagram.  This diagram will probably shock most of you.  You see when you look at this diagram it strongly resembles a known Satanic symbol that causes you to retract from believing it.  I purposely believe that Satan stole God’s family symbol and tried to pervert it intentionally to discredit it so that no one would accept it as being something from God.   By Satan taking a Bible pattern and making it his own, it will cause you to more easily reject the truth and this is a common way that he uses to deceive people.  Take a look very closely at this diagramed family tree and then I will discuss the facts of how only this diagram will solve the riddle completely.

Here we have a family of five and it is totally different than any family that I know of on the earth today.  However, that does not mean it is not possible.  I believe my Bible says with God all things are possible (Mat 19:26).  What I want you to do today is to change your perspective and to think about this diagram from a spiritual point of view.  Try to see it from God’s point of view.  Who are the two males in this family?  We know from the Bible that God is a Spirit (John 4:24).  We also know that God is called our Father many times in the Bible as well as the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1:7, Rom 15:6, 1 Cor 8:6, 2 Cor 1:2).  We further know from scripture that God existed in the spiritual realm eternally before there was a natural realm ever created.  Now think, where was the Son of God conceived and born?  Clearly Jesus Christ was born a natural man in the physically created world.  So we can clearly understand that we have a natural Son that came from the spiritual realm of heaven to be born in the physical world as a man.  Therefore, we have two direct realms of reality being described to us in one diagram.  In other words this diagram originates in the spiritual realm, but it then crosses over into the natural realm simultaneously.  This is why we have two women who are married to God the Father, one is a natural woman and the other is a spiritual woman and if you have ever read my other Bible lessons you already know their names.  If you do not understand that a covenant is a marriage, then you should go and read my lesson on “Understanding Bible Covenants”.  God the Father was in covenant with two women in the Bible and I will explain this more clearly in the next Bible lesson.   So before I continue, I want to confirm this family diagram using an Old Testament family that God gives us as a natural type of His family.  God repeats patterns in the Bible to reveal hidden information to us.  However finding these patterns can be very difficult unless the Spirit of God points them out.  This hidden pattern is found in the family tree of Abraham and this should not surprise you at all since Abraham is a central figure of the Bible.  However the reality of connecting this family pattern to the matching God family pattern will take many by surprise since it was a well concealed secret.

You will look at my diagram and probably scratch your head and wonder how I got this information.  I will have to tell you that it was not me that got it at all; it was the Spirit of God revealing it to me that caused me to see it.  You see I was listening to the Bible on CD one day over 10 years ago and while I was listening to the book of Genesis chapter 20 all of sudden God said, “Did you hear that?”  I had to stop and back it up and then listen to it again and then God said that was an example of the five in one family.  Sometimes I think I shock people when I say that God speaks to me, but yet if you think that God doesn’t speak to you it is because you are not listening and for no other reason.  After I read the verse in the Bible, I saw it immediately and here is the exact verse that God spoke to me about, see if you can see it also:

Gen 20:12  And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

Did you see it?  Did you notice that Abraham married his sister?  I told you that this was a common early Old Testament occurrence in the recorded events of human history and this verse proves it.  You see Abraham was born nearly 2000 years after Adam and this proves to us that men still married their sisters even then.  However, it changes things slightly when you see that his wife was only his half-sister.  Sarai had the same father as Abram but not the same mother.  Guess how many family member that comes up to be?  If you guessed that there were exactly 5 in one family you would be exactly right.  If you also saw that they were 2 males and 3 females you would also be exactly right.  If you go on and think with me  logically you will see that every family member title fits exactly the titles given to us in Micah 7:6.  It is only because Abraham’s father Tera had two wives that make it possible for there to be 5 in one family.  We have a precise match to the spiritual family of God using an Old Testament type and shadow that has been written about for thousands of years before Jesus came to the earth to tell us about it.  I believe that when you understand that God knew the end from the beginning that it made it easy for God to hide important information in the book of Genesis that we would need to know about before Jesus came back to the earth almost 4000 years later.  It is an awesome example of the extreme intelligence of God at work.  If you do not yet understand the complexity of God and the Bible after studying this Bible series, you might just be reading the wrong Bible teacher.

DIVISION IN ABRAHAM’S FAMILY

In conclusion today I want to show you how this family tree diagram causes you to understand the plan of God in action from beginning to the end.  Hopefully you will recall that Jesus taught us that there would be five in one family divided 3 against 2 and 2 against 3 (Luke 12:52).  This stated division of 3 against 2 is actually found to be present in the Old Testament shadow of Abraham’s family tree given to us by God in Genesis 20.  The exact same pattern of mentioned division occurs in the family of Abraham that was stated in the prophecy of Micah 7:6.  You’ll see what I mean as we continue to explore this subject in grater detail.   Why are these specific numbers important for God to mention?  Why is it exactly 3 members divided against exactly 2 other family members?  What exactly is a division?  A division by definition is the separation of one person, place or thing from another person place or thing.  A division is a departure from something, or even an isolation from a given object/noun.   Why would it be necessary for God to divide His existing spiritual family?  God actually answers this last question in the Micah 7:6 prophecy and you should review this fact so that you can understand what the plan of God is doing using this simple concept of division.  Remember the prophecy said “a man’s enemies are those of his own household”.   If God’s own spiritual enemies were close family members who could God be talking about?  From the diagram we can see that the enemies of God could possibly be found to be present as one of His wives or one of His children or all of the above.  That makes things much more complex for God to resolve in this riddle.  It goes back again to the old adage that you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your relatives.  It means if God’s enemies were a part of His internal spiritual family, how does He choose to get His enemies out of His house legally, morally and justly?  You really need to give that question some very serious thought before attempting to answer it.  I believe that the answer to that question boils down to, that God chose to start a brand new family apart from his current existing family and that is the only solution that is legal while being morally sound preserving the Holy character and nature of a loving God.  God is so much smarter than you or I, and He always does things in a legal justified way that does not reflect upon Him negatively.    Division can be a positive or a negative depending on the reason for the division being implemented.  A negative division would occur if you committed a crime and were convicted of that crime and sent to prison, you have now been divided from society by your personal bad choices.   A positive division occurs when you can see how our roads have been built; we have divided highways where one side cannot invade the space of the other side’s traffic to cause accidents or deaths.   These are two different types of divisions.  They both are in effect implemented to prevent something negative from happening.

But, what is a division in the terms of a family unit?  There are actually several different types of legal family divisions that can occur and I will discuss some of these briefly to help you understand how which legal pattern of division fits for the prophecy in Micah 7:6.  One possible family division occurs when a significant loved one dies.  Whenever a family member dies, that family member is no longer a part of the family living in the same house.  Thus natural death is a division between family members.   Of course they do not cease to exist; they just do not exist in the natural realm, but death is still a clear dividing line.  We learn this concept from the book of Ruth when Ruth says to Naomi “I will be with you until death separates me from thee” (Ruth 1:17).   You need to understand that this is one of the main reasons why Jesus was born a natural man on the earth, so that He could die a natural death.  The Spirit of God could not die in heaven so He became a man.   Once you understand that death is a separating force for covenants, you begin to understand why one of the reasons that Jesus had to experience physical death.   Consider death as a potential dividing force in this family of 5.  Which two would need to die or which three would need die in order to leave the others alive and divide them 3 against 2 or 2 against 3?  Well that could apply but this is not what is mentioned as the dividing line in the typology of Abraham.  Therefore, I will think that this type of division does not apply to Micah 7:6.

Another possible family division would be a type of divorce where one parent separates from another and one gets custody of the children and the other one does not.   In this case we could observe one mother taking custody of her child and departing the family and that would match 2 being divided against 3.  That is actually an interesting concept that we will see in other coming Bible patterns but that is not what is happening in the story of Abraham.  There is no divorce mentioned in the lesson from Genesis concerning Abraham, his mother or his father or Sarah and her mother and father.  Therefore we have again a close possible solution but no direct match from scripture typology.

These two types of family divisions are close but not a sufficient match for what is being communicated in this riddle from Micah 7:6.  You see based upon the fact that the daughter is called a daughter-in-law we have an established marriage of the son to the daughter.  We therefore, should know from scriptures that a marriage is also a type of family division even if you have never thought of it this way.  Marriage is a clear separating force in the eyes of God and that is exactly how He views it and planned it to occur.  Perhaps I will do a future series on the subject of division to explain these concepts more in-depth to you, but for now let’s move on.   If you look at the diagram that I have given you of the family of 5, this family is a perfect representation for this reality of 3 divided against 2.  Let me try to explain that statement by going back to Genesis again and showing you what God says to us about the covenant of marriage.  God tells us something in Genesis 2:24 that is very relevant to this situation and here is where I am going to connect some more dots for you to see something radically new and different from the Bible:

Gen 2:24  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

You can clearly see that when a son takes a wife, there is a definite family division that is stated.  To “leave” one’s old family is a dividing line occurrence that begins a new family.  God says the son will leave his father and his mother and he will now be joined in covenant with his wife.  Anytime a son leaves his mother and father to become married, a family division has occurred.  This is a separation of being in the father’s family that results in the establishment of a new son’s family.  So when Jesus, the Son of God comes to the earth to establish a new covenant in His blood, He has just left His Father’s house in heaven and has separated Himself from ALL of His Father’s covenants by definition revealed to us by God’s created patterns and His very specific Words of Law.  Both the son and the daughter bride must leave their respective parents to become joined in covenant to form a new family household that is both independent and completely separate from the existing Father’s family household.  The father is not the one that is marrying the bride, the son is the groom to the bride so the father has no covenant relationship with this new woman.   If you do not understand how this works, I’m sorry for you, I do not know how to explain it more clearly.  You see I learned this concept because I lived it.  When I married my wife, I moved out of my parents house and got my own house.  My wife and I created a brand new family unit that never existed before and this family was now separate from both of our parents.  There is one fact that is still relevant for my new family house and this is my house had the same name as my father’s house.  Since I took my father’s name I was a builder of the family name keeping it going to the next generation and that is very important to apply to what Jesus is doing also.   When my wife and I moved out, our parents were no longer responsible for us to provide for us or to give us anything.   This is simply how life works, we still recognized where we came from, but we now we do not live with that old family since we have a new one with our own children.  Someday our children will grow up and get married and they will then become a new separate family and the endless cycle will continue until God’s timetable ends it.

So we have the son and his wife who are now two and using the diagram of the family of 5 they must leave their 3 parents that have been excluded from their new household.   We have two children who have become One New Family and we have an old One Family that was five members that now have become three by themselves.  I’m really not sure if you understood the simple math behind what I just said, but it was very deep and I know it went over many people’s head.  My Blog is called “Advanced Bible Studies” and this is why.  It is written for spiritually mature Christians who want to think.  I want you to see from my 5 in one family diagram that there are two children that leave 3 parents to be married and this is a division of 3 against 2.  This was the plan of God in a new revealed reality.   God has dissolved two covenants for the creation of one new covenant that is far better.  You probably still have a lot of questions and you are probably still lost to who these three women are, but I will explain them more in the next lesson and it will become much clearer.  If you are impatient and want to see who they are faster, just go and read my other Bible lessons and it will become much clearer more quickly.

I hope that you do not write me off as being crazy, because you do not understand all of these new Bible concepts yet.  Just realize that you still do not know everything that I know and it is just impossible for me to teach you everything that I know in one Bible lesson or even one series of lessons.  Anyway until next time, I will pray “may the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Him who created us be there to open the eyes of your understanding to enlighten you with all of His truth”.  If you like what you are reading I would encourage you to tell me and then go tell a friend about what you are learning that is so different.  Thanks and God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading in this series you may proceed to “Part 5“.