Category Archives: Understanding
Understanding the Value of the Word of God? God’s Word is Seed, Water and Light! Part 1
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible lessons designed to help you to recognize the extreme value of the Word of God. I had a funny thing happen to me the other day when a three year old picked up a kids book and said to me, “this book is broken, I can’t read any of the words”. I thought that was very cute reasoning from a three year old. Well I laughed and said to myself that is the way the Bible is to many people. There are a multitude of people in the world who have tried to read the pages of the Bible and they have concluded “this book is broken” because it does not make any sense to them. Because of this, we have many in the world that look down on the Bible and like my three year old little friend, they do not understand what they are doing or saying. I have seen others on TV laugh at Christians and they look at the Bible and call it a foolish book of fables. All of these erroneous conclusions are based upon ignorance and their inability to see any value of the words that are written on the pages. I use to be this exact same way until God opened my eyes and I began to understand the deep hidden spiritual information that is encoded on the pages. All of a sudden the pages of the Bible became alive to me and these living words began to speak to my heart and I began to see and understand the real spiritual things of God like never before. This new perspective changed my life forever!
1Co 3:6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
1Co 3:7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.
I was given a question from one of my readers; so I thought if one person had this question there might be many others that could benefit from the same answer. As you can see from my key verses, God is describing a spiritual ministry process in the terms of planting seeds and watering them and God causes them to grow. This seems to not be that difficult on the surface, but yet what does each of the elements represent in these verses and how do they work together? Why does someone plant and someone else water? What is the seed and what is the water? These are some of the questions that I will attempt to answer in the rest of this lesson.
The Bible describes itself in many fascinating and unique ways that make it a book like no other. Today I will attempt to address just three of these unique descriptors to allow you to see the Word of God from a new and different perspective. I will be teaching about seed, water and light primarily and what they each represent. If you have ever planted a garden in your backyard, then God has taught you several spiritual lessons without you even knowing it. You see God tells us the hidden things of God are clearly revealed in the things that He has made, so men are without excuse (Rom 1:20). I remember one year we planted tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and broccoli to name a few vegetables in a garden and we carefully tilled the soil and put the seeds and the plants into the ground and then watered them, cared for them, built a fence around them and over time they grew. We enjoyed and ate a lot of really fresh food from just a few rows of vegetables in a garden over that summer. After studying the Bible I learned that farming was a created concept from God that applies to us learning about the Bible. You see God created these natural farming processes to reflect a much greater truth about how things work in the unseen spiritual realm. I have written on this subject before, but not in this direct relationship of God’s word being three different aspects that are essential elements to our spiritual growth process. So today’s lesson will be watering some seeds that I planted before. Uh oh, I think I just got ahead of myself.
In the natural garden world there exist four natural elements that are essential for our natural food production. These four essential elements are light, water, seed and soil. Without any one of these four we would not exist on this planet. These four essential natural elements are all symbolic representations of spiritual things and that is my primary subject today. Of course light comes from the sun and is probably the first major basic element that permits all life to exist on our planet. We live in a solar system that is our life sustaining force and our planet exists in the perfect position in order to sustain this life here. If we were closer to the sun, it would be too hot and if we were further away it would be too cold. So we live on a Goldilocks planet, one that is just right for human habitation and this is not by chance or accident. I totally believe that it was by design. So the first subject that I want to focus on is the Sun and who or what this represents to us in our Christian walk.
Mal 4:2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.
We will briefly examine why Jesus Christ is described to us to be the “Sun of Righteousness”? I will briefly tell you that God does not have to call Him the “Sun of Righteousness” if there are no other suns that exist. In other words God qualifies Jesus to be righteousness and this implies there is a sun that is unrighteousness. I do not have time to explain this fully today, but Satan is the unrighteous sun, I believe. You see in Isaiah 14:12, Satan is called “Lucifer” and this name in the Hebrew means “bright morning star”. Wow, that is tough to understand isn’t it? You see Jesus is also called the “bright and morning star” in Revelation 22:16. Both Jesus and Satan are called by the same name, but one is the Sun of Righteousness and the other is the “sun of unrighteousness”. You have to understand that this “morning star” is a coded reference to our sun, the star that rises in the east every morning that lights our day. I’m sorry I do not have time to elaborate on that more today since it is not my primary subject. Just understand when you are looking at the night sky that every star that you are looking at is a different sun than ours. So there exist many suns by the design and creation acts of God. Let’s continue to look at Jesus. You see Jesus called Himself the “Light of the World” and the “Light of Life” in John 8:12. Jesus is clearly telling us that He is the source for all Spiritual life. There are many verses in the New Testament that confirm this reality, if you choose to see them. If you want to look up some of the names, titles and descriptions of Jesus in the Bible you can read my lesson on this subject called “Names, Titles, Descriptions and Symbols of Jesus in the Bible”. I have concluded that Jesus is the Spiritual Sun of the Spiritual Day and you can read about this in more depth in my Bible lesson called “Understanding Night and Day”. The next factor that I want to associate with the sun is who Jesus is according to the Bible. We certainly understand that Jesus is called the Son of God, but God describes Him in another key way that you should see:
Rev 19:13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
This verse in Revelation is describing Jesus Christ and God is calling His name something entirely different. God calls His name the “Word of God”! By the laws of mathematics created by God we can substitute Word of God for Sun of God and we can even go further and say the Sun of Righteousness is equal to the Word of God. This is a very substantial part of my lesson today. God’s Word is the key factor that brings us Spiritual Light and Life and this is an essential part of God’s spiritual farming lesson.
The second essential element for life on our planet is the existence of water in mass quantities. Our planet is often called the water planet since there is so much water on it that this water could cover it many times over if the world was flat. However in the farming process, water is not the next essential element so I’ll leave this one to last today. Next I want to address “seed” and you should know if you have read my other Bible lessons what this is or at least know parts of what this is. I did a long series of lessons from the Bible on what Seeds represent and there are many things that conform to these types of created and spiritual realities. If you would care to read about them all in detail, you can go and read “Understanding Seeds”. However, today I just want to focus in on one lesson and really just a part of that lesson to define what Paul was sowing and Apollos was watering. You see if you recall in the Parable of the Sower, Jesus taught us the Seed was the Word of God. You can read this in Matthew 13:23 and Luke 8:11. So God’s word is clearly defined to be God’s spiritual seed. We also know from this parable that the ground or soil is man’s spiritual heart. God tells us that those who hear and understand the Word of God are those that will eventually produce spiritual fruit. Let me give you another key verse found in the Bible about the Seed of God:
1Pe 1:23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
Here is God contrasting two seeds, one is corruptible and one is incorruptible and that is two ends of two opposites. The concept of corruptible is a Greek word that means mortal or decaying. To be mortal is to be subject to death. It is often associated with organic matter in the world. The laws of thermodynamics state that everything that we can perceive around us is in a state of decay. God is basically comparing natural things (seeds) to spiritual things (seeds) and God inform us that His spiritual Seed is incorruptible. We can understand from the definition of this word that it means “immortal” or incapable of death. God is basically telling you His Words are everlasting Seed that will never die, never pass away and never cease to exist.
We have now discovered two key factors to identify or describe the Word of God. These are God’s Word is Spiritual Light and God’s Word is Incorruptible Seed. I hope you are beginning to see and understand the increasing value of the Word of God. It appears to me that the more I learn about God’s word, the more valuable it becomes to me. God is telling us without His word we would all cease to exist instantly. So let’s continue in the farming analogy and discover if God’s word is also water? There are actually many things in the Bible that are described to be water or symbolically related to water. People are said to be water, seas, oceans, etc. whose waves roar endlessly. But, this is not God’s water, just the people made in the image of God who many seem to be clueless to whom they really are. Let me show you what Jesus says to His disciples in the Gospels about water and this will hopefully begin to change our perspective on the subject:
Joh 15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
If God’s word can make you spiritually clean, then God is implying a washing process like when you take a bath or shower. God is basically telling you that the Word of God is the Water of God in indirect terminology. Water is an essential element for life on our planet. We drink water, we wash in water, we use water for many purposes. You should be able to understand that water is a vital and indispensable part for life on our planet and that God is saying “My Words are also this essential” in the spiritual realm. Let me give you verification and a second witness for this reality:
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
Ephesians chapter 5 is predominately a marriage covenant chapter and in the context of this information, God describes that His Word is a cleaning force or power. This verse leaves no doubt in my mind that the Word of God is equal to the Water of God. All of this information might be confusing to you or it could be very enlightening to you. You see in the natural realm, light is not water and they are two different elements or substances, so we think. Seeds are also not light and a seed is not water either. So it is very complicated isn’t it? This is why there has been a great debate in the church to the existence of the Trinity of God. How can God be three and still be one? It is a huge perplexing puzzle that only God can solve. What you need to understand though is that everything that we see around us in the physical realm was created by the Word of God from the spiritual realm, so essentially all of these things are the same one thing, the Word of God. When I learned how God created the world, it changed my perspective to many things in the Bible. God saw and God said and then it was. You can read this over and over in Genesis 1. God was trying to teach you that His words became what we see around us.
Today is Earth Day and I do not profess to be a supporter of this man made cause or event. It appears people in the world want to say “Save the Planet” and ignore the people and let them all go to hell. The problem with this reasoning is that God tells us “heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word will never pass away” (Mat 24:35). So people are focused in on the wrong priority entirely. God’s word is eternal and you should be consumed with knowing as much about it as you can learn.
2Co 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
The things of this world are very temporary and not eternal so we as true Christian should not give these natural things like our planet the first priority. Do not get me wrong, I did not say to pollute it or to treat it badly, I am in fact saying you should be a good steward of what God has given to you to enjoy, but do not make it your life’s focus to save the planet because it will not matter in a short time from now. Keep your eyes on the eternal things and this is just the Word of God. Make God’s Word your first priority and it will make other temporary things seem very insignificant.
So I have given you at least three different aspects of the Word of God today. The Word of God is Spiritual Light that causes us to live and grow. The Word of God is Spiritual Water that causes us to be clean. The Word of God is Seed that is planted in the spiritual soil of our hearts and it is these three factors from God that causes us to produce fruit unto God. This is why Paul could plant God’s word first and then Apollos could come along and water those seeds that were planted by Paul. It all reverts back to the same eternal words of God. These are not new words; they are the same words being spoken by different preachers or teachers. This is how it works. God is the essential factor that causes the seed to grow. God gives us the seeds to plant with His Word. God gives us the water to cause these seeds to continue to produce and this is also His word. So it is always God and His Word that is the important factors and never the preacher who sowed or watered. Do you understand these concepts? Do you see why I’m not important? However, what I say is very important, but me, I am just a farmer who is either planting new seeds in you or watering old seeds that have been sown already by someone else. I hope and pray that you enjoyed my simple Bible lesson today and may God continue to bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2” now.
Understanding Bible Faith! The Prayer of Faith! Part 12
(Ver 1.2) This is the continuation of a series that I have been doing on the subject of Understanding Bible Faith. What is it? Where does it come from? How do we get it? What good is it? How do we use it and on and on I could go. These are a few of the subjects that I have attempted to cover in this series at least in part. Everything that I have covered on the subject of Bible faith is applicable to today’s subject of the Prayer of Faith. However, today’s lesson is actually a new perspective of three related subjects and these are faith, prayer and healing combined into one lesson. I will have to touch a little bit on each of these subjects in order to teach about the “Prayer of Faith”. I have been trying to answer questions about some very complex subjects found in the Bible by simplifying them to the best of my ability. If you have not read this Faith series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1” and continue through the lessons sequentially so that you do not miss out on any of the important points that I have already covered. In the world that we live in, we all are faced with challenges that at times seem insurmountable and even overwhelming to us. This is when most Christians fall on their faces and begin to pray asking God for help. Now, if this is the only time that you pray when you are in a major crisis, then your current situation was probably caused by your own poor judgment or past decision making failures. I know we have all been there before and have fallen short of the best that we could have done in every situation. Human nature normally likes to think that we have everything under control despite the actual circumstances of life that we are faced with. But, when the doctor comes to you and tells you that you have stage four cancer, then all of sudden people think it is time to pray. Please do not believe that I am making light of your situation and please do not think that I am saying it is too late to change it, because with God all things are possible (Mat 19:26). But, you need to realize that just because everything is possible with God does not mean that you can have it fall upon you automatically without learning what God wants you to do to obtain it. However, you also need to realize that no matter what the report is today, that does not have to be the final report on the matter. The first report never has to be the last report if you learn how to change your situation around by using your faith. I have already tried to teach you that your faith is the determining factor for your final outcome, either positive or negative and this is why you need to continue to change and grow up spiritually to begin to believe the right things based upon the Word of God to cause a positive outcome.
Do not get me wrong when I say that any prayer is better than no prayer, but people need to realize that there are several different kinds of prayer mentioned in the Bible and that each of them have specific purposes, instructions and rules associated with them for the correct way to use them effectively. This is why many Christians pray and nothing happens, because sometimes they are using the wrong type of prayer or the wrong rules for the prayer that they are trying to pray. Today’s subject is a “single” very specific type of unique prayer called the “prayer of faith” and this is a radical new approach to asking God for anything that no other religion in the world follows or even understands how to do. You see too many people believe that all prayer has great power and therefore, all you need to do is to pray and then you will see the hand of God at work. But, that is actually a fantasy type of prayer that is not based upon what the Bible says. Most types of prayer that religious people in the world pray have ABSOLUTELY NO POWER whatsoever associated with them! I know I just shocked a lot of people with that statement, but you find the scripture that says “Prayer” changes things just because you prayed. Please know that Jesus taught us that there is a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray and this is a new concept to many Christians who do not know the difference. Here is an example of what I am telling you:
Mat 6:5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Here is Jesus teaching us a specific way NOT to pray. Jesus says the hypocrites love to pray and Jesus clearly says this is not how we should pray. I will be very plain and tell you if there is one wrong way to pray there are implied multitudes of wrong ways to pray. Perhaps one day I will do a series on what the Bible says about prayer. There are over 165 verses in the New Testament that mention prayer directly and many others that mention it indirectly. Therefore, there is a lot on the subject for us to learn and then we need to apply what we learn to find the correct way to pray to our Heavenly Father. Take a look around the world and see how many religious people are praying every day. You see all you have to do is to look at how many Jewish people are standing at the western wall in Jerusalem that are religiously lifting up baseless empty words to a God who is not interested in them. Wow, I know I am just about to lose a lot of readers with these statements. Please think with me, if prayer was all that was necessary for God to move, then the Islamic faithful who bow towards Mecca and pray 5 times a day would certainly be the most blessed by God. But, I will also tell you plainly that God is not interested in their prayers either. You see the problem with most of these prayers is the fact that Jesus taught us that He was the only way to the Father (John 14:6). Jesus also taught us if you ask the Father anything in my name, that is what He will hear and do (John 14:13). Do either Jewish or Islamic prayers ever acknowledge Jesus as the mediator and go between to God (1 Tim 2:5). I do not believe either of these world religions acknowledge the fact that God had a Son who came to the earth in the flesh. To me, that is a major problem isn’t it? That clearly teaches us that not every prayer that someone says is going to change anything so we better find out what to do to make it work.
So I guess we have a major problem, either prayer works or it doesn’t work, or perhaps there is a greater truth called faith that supersedes prayer that God is requiring us to learn in order to get our prayers heard and answered. I have said this repeatedly in my Bible lessons, there is more than one truth in the Bible and you need to learn all of the factors that are related in order to understand if what you are doing is correct. Let me be very frank again, if you have been praying to God to heal you for ten years and nothing happened then you have been praying 9 years 11 months and 30 days too long. Please get a clue and see when your prayer is not working, you need to do something different to cause it to happen. Too many times people look at God as being the problem, when prayer is not answered and this is never the case. The Bible says God does not change (Mal 3:6), with Him is not even a shadow of turning (James 1:17) that is going to occur. Therefore, where does that leave for the change that needs to occur in order for the prayer to be answered? This is not a trick question, if you have been praying to God and that leaves only two choices, you or God. If God is not the problem then you must be the problem that needs to change! Every Christian should be an ever changing individual, always moving from faith to faith, growing in knowledge and producing new fruit unto God. If you are not a changing Christian then you are dead Christian and that is not good. If you are a Christian and you are not willing to change, you are just in big trouble. Please learn that the problem with unanswered prayer is not His fault nor is God saying NO! God is normally just waiting for you to change and conform to His word so that you will get your answer on His terms and the correct way. This is why you need to learn about the prayer of faith and what it is and how it works. This is the beginning of the lesson on the prayer of faith and this is my foundational scripture found in the book of James:
Jas 5:14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
Jas 5:15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
This is a much ignored passage of scriptures in many churches in the modern world. Too many modern progressive churches think that the original letters written to the churches do not suddenly apply anymore and that is simply not true. We have some people that go to churches where they teach God moves and heals people only through doctors, modern medicine and hospitals today. They have reduced the power of God and in effect limited Him to a very narrow minded perspective that says God is incapable of doing anything supernatural in the world. To view things from a natural perspective only is to deny God’s supernatural power and this is foolish. As you can read in these verses in James, God is talking about people who are sick in the church. So what are they supposed to do? According to God and the Bible one thing that they can do is to call upon the elders of the church so that they can pray for them. Of course this is not all that it says is it? It actually takes much more than just prayer according to these verses. There is a factor given that the elders should anoint the sick person with oil and I have seen this done in churches and I feel like it is scriptural to do this. However, it is not the oil that heals people. It is not the elders that heal people. The implication is clearly given to us that the elders better be spiritually mature enough to understand how to pray a very specific type of prayer called the “prayer of faith”. You see this is the greatest problem with prayer for the sick that ministers in the church will come and pray for you, but since they know nothing about faith they pray wrong and get no results. When people come to your house and anoint you with oil and then say a quick prayer and leave, too many thinks they have fulfilled the requirements for what God said to do, but then when the sick person does not get better or even die, no one wants to think it was their fault or even attempt to take any responsibility for what just happened. Instead people reason in their minds that it was just not the will of God to heal Sister Jones or whoever. When it actually boils down to the fact that no one prayed the prayer of faith and God says very clearly that it is this prayer of faith that will heal them. When God says the prayer of faith will save the sick, the Greek word is “sozo” that means to deliver or to make whole.
No the problem is normally caused because God says ONLY the “prayer of faith” will heal the sick and everyone thinks they prayed this way correctly when in reality they do not have a clue what the prayer of faith really is. So we need to learn about what the prayer of faith is and how to pray it correctly or you will never see anyone get healed. That seems to put the responsibility of healing back upon people and not God, doesn’t it?
What I have discovered is that God is never moved by needs. You see there are a lot of people in the world who are sick or diseased who even die every day and God did nothing to stop this from occurring. I guess I should rephrase that statement because that made it sound like God is responsible for not healing and this is just not the case. You see healing was a very specific part of the atonement work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Salvation was an all-inclusive work of God that included your spirit, your soul and your body. God saved you spiritually, mentally and physically as a complete work of the shed blood on the cross. Therefore, if you need physical healing, then you are a candidate for what the Bible says God has already provided for you. If you do not do what the Bible says for you to do, then what do you expect God to do, make you do it? That would make God an unjust God who forced someone into doing the right things and God is not this way. God says in Hosea 4:6 my people are destroyed (killed, robbed, made sick) by a lack of knowledge of God. Insufficient knowledge is one of your greatest enemies to you receiving healing. So that is why I am here to try to teach you. Since I’m not God, I will warn you that I do not know everything and therefore I need to learn more also, but I will tell you what I have learned up to this point in time.
Faith as we have already learned comes by hearing the Word of God. Therefore, your personal measure of Bible faith is based upon your knowledge of God’s Word that you have heard. We can also conclude that the “prayer of faith” is also based upon this same personal knowledge of the Word of God. It comes down to this fact. Before you pray you better find out what the Bible says about what you are praying for and then you can base your prayer upon those specific scriptures. This gives your prayer a firm foundation to stand upon. This is what I have been taught to do. Go to your Bible and search the scriptures for verses on your subject that you are about to ask God for and see what He has promised you. Then study these for several days, mediating on them over and over until they become a part of your spirit and then go to God and pray. This means you should be able to quote them out of your spirit without reading them. You should know every word and every reference for every scripture. Now you have a firm foundation for the “prayer of faith” and you will be able to fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12). If you need healing then look up healing scriptures and find out what God said about it. You can look in Isaiah 53 at the atonement scriptures. But, these are also quoted in the New Testament more clearly in Matthew 8:17 and 1 Peter 2:24. There are many other healing scriptures that are also good to know, like Psalm 91:16 and Psalm 107:20, to name a couple. Study the Bible and find out the promises of God and these are what you will stand upon for the basis of your faith to expect God to fulfill them in your life. What I am trying to tell you is that the “prayer of faith” is always based upon your knowledge of the Word of God. Therefore, if you do not know the Word of God, you do not have any faith to pray. Uh oh? That doesn’t sound good for a lot of people who pray! Jesus actually teaches us some very specific things about the prayer of faith in Mark 11 and that is where I am going next. Please read this verse very carefully:
Mar 11:24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.
If you read the context of this scripture you should be able to see from verse 22 that Jesus says “Have faith in God”. There is actually a better translation of these Greek words which say “Have the God kind of faith”. Jesus was telling us we could have the same kind of faith that God has and this is hard to accept for many people. Jesus is definitely teaching us a faith lesson in this chapter so the subject of faith is the dominant themed subject. So when Jesus gets to teaching us on prayer in verse 24, He is associating a very specific type of prayer by discussing only the “prayer of faith” that we read about in James. What does this verse say? Jesus acknowledges that people have desires and these are some of the primary reasons why a lot of people pray. In other words people who do not desire to be healed and who want to remain sick will not ever pray and ask God to intervene. One of the first things you need to figure out is, do you desire to be well and healed? You may recall in an earlier faith lesson that I taught on the man at the pool who Jesus came up to and asked “will you be made whole”. The man’s will and desire played a role in whether he was going to be healed that day. If you have the same desire to be healed then continue reading else stop reading here now! Next it says to pray and ask for it. This is where it begins to get more complex. You see you cannot ask wrongly and expect to get it answered just because you desire it to happen. In other words, if you desire another man’s wife, you are not asking according to the will of God or the Word of God and you can count on your prayer not being answered or even just plainly ignored by God. So find out if what you are praying for is the will of God first by looking in His word and if you can find at least two scriptures that say that you can have it, then you have a firm foundation for your request to God.
Mark 11:24 then changes prayer things up dramatically when it says that when you pray you must also believe. This is another key factor for why many prayers go unanswered. People pray and never believe anything happened or they believe wrongly like things will happen some day. You see that is not the prayer of faith if you do not believe anything or believe things correctly. What I am trying to teach you right now, is that it matters what you believe when you pray. In fact God tells us in Hebrews some important stuff that we need to believe:
Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Praying the prayer of faith without first possessing faith it is impossible for God to honor this prayer without Him violating His word. You see if God says it is impossible to please Him without faith and you think you can pray and get an answer anyway who is right, you or God? If you do not please God with your prayer, do you think it will be answered anyway? I personally do not believe this. God very specifically says you need faith to be pleasing to Him. Then it says you must believe that God exists. Wow, why would anyone pray if they did not believe this first? Next you must believe that God rewards you because you prayed. This is where it begins to get more complex again. You see Jesus taught us in Mark 11:24 that when you pray you must believe that you receive and that goes along with the fact that you must understand and know that God heard you. You see I already showed you that God does not hear every prayer. If you do not believe in Jesus when you are praying to God, you are being ignored because only Jesus is the way to the Father now. Here is a good time to introduce you to a verse that I talked about earlier but did not give it to you directly:
1Jn 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
As you can clearly see God says He only hears people when they pray according to His Word. This means if you are not praying according to His will your words of prayer are ignored. So one of the most important factors in any prayer of faith is for you to find out what the Word of God says is the Will of God for your situation. It is not hard to do this, if you know how to use a computer search program to look up the scriptures. As I taught you before, this means that you must spend time preparing to pray before you ever attempt to pray the “prayer of faith”. The more time that you spend in preparing to pray the prayer of faith will cause your prayer to be more likely to succeed. Do not rush into prayer, review the scriptures that you are going to use for several days and then finally pray.
Here is where I am going to differentiate with the KJV translation a little bit. I believe that Jesus said in Mark 11:24 that when you pray, you must believe that you received (past tense) what you have prayed for before you ever have them in the natural physical realm. The KJV translation is “receive” but this Greek word seems to be past tense and that makes a huge difference in what you believe and when. If you pray and believe that God heard you and that He will heal you some day, that is not past tense and that is NOT faith. This is probably the greatest challenge to why your prayers never worked before. You see it is because you did not believe that anything changed that is one of the key factors to why nothing did change so you kept praying and asking for God to do what He said He had already done. This is why the prayer of faith is only prayed one time and never repeated. In future prayers you can remind God and yourself about what you already asked for and thank Him for giving you the answer, but you are in error if you ever ask Him for it again. I wish I could say this is easy to do, but that would be an untruthful statement. Nobody that I know of ever said that walking by faith and not by sight was easy to do. Faith goes against all human reasoning and logic. People like to see the healing and then believe that they have it and this is putting the cart before the horse in the Bible reality of how God says to do things. You see the world says “seeing is believing” and this is the opposite to what God says “believing is seeing”. Since many humans are flesh dominated we tend to look at the circumstances and they many times take priority over what we just prayed for and what the Bible said to us. In other words if you are worse tomorrow than you were yesterday after you prayed and asked God for healing, you must not automatically fall into a sense realm reality that God did not answer your prayer. When you do this you are basing your faith on your circumstances and ignoring what God’s Word is saying to you and this is failure to please God. This is the opposite of what God tells us to do in the Bible:
2Co 5:7 (For we walk by faith, not by sight:)
To walk by sight is to chart your course based upon what you see in the world with your 5 physical senses. But, to walk by faith this is where you find out what God said and then you fight to believe that over what the doctor has said. If God said you “were healed” and the doctor says you are “sick” do not chastise the doctor or sound like a fool in denial, you just thank the doctor and do what he says to do, but you choose to believe what God says the outcome is over the doctors report. The last report from the doctor is never the final report unless you give into it and believe it.
In closing today, let me reemphasize one major point. One of the most important things that you need to learn today, is the fact that when you pray the prayer of faith you must begin to believe that you have the answer at that very moment that you prayed or you are not following the Word of God or being obedient to how God taught you to pray. The concept of having to believe that you have something before you actually have it is a Bible faith concept that is found throughout the Bible from cover to cover. For example, God told Israel after they had left Egypt and they were in the wilderness, “I have given you the Promise Land”. So according to God it was a done deal, but to Israel they did not have it yet. So they were required to believe something that God said before it actually occurred and they possessed it. This is the same thing that happened with Abraham. God told Abraham your seed shall be as the stars of heaven. God told Abraham “I have made you a father of many nations”. Before Abraham was a father God said he was, so Abraham had to believe this before it happened and it eventually came to pass. This is the concept of faith that is essential to see before the promise has been fulfilled in your life in the natural you must accept it done in the spiritual realm. You must believe that it is true before you can actually prove that it is true in the natural realm. Here is another New Testament statement that Jesus makes:
Joh 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Jesus gives us a basic nutshell faith lesson in one verse. Jesus says you must hear the Word of God to get faith and then you must believe what you heard. If you do these two things then you have the basis for Bible Faith. In Jesus’ example, you must believe on Jesus being sent by God and then Jesus says you will have eternal life. How many of you that believe in Jesus as being sent by God today, actually feel like you have this eternal life? Can you prove it? How do you know you have it? I rarely feel like it and I cannot prove it to anyone, but yet Jesus says I have it so that is what I will stand on with my faith. Jesus is basically saying you will have eternal life whether you feel like it, whether you look like it or regardless of the proof that you possess. This is Bible faith, having what the word says even though you have no physical evidence for what it says. I hope this lesson helps you in your walk with God and I expect to hear about many answered prayers from this lesson. Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible with me and spread the word to a friend. God Bless!
If you would like to read the next lesson in this series you may continue to “Part 13“.
Prostituting the Anointing of God! A Copyrighted Gospel Sold in the Den of Thieves! Part 2
(Ver 2.0) I will get back to teaching on faith and healing very soon. However, I will warn you again today up front that this Bible lesson will potentially offend some people. This is now Part 2 of a lesson series that I have been teaching about a modern day problem that has been running wild in almost every Christian church and ministry in the world. I was not going to write a part 2, but the Spirit of God did not allow me to drop the subject, so here I go again today. We live in a complex world with vast numbers of pressures that are presented to men and women of God and we must all have money to survive and pay our bills. But, this mentality and pressure has caused many Christian ministries of God to justify a selling of the Gospel that only allows for a few rich people to hear and learn the truth of God and it places unjust limitations upon all those who cannot afford to buy it. There are a few exceptions that I can name like Keith Moore who runs Moore Life Ministries and Andrew Womack who runs Andrew Womack Ministries, who both allow you to copy their ministry materials and freely give them to others. They both also freely distribute the Gospel for free. I guess I should point out some minor differences between the two; Andrew Womack has an online store where they post suggested prices for their materials but I assume if you cannot afford those prices they might send them to you anyway. They do say that on their TV show, that if you cannot afford the CD that they are talking about that day that they will send it to you anyway. I also learned today that they have many of their materials available as a free download as MP3 files. Prais God for them! Keith Moore is more technology savvy and will post the entire MP3 file and the WMV video file of his meetings on the internet to allow you to watch or listen to them on your iPod or MP3 player device. Search the internet and look for churches who give away MP3 files of their sermons for free for you to download and listen to and you will see that there are a growing number that have purposely chosen not to prostitute the Gospel for a few dollars so that everyone in the world can hear it for free. These are all examples of innovative new types of ministries of God who care more for people than they do for money. However, it is funny how God works when He sees people who care for what He cares for. It seems that God will always meet the needs of those who are reaching out to people for free and cause them to prosper. You see Keith Moore, who does not charge for the Gospel, flies a jet airplane and is significantly blessed by God and this is an awesome example of God’s blessings on a man who is teaching others the truth and being blessed to do it. This is how it supposed to work in every ministry. Jesus taught us very clearly “freely you have received, so freely give” and if you are not doing this, then you are guilty of spiritual prostitution and I will talk about this directly today.
If you have not read “Part 1” I would truly advise you to start reading there first and then come back and continue with this lesson so that you will better understand what I am preaching today. Many times the Bible and the Truth of God are very difficult to swallow for some people. Some Christian people and even ministers see things in their minds as being acceptable, but in the eyes of God and the eyes of men on the outside it is self-evident to be the wrong approach. Today’s Bible lesson is about the Christian Prostitution of the Word of God and that is a potentially offensive subject to many today, yet this subject needs to be preached regardless of what people think of it at first. A prostitute in the natural world is usually a female who sells herself to others for the sexual pleasures of those who pay her money for what they desire. If you do not understand what prostitution is, you are either blind or extremely naïve. Prostitution is legal in Nevada and some other countries in the world, but just because something is legal does not mean it is right in the eyes of God. That is why I can preach against ministries who are selling their Gospel using the laws of the government to justify their approach to the distribution of the Gospel. Just because Spiritual Prostitution is legal in this country, it does not make it right in the eyes of God either. There are two questions that enter into my mind when I think about the subject of prostitution. First, what makes a woman do this? And second, what makes a man want what she is selling? For the woman, it is usually a desire for the money. For the man who is buying it, it is usually just a lust or the fact that he has a very strong desire for sexual gratification. He obviously sees value in what she is selling and is willing to pay her price. What am I preaching about today? When a man has sex with a woman it is called “knowing” her in the Bible. The Bible says Adam “knew” his wife and she conceived a son (Gen 4:1). This natural sex act is often times called “carnal knowledge”. The “knowing” of a woman is the covenant act of marriage. This is true whether you thought it was true or not. It is also true if she is a paid prostitute or your real wife (1 Cor 6:16). But, we can also have spiritual “knowledge” of God by hearing His Word taught by a preacher or a teacher and this is why I am teaching you about prostitution. There is a direct correlation in the Bible between natural sex to spiritual knowledge if you did not know it! The Word (Logos) of God is called His “seed” in Luke 8:11 and 1 Peter 1:23. The sperm of a man is also called ‘seed” in Leviticus 15:16-18 and Numbers 5:28. Therefore we can conclude the Word of God is His spiritual “seed” sown to give man the knowledge of the truth. So I am discussing a very mature subject today when I describe people who are on the internet selling the “knowledge” of God for money. The selling of the knowledge of God’s Word is equivalent in the spiritual realm to the natural sexual knowledge of a prostitute if it is done for money or profit. Getting or giving the knowledge of God is exactly like having sex in the natural. You need to get a hold of this concept very fast if you are a preacher who is selling your knowledge of God for money! I believe that this is a very serious subject and that is why I am preaching it today at the risk of offending my spiritual brothers. If you know of anyone that is doing this, please share this message with them ASAP!
What makes a prostitute think that she is worthy of this money that she earns? It is usually because she is attractive and does not know of any other way to get money. In other words her looks make her desirable to others and this causes her body to have monetary value. If no one wanted what she had, there would be no prostitutes in the world today, this is just how it works. Here is the major problem that I am talking about today. The Word of God is a highly desirable substance to many people like me. Over twenty years ago I began to hunger for the knowledge of God, so much so that I spent thousands of dollars to obtain this knowledge. I valued what many men of God were teaching so much that I bought it like a natural man after a sexy prostitute. Since this was the fastest and only way that I could get this knowledge, I paid their price. Since I was not a rich man that limited me to what I could give in offerings to them. But, I sacrificed the one for the other. So if I was the John looking for the “knowledge” of God, what does that make these ministers who were selling this knowledge? Wow, that does not leave too many choices does it? Obviously there are many ministries in the world who are spiritual prostitutes of the knowledge of God. This is why when I asked Kenneth Hagin Ministries for permission to copy their materials and give them away for free, that I was shocked when they said to me “NO”, I could not do that. They obviously liked the money more than they liked to help people learn about God. For a ministry that teaches “faith” predominately I do not understand why they do not live by what they preach. You see if there was no demand for this ministry’s materials, there would be no prostitution going on by them selling it. However, since God’s Word has great value to many people in the world they have a golden opportunity to sell their knowledge for a great price. This may be not what they think they are doing, but nonetheless it is what is going on. Jesus actually spoke of this in terms of a man who sold everything he had to buy the pearl of great price. The pearl of great price is actually the knowledge of God that He was speaking of in parable form (Mat 13:45-46).
You see I do not preach against the message that is being taught, it is a great message. I know I have over a 1000 of them on my MP3 player. But, how much do think that it cost me to get all of these? Do you think I got them for free? If you go to their website you will find that they sell MP3 files for $5 each, Tapes and CDs for $7 each and DVDs for $15 each. You do the math and see how much you think I spent. Now, some of these tapes that I bought did not come from them directly. I bought some of them off of eBay and those usually cost me more than what they would have sold them for but, since they were discontinued sets and they did not sell them anymore, I had to do what I had to do to get them. You see the Unnamed TV Ministry has created an artificial state of demand by limiting their materials. Much like the world diamond market controls the number of diamonds on the market so that they can cause the prices to rise. Anytime you put limits on what you are selling this is what you are doing regardless of what you think you are doing. Since you cannot find many of the tapes anymore on their websites, you have to buy what comes up for sell by the chance of people selling them that do not know what they have. Many times people would die and leave their tapes to their children and they would not have a clue what they were so they would sell them in a garage sell or on eBay. This is where I would buy them. For example, Unnamed TV ministries has two yearly meetings where they have a week of intensive training and Bible studies. I have nearly every set of tapes of these meetings going back 25 to 30 years. Sometimes I paid upwards of $10 a tape to buy them off the internet. When there are 16 to 20 tapes in one set, you do the math and tell me how much it cost me. So why did it cost me so much? It is because I was bidding against 10 other people who knew the value of the information on those tapes. It would be like having one hot prostitute and 10 Johns bidding to see who was going to have her tonight. I’m sorry if I’m too blunt sometimes, but somebody needs to wake up to see the truth!
Modern technology permits people to spread the Word of God for the cost of pennies and the majority of the ministries on the earth are still charging many dollars for their valuable spiritual copyrighted information. If you look at my picture that I have included in this paragraph you will see a very small computer chip that I own. On this computer chip I have 500 Kenneth Hagin sermons. So I still value these like the great Words of God that they are. These are the pearl of great price that I have sought after with my money and these are not all of the sermons that I own. I will tell you that I have nearly 2000 of just Kenneth Hagin messages and then I have many other Bible teachers of God for a total of over 10,000 MP3 sermons all together. God knows my heart and sees my hunger to know the truth and God has blessed me tremendously more than I could say. So I appreciate all that I have and I wanted to share it with others around the world and I have been struggling because of the resistance that I have been getting from ministers of the Gospel found in the body of Christ.
About 20 years ago, I was a part of a very large church in a city located in the Bible belt of America. This was a church that was growing and had increased in size to be one of the largest churches in the city. Our senior pastor was on TV teaching the Word of God and ministering to people nationwide, and making a lot of money from it. Our Sunday morning church service was broadcast live to the city on TV. Our church had over 5000 members in it and we thought we were doing very well and were certainly in the perfect will of God. Over time the ministry was attacked by Satan and the news media and things started to change and deteriorate quickly. The senior pastor was under such pressure that he isolated himself and started surrounding himself with ungodly council and advice. He eventually got deep into error, departing from the Word of God and abusing his anointing from God to go in a different independent direction. In his eyes he was just fine and thought nothing was wrong with him. Even after leaving his wife and taking up with another woman he thought he was justified in what he was doing. Well that church does not exist anymore; it went from over 5000 members to zero in a matter of a couple of years. That church building was sold to the city and it is now a convention center. Please learn from the mistakes of this ministry example that no man is justified to do what is right in his own eyes and think they will always have a ministry that can never fail or cease to exist. I know, I was there and I saw it firsthand. I tried to help and do what I could, like I am doing right now but I was pushed out like an enemy of the church and ignored. So it is today in my fight against my brothers in Christ who seem to deny what they are doing is wrong by selling their copyrighted Gospel.
I have learned one very important lesson that if it was not for God and His grace, I would not be doing what I am doing today. Therefore, what I teach and preach is not mine to control, copyright or limit. I am smart enough to see that if it were not for the knowledge of God and the anointing of God I would have absolutely nothing to teach that is worth a dime to anyone. Too many times preachers begin to think too highly of themselves and their abilities and they fall into a trap of believing that they have accomplished and created such a great ministry by their own abilities and talents. When you fall into this trap, it is very easy to think that you own what you are teaching and not give God the credit for what you have that is so valuable to others. When I see the anointing of God on me and what I teach, I stand in awe of the Greater One who is at work and I do not dare to think that I can copyright it since it was not my words to begin with. This is the error that too many ministries have fallen into and they are now so deep in it that it will be extremely difficult for them to get out of it unless they fall on their faces and repent quickly and change.
In my first Bible lesson on this subject, I taught the message of Jesus casting out the money changers from the temple of God and I related this to what is happening today because these men were using their knowledge of God and His Word to create a business. Today I want to continue this Bible lesson with another story that is found in the Bible that certainly applies directly to what I have been teaching you. You can turn to this story in the Book of Acts and find it in chapter 18 so please turn and read it with me and observe what is being said very closely:
Act 8:18 And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,
Here is a man named Simon and he observes the anointing of God in action in the lives of the apostles. Peter is basically laying his hands on new believers in Christ and they are being filled with the Spirit of God with the evidence of speaking in other tongues and Simon offers them money for the power to do this also. Since I am preaching about money, the anointing and ministers today this story certainly applies, doesn’t it? Or at least it should, if people would open their eyes and see what is going on:
Act 8:19 Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.
So Simon desires to have the same power and anointing that is present on Peter to do what Peter was doing, but he is wrongly motivated primarily by greed. He is thinking within himself that with this power, he will be able to get rich. By buying the anointing he will be able to do exactly what Peter was doing and use it for a new spiritual business. Wow, I hope and pray that you can read and see what God is saying here! Here is Peter’s reaction to this offer of prostitution from Simon. You did hear what I just called it, didn’t you?
Act 8:20 But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.
Apparently Peter was not motivated by money and he saw things differently than a lot of modern ministries on the earth do today who seem to be motivated or stimulated by money offers that are coming to them. It is very obvious to me that Peter did not take any money for what he knew was not his to begin with to sell. Are you still listening to what I just said?
Act 8:21 Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.
When you do something wrong does it matter the intentions of why you do it? Then on the other hand can you have perfectly good intentions and still do the wrong things? Both of these are certainly possible today. Here is where it begins to get infinitely more complex. People do many things in the world today out of ignorance even though they are still clearly the wrong things to do. I hope and pray that this is the situation for the ministries that I have named in these lessons and all of the others that I did not name. That is why I like to think that modern ministries are not willfully and intentionally prostituting the gift of God that has been given to them to make a profit from it. However, Peter was smart enough to see that it was wrong either way and that it was not wise for him to partake of the money that was being offered to him. Having the right knowledge of God is the power to say no when a situation is presented that appears to be very good on the surface. Modern ministries today have been presented a very attractive offer for the use or I should say the abuse of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they have fallen into the trap that has turned the selling of that which does not belong to them into a positive thing for the benefit of what they are doing for God. Could not Peter think the exact same thing in Acts 8? Couldn’t Peter had justified, that this money could be used to help spread the Gospel, so he better take it and just let God figure out what to do next with Simon. Think with me, Peter was a called man of God. Peter was an anointed man of God. Peter was taught by Jesus himself! So Peter had the same things going for him that preachers like Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland have going for them. I guess I should clarify that Kenneth Hagin went to be with the Lord in 2003, so he is not technically in charge of his ministry anymore and his son runs it today. His son Kenneth W Hagin is on TV and this is probably a part of what is feeding the problem. Maybe you think I am being a critic because I do not like these ministries, but since you do not know me, you would think wrong. It is only because I like them so much that I mention them at all. You see I consider Kenneth Hagin to be a spiritual father of mine, so it hurts me to no end that I have to teach what they are doing is wrong! You have no idea how much I cried when I wrote the first article.
What I want you to learn today is that Peter was in town preaching the Word of God and ministering to the people when he was offered what appeared to be a large sum of cash to give what he did not own to another man. If you do not understand how this applies to the modern world, then you are a spiritually blind man or woman. If you are selling your anointed teaching or preaching materials for a profit you are accepting money for something that you did not produce or could produce without the power of God’s participation. Maybe some of my readers do not understand what the anointing is and we should back up briefly and talk about that. The anointing is God’s Power and Ability for you to do what you have been called to do. The anointing of God is a gift of God like Peter was discussing in Acts 8. In other words, you might have been called to preach, but yet if you are trying to do it all in your own abilities and talents you are laboring in vain and wasting your time (Ps 127:1). To “anoint” is a Bible term that means to smear or rub with oil. The oil is usually viewed to be a type of the Holy Spirit in the Word of God. So to anoint with oil, is a concept that is an outward representation of something that actually transpires internally in our hearts (spirits). That was a brief lesson on the anointing and I know I did not cover it very well. But, since I’m teaching about Peter in Acts, let’s review a statement that Peter makes in his letter to the church:
1Pe 4:10 As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
1Pe 4:11 If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
I hope that you can see what God is saying to the church in these verses. Since Peter is the scribe for these words, they directly apply to what we just read in Acts 8. Peter basically says that it is the ability that God has given to him that has caused him to do what he has done and it was not him that was doing anything. Think with me about the life of Peter recorded in the scriptures. It was not the same Peter in Acts chapter 2 who stood up and preached to thousands that it was the Peter who denied Jesus 3 times in John 13. What changed or happened to Peter to cause such a drastic transformation to a man who was fearful of other men to a man who was bold to preach the Word of God? The change occurred when God anointed Peter with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit which gave him supernatural power and abilities. I do not mean he could fly like a superman, I mean he had the Power of God upon him and working through him to do things that his natural man could have never accomplished. This is the anointing and the gifting of God that he was describing.
I use to be like the Peter who denied Jesus three times. You see I use to know nothing; I use to have no understanding of the Word of God and I use to have no teaching ability. I may have been called by God as a young child or even still in my mother’s womb as it says for many men of God in the Bible, but, I could not fulfill my destiny using my own determination or skills. It was not until the Holy Spirit came into me, filled me, then anointed me to teach and taught me what to teach that I could dare to teach the Bible at all. This is an essential lesson to learn for anyone in the ministry. It is always the anointing of God that must be present to produce anything of any spiritual value for others. So if you are teaching the Bible without the anointing you are just an entertainer that is making money and you ought to charge admission to your shows. But, if you are anointed by God then you are a man or a woman that is depending on Him to show up and work through you.
Most modern ministries with any integrity would never think of charging you an admission or an entrance fee into one of their meetings like it was a rock concert or a Broadway show. To charge money to allow you to hear the Gospel message of salvation would be a clear violation of the Word of God. However, to charge you money for past Bible lessons that they have recorded seems to be another story entirely in today’s world. I really do not understand how they see these two things to be different. A live teaching and a taped teaching contain the same words, the same message, the same meanings, the same anointing and the same power to save, heal or deliver the people who are listening to it. Why is it permissible in their eyes to charge great deals of money for these old Bible lessons that they do not charge for their new live ones? Why the gift of God is not sold live, but is sold in copies later, I really do not understand? That is a very narrow minded interpretation of the scriptures if you think one is permissible and the other is not. That is being inconsistent and ignorantly irresponsible of what God has given to you as a free gift. Do you not understand these concepts? Am I speaking empty words to empty heads? Or have you closed your mind to what the truth of God is telling you because we live in a modern world? Heaven help us all to get on the same page and work in unity and harmony to reach the entire world for God. I hope that you learned something from this series of lessons and if you agree with what I am saying, please share it with others so that the truth will prevail. God Bless you!
Driving Out the Money Changers from the Temple of God! A Copyrighted Gospel Sold in the Den of Thieves!
(Ver 2.0) I will warn you up front that this Bible lesson will offend some people today. I’m sure after you read this lesson I will have some people who agree with me and others who strongly disagree with me, but I really do pray that you will agree with God’s Word and not my opinions I am not writing this Bible lesson today to seem better than anyone else or to say that I am perfect and I never make any mistakes! I am just writing this article today to point out a major problem that has been running rampant in the Body of Christ. It seems there are certain internal policies called the doctrines of men in many Christian Ministries today who believe that they have the right to limit and control what is being taught to others and even how it can be shared. This is what I call today the “Copyrighted Gospel of Jesus Christ” and you will soon learn more about why I called it this. These offensive policies are giving the body of Christ a black eye and a very poor reputation and what even one Christian man does reflects on all of us as a whole whether we like it or not, since we are just ONE BODY! You see I’m definitely not perfect either and I make a ton of mistakes. But, if someone sees me making a mistake I would greatly appreciate them telling me about it so I can learn, repent and change. This is my attempt at teaching so others will see a different perspective to what they are doing. I try very hard not name names in my lessons, and I will do the same today after considering what these words might do to damage the reputation of certain Christians. Somebody definitely needs to wake up the sleeping giants, sound the alarm and they need to stop what they are doing and this is my deepest prayer. Perhaps God can use this message to do something that might cause a change to occur. I have tried to talk to a few ministries personally and privately first and since this didn’t work, I am now taking the message publicly to the Body of Christ for your attention and consideration. So today I am going to talk about the moneychangers in the Temple of God, who they are and what they are selling in the modern world:
Mat 21:12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
Mat 21:13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
As you can see from these verses in Matthew Jesus is NOT a happy Savior! This is an example of Godly Righteous Anger in action. Many people like to think that God is only Love and that this means He is nice all the time and will put up with your antics indefinitely. The vast gay community embraces the scriptures of God’s love and grace and they ignore the scriptures of sin, repentance and His judgment. Here in Matthew 21:12 Jesus goes into the Temple in Jerusalem and starts casting out those who were there to profit from God’s Word. These were His natural brothers and sisters if you did not know that. So I feel justified to speak of my spiritual brothers and sisters today in the same light. These people in the temple were all religious people who knew what the Bible said and they used this knowledge to make God’s work and His Word a business that caused them to get rich and profit from what did not belong to them. So Jesus got angry and cast them all out! Do you think that God thinks differently about this today than He did back then in the Temple? Do not get me wrong, being rich is not a problem at all, but how you got there is! If you are using God’s Word to prosper you or your ministry then you are a modern day moneychanger in the Temple of God at risk of being driven out before Christ returns for His church very soon. There are many and I do literally mean many Christian ministries that are in danger of this catastrophe today. All you have to do is go on to the internet and search for ministries that do this and you will find them. They have literally thousands of tapes, CDs, Video Tapes, DVDs and books for sell that clearly have huge mark ups and profit margins built into them. They have taken the Word of God that was given to them for free and put a price on it because it was valuable to someone and they can sell it to help pay for their ministry and TV expenses. This is what I call prostituting the Word of God for money and it is going on almost everywhere! Many of these ministries justify this practice with the logic and human reasoning that all of the money just goes back into the ministry and never their personal pockets, but yet most of these ministers and their employees still draw salaries from this income and there lies at least a part of the root of the problem.
So here is where I am going to start to get directly to the point that needs to be said today. I recently asked a very popular Christian TV ministry for permission to distribute copies of their materials for free to those in other countries that cannot afford to buy them. I did not modify the messages or make any changes to them, nor did I charge anyone for any of them. In fact, I mailed them to others with me paying the full cost of shipping. I also took upon myself the duplication costs, the material media expenses and the gas and labor for sending them were all paid by me. So I was never attempting to profit from their copyrighted materials. I was only motivated to help others to learn from the great messages that I had learned from. There is a huge problem with many ministries today; they do not fully understand the advantages of modern technology and the power of it. While the world around them has gone fully digital, these ministries primarily live with an analog mentality. I am a computer geek and I do not deny this one bit. Over 15 years ago I started buying old tapes from certain ministries and I converted them to MP3 files on my computer. This allowed me to keep them electronically so even if the tapes wear out, I still have the message. But, today there are also new MP3 players that you can fit in your little shirt pocket that will hold over 2000 sermons on it. This allows the Gospel to be carried around wherever you go. It also allows the Gospel to be freely and cheaply distributed to others for little to nothing. There are some ministries that are starting to learn about MP3 files now, but they are still stuck in their analog paradigm of selling them for the same cost as their tapes and CDs. That is crazy; do you know how much it would cost to fill up a MP3 player with your $5 MP3 files that cost you pennies to create and distribute? You see we live in a different world today; it is not a reel to reel Gospel mentality anymore. It is not even a cassette tape mentality where you can only put one tape into your tape player to hear the Gospel anymore. It is a digital revolution that has occurred to allow you to carry around 1000’s of your favorite Bible lessons and you can do all of them in a device that is less than 1 inch square or even on your smart phone. Wake UP PEOPLE!
You see this ministry that I asked for permission from, did not care if people had their materials, they only cared that they were given away for free to people outside of their control. How arrogant and controlling is that attitude? According to them anyone is free to go to their website and spend $5,000 – $10,000 to buy all of their ministry materials and they will be mailed directly to them. But, do not ever think you can make copies of them and give them to anyone else or they will sue you because of the copyrighted Gospel only belongs to them. This is a GOSPEL FUNNEL effect that Satan loves. If you limit the Gospel to go through one source of distribution only, it causes the Gospel to in effect be easily stopped or at the least severely hindered.
Does any ministry have the right to be a funnel for the TRUTH? What if Paul had this attitude? Would we have a Bible today? How did the early church grow into the fastest known religion from a small handful to thousands in only a very short time? Could it be the fact that there were no funnels limiting the spread of the truth? Could it be the fact there were no COPYRIGHTED Gospel ministries? All of this sounds a whole lot like the people in the temple who were profiting from selling doves and sacrifices for the people to obey the Word of God. If only the rich could afford to buy their sacrifices, then the poor were in trouble. This is the same situation we have in the world today. We have a bunch of ministries that are preaching a rich man’s Gospel and the poor are left out to fend for themselves.
Let me describe to you the situation so that you understand what is going on. I try to be a man of integrity and I never do anything to profit from preaching or teaching the Word of God as you can tell from reading my Bible lessons on the internet for free. So over the past 30 years, I had bought a bunch of a certain ministries materials costing me thousands of dollars and I thought they were all excellent Bible lessons that everyone should hear. So I emailed this ministry and asked them for permission to make electronic copies to distribute to others free of charge. In other words I would give their materials away to help others for free in order to assist people all over the world learn the same truth of God’s Word that I had learned. Does that sound unreasonable to you? You see after I emailed this well-known TV ministry and asked for this permission to make copies of their materials to give away to others for free, they wrote me back and explained all of their materials were “copyrighted” and I could not give them away to anyone because it was just not allowed by their internal policies. Forget, the Spirit of God said not to do this and forget what the Bible says about spreading the Gospel, they did not mention either of these to be factors in their policy; they just said it was THEIR Policy that forbids me in conjunction with the copyright laws of the United States of America which backs their right to do this. Wow and I thought there was a separation of church and state? I guess the separation is only important if the government is trying to tell the church what to do, but if the church wants to use the government to helps them to make a profit from the Word of God and the Gospel, then that is OK! So I became righteously angry with their email response and this is my attempt to tell the world about it. Since I am a Christian and a man of integrity I have no choice but to abide by their ignorant Godless policy, but you need to know about it so that you can decide if what they are doing is allowable both in your eyes and in the eyes of God. Here is the email response that I got from this ministry:
Because of the great amount of requests we receive from persons both known and unknown to us for duplication of “OUR UNNAMED” Ministries material such as cassette tapes, CDs, video tapes, DVDs, excerpts of books and magazines, printed lessons, etc., we have had to adopt a standard policy in order to be fair to everyone. In times past there has been confusion, misunderstanding and even unauthorized message changes resulting from duplication. Now that all of our materials are copyrighted, we feel it best to deny all requests for duplication. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Oh, I understand perfectly well! Here is a ministry that charges a great deal of money on their website and in the meetings for their copyrighted Gospel and as long as you can afford to pay their prices you can have a copy of anything you like. If you are rich enough you can even buy one of everything. Oh, I understand perfectly well! But, if you cannot afford to pay $5 for a MP3 file, $7 for a CD or $15 for a DVD then you are screwed! Yes, I understand perfectly! Here is a ministry that is interested ONLY in making a dollar; more than they are for getting people the Word of God to teach them. Here is a ministry that God came for free and taught them what to teach to His people and they turn around and think they own the message. Wow, did you hear what I just said? Here is a ministry that does not allow you to copy “their” messages to give to others because it would cut into their future revenue stream. This is no different than the moneychangers in the Temple of God that Jesus drove out with a whip. If the people of Israel could not afford the moneychangers prices they did without a sacrifice that year. Oh, well maybe they can come back next year and could afford to buy a dove? I understand perfectly! What if the apostle Paul had that attitude? I would bet you that Paul would not have written 2/3 of the New Testament for us to have today. He would have seen how much money he could have made from the revelations of the mystery of the Gospel and only give this valuable information to the rich who could afford to buy it. If Paul would have copyrighted the New Testament, we would not have the Bible today. If the church in Paul’s day was not allowed to make copies of the letters that were written to them by Paul, they would have worn out, died and faded away forever. Do you understand these concepts that I am giving you today? What is the difference between a hand written letter or a scroll in Paul’s day and a CD in our day? They are both the Words of God, are they not? I do not see there is any difference between them. So what gives a ministry the right to limit who gets what they teach and forbid others to copy it? Who died and made them God? Is it only because the government says they can do it, that this makes it permissible in the eyes of everyone? Is the government the God of these ministries who charge for “their” gospel? Listen to what Paul said about this subject and pay very close attention to the Word of God and what He says:
1Co 9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
Wow, when I read this verse I nearly fell on my face and asked God why don’t men see and understand what they are doing with their eternal rewards. They have chosen to sacrifice an eternal reward for a temporary monetary gain. My Bible says in Matthew 6:20 “Lay up for yourself treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust does corrupt it”. Paul very clearly tells us in 1 Corinthians 9:18 that his reward is great because he has freely given the truth to everyone without a charge. Paul further calls the charge of the Gospel an abuse of the power of God. Are you listening to what God just said? So if you are making ANY money from the Gospel you are abusing God’s power and losing your eternal reward. These are not my Words are they? I did not make this up, did I? Is this what your Bible says about selling the Gospel? What are the vast numbers of ministries doing with the Gospel that they have been given? Do they just ignore the Bible because they can? Most modern ministries when they go to a church to teach in person, they go for free, but then they usually receive an offering for their work that they have done. That is a normal Bible way of doing things in the church and I believe this is acceptable based upon Romans 15:27 and 1 Corinthians 9:11. But, here is where these ministries take it up a notch because of the advent of modern recording technology which was not available in Paul’s day. Because the Gospel can be recorded, preserved, and redistributed in the modern world, it is copied and packaged into an attractive sellable product and peddled everywhere they go for profit and income. Most of the ministries who do this are on television and they see these products as ways to help pay for the very expensive television time costs. So they will offer these valuable lessons on special promotions that will cause people to want them and send in their money so that they can hear the Gospel. So they make millions of dollars from the Gospel of Jesus Christ to help them pay for their TV bills.
When I was younger, I remember going to some Kenneth Copeland Believer’s Conventions and I would always have to pass by the tape tables at the front to get into the auditorium. Of course they were selling the tapes of the meetings that were going on that week, but they were also selling tapes from many years gone by at the same time. I would look at the tape series one after the other and there were normally many of them. My heart hungered for the knowledge of God and I wanted to buy them all. But, I was going to a church that taught us to give offerings and to sow seeds into other ministries. So I had a dilemma and a very hard choice to make since I was not a rich man. Do I buy tapes or do I give an offering? Why did I have to make this choice? It is because they charged so much for their taped Gospel. The Gospel was being peddled for a major profit. This was a clear prostitution of the Word of God and I can see that now, but back then I did not know enough to understand it. Oh, sure it was all nice quality tapes and folders and it takes time to duplicate them and package them. But, when you buy in the bulk like they did you can get these things very cheap and it does not cost you $5 to make one tape. In fact the cost is less than ten percent of that when done in major bulk with an efficient assembly line support process. So even if 50 cents of my $5 goes to cover the cost of making the tape the other $4.50 went to the ministry to pay for their jet airplanes or whatever. Wake up preachers!!! You see the cost of recording, duplication, production and distribution has greatly decreased over time with technology advancements. What use to cost 50 cents is now in the pennies today. What would had happened 25 years ago if preachers gave away their messages for free and allowed you to copy all of them? I believe that Jesus could have come back sooner because the Gospel would have already gone around the globe. Instead we have ministries like Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland who are charging more than ever for their 30 year old copyrighted Gospel and what can we do about it? Do you think charging for the Gospel puts undue constraints upon who is able to hear it and who is not able to hear it? Does any of this sound fair to you? You see the Kenneth Hagin ministry said that they had to be fair by making a blanket NO COPY policy and they forget who they are not being fair to are those that cannot afford to buy their overpriced materials to learn the truth. This Gospel could have been spread around the world with modern technology and the internet for pennies. I have to tell you the truth that Kenneth Copeland does give away a little bit for free on the internet, but Kenneth Hagin Ministries do not give anything away ever for FREE on the internet. So do I sound like the bad guy here? Are you going to shoot the messenger and ignore the message?
Let’s shift our focus off of money for a minute. The Kenneth Hagin Ministry claims that people have abused their materials and even edited them to make them say something that they do not say and this is the justification for copyrighting the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for not permitting anyone to make copies or redistribute the messages. Isn’t it amazing that Satan can use a few people to abuse the Gospel and this is suddenly justification to stop the ministry from spreading the truth to the hands of many more people who want to hear it but can’t afford it? Here is a great ministry with a great message and all it takes is for Satan to abuse it and they shut the doors to make sure it does not go around the world unless they can fully control it. Abuse is a funny lesson to learn from, but this is nothing new. In the natural world people abuse natural food and overeat constantly and we have a generation of kids who are grossly obese because of natural food abuse and the lack of physical exercise. Using the logic of the Unnamed TV Ministry we should control natural food to the masses of children so that they will not hurt themselves with it. In fact this is what our government has hotly debated and they have started to initiate these types of controls in schools and other places. They have limited food service in schools to only good healthy non-fried foods that are low in fat. One government agency in California passed a law that McDonalds could not sell toys in the happy meals to kids because this promoted an unhealthy lifestyle choice. This is how some ministries in the church are reacting to the abuse of God’s spiritual food. You did know that God’s word is spiritual food, didn’t you? If you did not know this you need to read your Bible some more. Because a ministry’s materials were abused they have instigated tight controls to keep it from happening and this is not the way to solve the problem. Did you know that people when they received copies of the Bible written by the Apostles they would make copies of them? Did you know that sometimes some people would abuse this policy and make little subtle changes to the copies and omissions to some of the words in the text because they did not agree with them? Did you know that this is still a point of controversy today in some religious institutions? However, the problem is solved by looking at all of the copies and comparing them. Since there are so many copies of the original manuscripts in the world that we can use to compare, the truth is easily determined. So copy abuse is not a new concept, it was an old concept used by Satan in the early church and it is still the same today. The best way to overcome copy abuse is to ensure that there are more legitimate copies in circulation than there are corrupted copies. If the Unnamed TV Ministry website gave away legit copies for anyone to download and listen to, it would be impossible for Satan to corrupt them all. This is the solution for abuse of the message and it is very easy to solve in this age of technology. A legitimate copy of the Word of God can contain signature information, even file size and date and time stamps and other ways of ensuring the accuracy. Of course any smart criminal can overcome whatever you do to protect your material, so you will never overcome that potential abuse. But, you can ensure that no matter how many abused copies there are in the world, there is still a place where you can get the complete message for FREE. So the solution to keep people from abusing your ministry materials is to flood the market with them so that anyone can get a legitimate copy of it for free from your website. Then no one can stop it or even change it to keep it out of the hands of the people to learn it. Don’t you see how the spread of the Gospel could go around the world in a matter of a few days if only ministries would start to do this?
There are so many ministries on TV and the internet that are guilty of this practice of copyrighting the Gospel of Jesus, that I really cannot name them all. Please do not get me wrong I have no problem with anything these TV ministries teach, that is not the issue at all. They all have a great message from God. The only problem that I have is how much they are charging for it. Also I want to point out that not everyone in the ministry is doing this on the internet. One man that I highly recommend is named Keith Moore (Moore Life Ministries) and he teaches the Bible with great spiritual substance to it and it is all for FREE! Keith Moore Ministries gives away all of their Bible lessons for free and that is an awesome example that he is setting for the Body of Christ. Do me a favor and go to his website and download something and then send him an offering telling him thanks for freely giving us the word of God.
There are many of my favorite Bible preachers and teachers that I have learned a lot from that practice this Limited Funnel Gospel Prostitution and they have gotten a lot of my money in order for me to get this knowledge. If you came to my house you could find hundreds and even thousands of their tapes in boxes in my closet from these guys. There are literally too many TV preachers to name them all. However there are also many churches that follow their examples and do the same with their in church book stores. I do not believe that these ministries are purposely or intentionally keeping the gospel from the masses; I’m trying to give them the benefit of a doubt and convince myself that they are doing what they are doing out of pure ignorance and this is why I teach the way I do today by naming their names. Please join with me to help me proclaim freedom for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Call these ministries until they hear the voice of the people or the voice of God to change their ways to allow the Gospel to be preached without charge. Help me eliminate Gospel copyrights that only line the pockets of the preachers. Help me to take off Gospel limitations so that it can be spread around the world with modern technology. In closing here is the commandment and great commission given to the church by our Lord Jesus Christ:
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
Freely you have received from God, so therefore freely give to men. This does not say to charge to recover you costs, it says to freely give the message of the truth to everyone that will listen. In today’s digital world this is so simple to do.
Maybe you may have noticed that I teach the Bible totally FREE! I do not have a donate button on my website, I do not have a P.O. Box that you can mail to, I do not give you a ministry name, I do not give you my personal name. This is my way of FREELY giving to you what God has given to me! So if I never see a dime from anything I teach, I know that I have a reward awaiting me in heaven that moths and rust cannot take away. I will also tell you that anything that I publish on this site is not mine and I do not own it and therefore you may freely copy it and spread it to anyone that will listen to it or read it. I have an OPEN COPY policy that is based upon FREELY I RECEIVED so FREELY GIVE. You have full permission to abuse it or use it however you like. I do not care! I have done what God has told me to do by publishing it, now you do what God tells you to do with it and be a good steward of His Word too.
Therefore, if no other ministry in the world will distribute the Gospel for Free, I have decided that I will do it! I’m sure this is going to make Satan really angry with me so I would appreciate your prayers. Also, I recently had a commenter who asked if they could sow a seed into my ministry, but I had to turn them down. This was a very difficult decision on my part to make, because I understand the power of sowing and reaping in the Bible. However, I believe that God told me not to accept any money for what I teach. This is one of the main reasons I teach anonymously on the internet. This website is not the words of a man, these are the Words of God and if I treat them as such, somebody out there will see them for what they are and understand their value.
Before I end today let me please say a prayer and if you agree with what I have said today, please also pray this with me in agreement:
Dear God, help Christian ministries to see that everything you have given to them does not belong to them. Cause ministers to come to know that they are just stewards of the Gospel and that you will hold them accountable for what you have given to them freely. Help all ministers to have a compassionate heart for people; a heart that desires everyone to hear and know the truth and not just those who can afford to buy it. Help ministries learn about all of the new technologies that are available in the world and on the internet to help us spread the Words of Grace to everyone who is hungry to hear it. Lord God as ministries transition to a faith based life style of ministry by giving the Gospel for free to everyone, help them with an abundant supply of new partners, donors and contributors that more than make up for the revenue that they will lose from not selling your Words. Open the eyes and hears of our understanding and help us all to be good stewards of the blessed Word of God. Surely the time is short and many in the world still need to hear the truth before you come back, so help us to get this word out as fast and as efficient as we can and to not miss anyone that is open to the Gospel before you return for us. Even so Lord Jesus, come quickly! In Jesus name I pray! Amen!
Thank you and God bless you for taking the time to read my Bible lesson and please share it with someone that you know to help us all get the truth out!
If you would like to continue reading this series of Bible lessons, you can continue with “Part 2“.
Understanding Healing, Sickness & Disease? Understanding Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh! Part 4
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 4 in a series of advanced Bible lessons about where Sickness and Disease Came From. If you have not read this series of lessons from the beginning, then I would suggest that you go back to Part 1 and start there. In today’s lesson I want to directly focus in on a false teaching that is found in many churches that causes many people to remain in sickness. Many confused and ignorant ministers want to claim that Paul had a physical sickness, disease or disability from God and since he endured this with such great patience and humility we should also submit to the will of God and endure it the same way. I have actually heard people teach this as if it was a message from God or a Bible verse. They have theorized that since the Bible says that Paul was struck down blind on the road to Damascus by the brign light coming from Jesus that he had continuing and ongoing eyesight problems that followed him into his maturing years caused by God. They even use a verse found in Galatians 6:1 where Paul makes a statement “You see what a large letter that I have written unto you”, to say Paul was using Greek letters that were written extra-large to allow him to see them. Wow, you can really make the Bible say whatever you want it to say, can’t you? I personally believe that in Galatians 6:1 Paul was referring that the amount of information covered in his letter to the Galatians was what was a great size and I believe that he was not talking about the size of his handwriting. But, you can believe whatever you like and be wrong. So let’s look at the controversial verse written in 2 Corinthians and see exactly what it says about Paul’s thorn in the flesh:
2Co 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
I want to start this lesson with the emphasized point given to us of why Paul had this thorn. Rather than determining what the thorn is or who gave it to him, let us focus only on the why it was there factor. I actually believe that this reason of why it was present is more important than Paul having a thorn. You can clearly read in 2 Corinthians 12:7 the fact that Paul said this thorn was present because of the abundance of the revelations that were given to him. Uh oh? You can begin today by asking yourself this question, are you a Paul? How many revelations have you been given in the past 10 to 20 years? Could you write 2/3 of the New Testament? If you have not been given the same number of revelations as Paul, then you are not a Paul and you do not qualify to have a thorn. I really do not care what the thorn is right now, if it is a sickness or a disease, you must ask yourself why you are sick and if you can say it is because of the abundant revelations that you have been given by Jesus then you are potentially the same as Paul. Otherwise if you have not been given abundant revelations from God then you do not qualify for a thorn. This is very simple logic based upon the words in the scripture. This further makes it just so simple to determine now if you even qualify to have a thorn. God was intelligent enough to write you and tell you why there was a thorn and then you must be intelligent enough to figure out if you are eligible for the thorn. Based upon this information the vast majority of people teaching, preaching and hearing this verse do not qualify for it. Later we will examine what a thorn is using the Bible, but for now I want you to judge yourself and make a count of how many revelations you have been given. If there are so many that you can’t count them all, then you are qualified. Maybe I should stop and define what a revelation is so that you can understand that concept first.
A revelation is a New Testament concept. The word “revelation” only occurs 10 times in the New Testament. Of course there is a book of the Bible called “Revelation” and this is the final book of the Bible that describes the time of the end. There are no direct revelations given in the Old Testament that I know of. But, do not misunderstand what I am saying. God did have prophets in the Old Testament that were given words to speak from God, but if the prophets understood the Words it would shock me tremendously. Let me give you the definition of the Greek word from the Strong’s that is translated as “revelation” so that you see what it means:
From G601; disclosure: – appearing, coming, lighten, manifestation, be revealed, revelation.
The Greek word translated as “revelation” is from another Greek word that means “to take off the cover”. There is a clear implication given to us that the Word of God had a cover on it. So a revelation is a revealing of the Word of God. This of course further implies that the Word of God was a vastly hidden complex spiritual set of information that needs to be uncovered for us to understand it. It would be like when a waiter in a restaurant brings out a covered dish to your table and you do not know what it is until they take off the lid and reveal it. This was how the Old Testament was written. It had a covering over it that did not permit any man to understand the true meanings that it contained. This is a concept that I call “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” and I write about this a lot. These are techniques that God implemented in His Word using His extreme intelligence that allowed Him to use words that we can clearly read, but yet the way they were presented to us, it is almost impossible to understand them correctly until the Spirit of God reveals them to us. Let me give you some more scriptures from Galatians about this subject to teach you more about the concepts of revelations. Let me show you where Paul said he got what he taught from the Bible:
Gal 1:11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
Paul is talking about the Gospel that he was preaching to the people on the earth and he tells you that these words did not come from a man. This is just another way of telling you he didn’t learn it from a church denomination, a Sunday school, a seminary or even a preacher. These are usually the institutions which teach the doctrines of men. You see many churches in the world today only know how to teach lessons that they learned from other men and they have no spiritual substance or value to them. These types of men are not led by the Spirit of God, they are usually led by books, calendars, denomination plans and lessons and other doctrines of men. Paul tells you exactly where he got his message and it is not from any of these usual places:
Gal 1:12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
If Jesus Christ came to you one day and taught you something awesome in the Bible, what would have been Jesus’ purpose for doing this? Is it just for you alone? Why do you think that Jesus gave Paul such great revelations of the Word of God, was it for Paul personally to grow up spiritually and no one else? Of course it was not, Paul was called by God to be a teacher of the Word of God, and so Jesus came and taught him what to teach. Can Jesus still do this today? I know for a fact that He can and has. Did you know it makes all the difference in the world where your preacher got his message that he teaches you on Sunday morning? If it comes from a book other than the Bible, it is worthless no matter how entertaining it might be. We can clearly see that Paul claims to have been taught by Jesus Christ and the message that he taught was the words of Jesus and not the words of Paul or any other man. We are definitely starting to understand why Paul had a thorn in his flesh, even though we still do not yet have a clue what this was. Before I move on in this subject let me teach more about what a revelation is:
Eph 3:3 How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
As you can read a revelation is the implied understanding of a hidden mystery. A mystery is always something that is not clearly made known until the ending. If you have ever read a mystery novel then that is what I am talking about. The ending of the book almost always reveals the surprise. You can try to read it and you can think on it and you can attempt to figure it out, but until it is revealed it rarely is the right conclusion in your mind to what really happens in any really good mystery story. If you can read a book and figure out the ending before it happens then it is not a good mystery story. God’s Old Testament was the greatest mystery story of all time. It had complex twists and turns and unexpected things happened like God comes to the earth in the flesh when no expected Him to show up this way. Jesus instead of fighting with a sword and conquering the world’s kingdoms has come to the earth to die and no one expected that. Jesus at his trial does not even defend himself in court and He is convicted of no crimes and yet sentenced to die on a cross like a criminal. These are some of the greatest mysteries of God and why Satan did not know what to do with Him. While Jesus walked the earth in the flesh He starts speaking to the people in parables that told of hidden spiritual things that had been kept secret since the foundation of the world and this was clearly the start of the unveiling of the mystery of God. Jesus started revealing these mysteries to His disciples when He walked among us and then Jesus later appeared to Paul and taught him some more of the mysteries of the Old Testament.
Eph 3:4 Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
This book about Christ is the greatest Mystery book that you will ever attempt to understand. The complex hidden spiritual things in this book will cause you to scratch your head and wonder how did I not see that or say what did that say? Saul, who became Paul was a serious Bible student before he ever understood what he was reading. Saul was a devoted religious man of the order of the Pharisees (Php 3:5). It was only after Saul was struck down blind on the road to Damascus and the man of God came to him and restored his eyesight and filled him with the Spirit of God (Acts 9:17) that Paul ever began to understand the mysteries of the Bible to teach them. This could be my story also but, that is not my subject today so I will not go there.
Eph 3:5 Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;
As you can see the mystery was not made known to men before in the Old Testament. But, God has revealed them to us through His apostles and prophets by His Spirit. This is a foundational key to understanding if you qualify to have a thorn like Paul. I gave you a lot of the background information that is very relevant to making this determination. If you determine you are a Paul and can have a thorn like him, then let’s stop and figure out what this thorn was next. Let us reread a our foundational verse for today’s lesson:
2Co 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
I only underlined the part that I wanted you to focus in on. Paul describes this “thorn” as a messenger of Satan that was sent to “buffet” him. It is first important to note that whatever this thorn was, it came from Satan and not from God. The term “messenger” in the Greek can mean an angel or a preacher. It is someone who carries a message. The Fedex Company is a messenger business that delivers messages. Angels or messengers can be sent by God, or in this case they can also be sent by Satan. An angel is of course a spiritual being. You must realize that Satan has angels under his control in order to understand the spiritual kingdoms that exist. God has a spiritual kingdom and Satan has a spiritual kingdom and both of these kingdoms have angels. You can read about these angels in a spiritual war with each other in Revelation 12 and Daniel 10. However, I am not convinced that Paul’s thorn was an angel of Satan. I am more inclined to believe that Paul who knew the Old Testament was speaking in Bible figurative terms much like we do today in our modern language when he was describing a thorn in his flesh. Here is an Old Testament verse that Paul no doubt knew and it contains a definition of what a thorn in the flesh meant:
Num 33:55 But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.
God is using figurative language to describe a people. The children of Israel were instructed by God to drive out the inhabitants of the land and God says if you do not do this those that you allow to stay will become major stumbling blocks to you. God uses a term “a prick in your eye” or “a thorn in your side” and both of these are a way to describe someone who is causing you either emotional pain or spiritual pain but never a physical pain. In this case God is warning the children of Israel that these people would cause them to sin against God. They would introduce them to idol worship and other godless religions. God figuratively calls this a “pain in their flesh”. In our world we use this technique of speaking still today to describe people who are causing us emotional distress. We say “she is a real pain in my….” and you pick the body part that applies. Let me give you a possible example of this type of person in the Bible that Paul could have been speaking of:
Act 16:16 And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying:
Here in Acts 16:16 Paul and others are going to pray and a certain demon possessed woman starts following them around. This certainly qualifies to be a “messenger of Satan”. A spirit of divination is basically a “fortune teller” who uses evil spirits to try to tell people the future. We have these confused types of people still in the world today.
Act 16:17 The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.
Do you see that this woman starts following Paul around and begins to yell to people “These are the servants of God who show you the way to salvation”. You cannot read these words in a book and clearly understand the tone that they were spoken in. I can only assume that these words were spoken as “mocking words of sarcasm and cynicism”. You see what else would a demon possessed woman be saying? Satan does not promote a real man of God and tell people how to get saved; Satan is not working to help you out of his kingdom into the kingdom of God. It is very clear to me that Paul was a great man of God who Satan wanted to cause others not to believe his words from God. No, you see in these verses an example of how Satan can use a person in the world to be a thorn in your side as we just read about in 2 Corinthians 12:7. Paul when he describes a “thorn in his flesh” is using figurative language to describe someone who was trying to distract him from the assignment that God had given to him to cause him not to teach the revelations of God. Satan was clearly not interested in these revelations getting out. Satan was attempting to thwart them before they were spread around the world.
I am convinced that Paul’s thorn in the flesh was not a physical weakness, a sickness, disability or a disease. I believe it was Satan’s attempt to keep the revelations of God from being proclaimed. Regardless of what the thorn was, it was given to Paul by Satan because of the revelations from Jesus. This means I do not know of anyone in the world today that qualifies to have the same “thorn” that Paul did. If you think you have been given a thorn in your flesh and that this is a sickness to keep you humble, you better tell me what revelations you are teaching that will make you a Paul. I want to hear about these revelations very soon, they must be really good for Satan to want to stop them from coming out. This was a strange Bible lesson on healing, sickness and disease I know, but you have to counter the false teachings with the truth in order to get people to understand that they are not a Paul and they do not have to endure a thorn like Paul did. Please do not allow the teachings of some men on the earth to allow Satan to keep you in the bondage of sickness. If you have been taught that Paul endured physical sickness and prayed to God for Him to take it away from him and God did not, therefore you must also endure sickness in your body with the same level of humility, say sorry Satan that will not work on me again.
If you would like to continue reading on the subject of healing in the Bible you can continue to “Part 5“.
Understanding Healing, Sickness & Disease? The Heart of the Prodigal Father! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 3 in a series of advanced Bible lessons about Where Sickness and Disease Came From. If you have not read this series of lessons from the beginning, then I would suggest that you go back to Part 1 and start there. I have already revealed a lot of information in this series, so today I will try not to repeat those statements that I have already uncovered. What I want to do is to give you a different perspective on this subject of healing, sickness and disease using some scriptures that you possibly did not understand how they even applied to the subject. So today I want to talk about a story that Jesus taught us in Luke and in this story He reveals a great number of spiritual truths about some things that you should be aware of. This story is popularly called the parable of the “Prodigal Son” and I want to shift the focus off of the son and reveal what else this story teaches us. First off, many people call this lesson a parable and I am not totally convinced that this is actually accurate. You see in most of the parables that Jesus taught, He would almost always say “the kingdom of heaven is like…” and then reveal what it is like. He does not say that in this story. Regardless of if this is a parable or not, the truths given are still present and relative to my subject. However, I still believe that this story is a literal account of a hidden spiritual truth and if this is true, then it has more direct meanings than that which can be observed from the normal surface reading of the text. Almost everyone who teaches on this subject of the “Prodigal Son” teaches the story from the perspective of the son. They focus only on his arrogant attitude, the bad choices that he selfishly chooses and his coming into poverty and despair and finally his humility to return back home. This is a classic sinner story and people teach it this way predominantly. However, I believe that this story is more about the Father of the son than it is the son and people generally ignore this information. You might question in your mind what does the “Prodigal Son” have to do with sickness and disease? Here is a story that has nothing to do with healing directly, but in understanding this story you will soon learn that it has everything to do with healing. We are going to go through most of the story verse by verse for your benefit to see what we can learn from it and I want to start with Luke 15:11:
Luk 15:11 And he said, A certain man had two sons:
This is the beginning of why I said this is not a parable. Nowhere does Jesus say Heaven is like a man with two sons. There is no direct comparison statement of anything being like anything else, but instead Jesus says there is a “certain man”. When you understand how the Bible was written, you begin to see how God leaves it open to many possible interpretations of who Jesus is speaking of. You can think completely naturally and think Jesus is speaking of just an anonymous man on the earth that he knew, but wouldn’t want to tell us who it was. You could also think that Jesus is just speaking in parables of no one in particular and only trying to teach some life lessons in this story. Or you could think like me and try to see that God is describing His family in the terms that we could relate to. I want to stop here and review what the term “certain” means or at the least implies. To me the word “certain” means it is this way and not any other way. It is a very specific and unique adjective that implies Jesus knew exactly who he was speaking about. This means Jesus is not speaking of an anonymous man just to tell a natural story that has a spiritual lesson, but Jesus has someone in mind who He is talking about and this man with the two sons is actually the primary subject that we need to focus on in this lesson. It is true that Jesus never names the individuals or tells us directly who or what it is that He is speaking of. However, this is a common way that God spoke of Himself using an anonymous third party type of reference. In fact if you read my last Bible lesson that I posted, you will know that Jesus often times called Himself a man without saying He was this man. For example, there is the time in Matthew 19:4 where Jesus makes this statement:
Mat 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,
Who is “He” that made them in the beginning? You can clearly see that God is speaking and He is saying that some anonymous male created them in the beginning and whoever this was made them male and female and God the creator was the one that was personally speaking these words. So God was telling a true factual story without claiming to be the creator even though that is clearly who He was. So this is the way the Bible is written many times. Jesus will tell you a story of a “certain man” and this is actually a story about Himself, but He could not say that or He would have been stoned on the spot by the religious zealots who did not understand who they were listening to. Let me give you another example of this technique used by God:
Mat 25:14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
You really need to learn this technique of Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight that God uses very often. The translators actually messed this verse up with the words “the kingdom of heaven is as”, this verse actually says “for a certain man traveling into a far country…” in the original Greek language. Again Jesus is speaking of an unnamed man who travels into a “far country” that is actually referring to God in the terms of a man. You see God was this man who had left heaven to come to the earth in person. God had previously given this world into the hands of the man Adam to tend and work His garden and Adam sells out the garden to Satan and allows God’s enemy to take control of it and this is more than I should have said on that. I am going to try not to get off of my mainline subject too much, but I want you to understand that if this is God being described to be this certain man in Luke 15, then God has more than one son. You see the NIV translators have made a huge blunder in scriptures like John 3:16 when they say Jesus is the “One and Only Son” of God. Christians are called the sons of god in several places in the New Testament and even angels are called the sons of God a few times in the Old Testament. So it is clear to me that God has more than one son. I do not have time to explain any of this here so either accept it or ignore it and let’s move on.
Luk 15:12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.
The younger son, or you could call him the second born comes to his father and asks for his inheritance before his father has died. So this is an impatient obnoxious son who thinks he deserves his wealth right now. It sounds like a lot of children in the world today. This is a difficult subject to actually understand if you think it is God who is the Father in this story. Because you cannot read the descriptions of either son mentioned and easily apply them to Jesus the normal Son of God that we all think of. However, the translators obviously thought this was a story of God since they capitalized the title “Father”. Anyway let’s continue on in the story:
Luk 15:13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.
So the younger son takes his money and goes to a far country where he squanders all of his fortune. Did you notice that the son is leaving his father’s house and going into a far country? Didn’t that sound similar to the story that Jesus told in Matthew 25:14? There are some pretty amazing little details found when you start comparing stories that Jesus used to teach with. This verse in Luke in the modern world would be like a son taking all of his dad’s money and moving to Las Vegas and then gambling, drinking and partying until he is broke. I see people like this on TV all the time.
Luk 15:14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.
So the son’s timing was not so good for him. Either he made the wrong choices to begin with or his short sighted thought process did not plan for any future. This is often the attitude of people in the world. He has spent all that he had and now a famine strikes the land. Doesn’t it seem like when things can’t get any worse, they suddenly do. Of course a famine is a symbolic reference to not having any spiritual food. God actually calls His Word the Manna from Heaven and this is spiritual food, but I guess I won’t go there either today. You see even though I do not believe that this story is a parable, I do believe that it has vast amounts of symbolic language imbedded in it. I guess in a way that means it could be viewed as a parable. I am not opposed to calling it a parable if that is what you would like. Regardless of what you want to call it, every noun still has a symbolic representation of a spiritual reality.
Luk 15:15 And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.
I wish I could tell you more about what the implied symbolic references in these verses mean, but that would just confuse you since I am mainly talking about healing, sickness and disease. Just take note that when you join yourself to someone, that is a covenant relationship. A covenant is a marriage type of relationship between two individuals who are joined to become one flesh. That means what one of them has is what the other one has and vice versa. If you do not understand Bible covenants then you should go and read my lessons on “Understanding Bible Covenants”. I will also mention that feeding swine is a Jewish Law and a traditional no, no for any covenant man of God. The Old Covenant people of God were steered far away from pork and even today in kosher meals this is strictly forbidden. But, here this younger son was found working with that which was forbidden.
Luk 15:16 And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.
As you can continue to read in Luke, the son is becoming fairly desperate so that he begins to eat the pig food to stay alive. There is no man that will help him. It is a classic example of how popular you are when you are rich with money and how much you are a nobody when you are at the bottom as a homeless man. This is true today in our world also. This is why this story is taught so much from the sinner perspective. It is actually a perfect example of many people in the world that each of us know.
Luk 15:17 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
So the young son finally has a G.E. light bulb brilliant idea and remembered where he came from. In his father’s house the servants ate better than he was eating. He decides that it would be better to be a servant of his old family than to die lonely in a foreign country. How can you not see what this story is saying? Is the son afraid of his father? Does the son think that his Father will hurt or harm him? The son has no one that cares, but has decided to take a chance and go back home to the last person that cared for him. I think that more Christians today need to have the same light bulb moment about their Father.
Luk 15:18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
Luk 15:19 And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.
Here is where it is really starting to get very relevant to sickness and disease. You see in the last lesson I taught on this subject I talked about sin was one of the primary causes for sickness. Jesus taught us this in at least two great examples. When He saw a crippled man that was healed, Jesus told him “sin no more least a worst thing come unto you”. So Jesus taught us sin was a cause and sickness was an effect of the sin. Here in verse 18 of Luke, the son clearly admits to the fact that he has sinned against his Father. So this young man has determined that he will repent and tell his Father that he has sinned and ask his Father to make him His servant. As you can see, this son has had a major change of heart from the beginning of the story. He has become humble, repentant and he clearly regrets his choices that he has made. All of this actually sounds a lot like me and if you are a real Christian it probably sounds like you also. I can easily put myself in the shoes of the young man, but that is not my message today either.
Luk 15:20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
So the son is going back home to his Father’s house. That is actually a great example for us. This is actually why I said this story is about the Father more than it is about the son. You can clearly see that the Father was looking for his son’s return daily. The Father was in faith, expecting his son to return home and this is based upon the extreme Divine Love of the Father for His son. Before the son could get home, the Father runs out to meet him so that He can beat him, curse him down and bring him to the pit of despair for wasting his money and all of the sinning that he has done against Him. This is the attitude of many very confused Christians in the world today. They believe that God is out to curse them, punish them, judge them, teach them a lesson, make them sick with cancer or wipe them out with a giant tsunami or some other natural disaster because of their sins. Is that what this Father does to his lost son? Did this Father ever send out one of his servants to hurt his child? Did the Father ever go out and try to find His son to hurt him? It appears to me that the Father really just wanted to love His son back into His house with open arms.
Luk 15:22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
Here is God the Father’s heart being revealed to us from His own mouth. God says bring out the best for my son who has returned home. Of course this son was foolish and of course this son sinned and of course he deserved to be beaten or punished, but this was not the heart of the Father. Do you understand how crazy it is to say that God puts sickness and disease upon people just because they make a mistakes and sin? It makes me want to cry when I read this story and think of the people accusing God as being the one who is teaching, judging or correcting, them with sickness and disease. This prodigal son did not get what he deserved; he got what the Father’s heart wanted to give him. This was based upon mercy and compassion and the deep love of the Father for His child. Do not ever entertain a place anywhere in your mind that your sickness is from God. If you do this you are foolishly misdirecting the consequences of your own actions. You see the Father had nothing to do with the seeds that the prodigal son had sown and reaped. The prodigal son was getting exactly what he had planted until he turned his mind back unto his father who loved him. There are many “Predestination Theologians” who will try to tell you the “Prodigal” was predestined to fail, but you see God in His love allowed the son to make his own freewill mistakes and learn from them and that is what a loving Father does. I mean a loving father will always try to teach the child the way to go, but if the child wants to go his own way then that is their choice. I know I have been there. I guess I could go on in the story to show you how the older son gets angry with the father for not passing judgment on the mistakes of the younger brother. You can see this spirit and attitude still exists in the church today when I try to write about a loving father’s heart and they want a God who kills people with cancer.
Get to know your Father God and learn to see His heart for you. When you do this you will see that God wants to bless you with the fatted calf and a feast of great proportions. God wants to cloth you with the robe of righteousness and put the ring on your finger. God desires to have you come and sit and take your place at the table like you never left or did anything wrong. This is the forgiveness of the Father’s heart and all it takes is for you to start back towards His house and He will see you a far off and run to meet you. There are still consequences for the son’s actions but, the Father’s heart is consistently dedicated to bless the son the best that He can. You have to just ignore verses and stories like these in the Bible or explain them away if you want to teach a Gospel that brings sickness from God to judge, correct and teach His people for their sins. There are just too many conflicts in the New Testament for me to believe that God ever puts sickness on people, but yet I get comments about this way too often from people who want to focus in on the Old Testament verses that they quote to me over and over like I never read them. I only wish they knew the same Father that I knew. Maybe when they finally come to themselves and turn back to the Father’s house they will also see Him running towards them also. I guess right now they are still living in Vegas and thinking everything is under control. Oh well? I hope that you enjoyed my Bible lesson and learned something that will give you hope to know your Father’s heart. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, you can go to “Part 4“.
Solving the Riddle of the Family Members in the Unseen Spiritual Family of God! A Godly Riddle that Will Challenge You! Part 3
(Ver 1.5) Today is Part 3 of a series of lessons on Understanding the Structure of the Hidden Spiritual Family of God. Today I will continue the subject, but speak more directly to show you verses that describe some very specific family members in a complex spiritual riddle form. I will be discussing a revelation that God taught me over 10 years ago. This is an extremely advanced Bible topic and it is certainly one that you know very little about, simply because it has never been taught before. Perhaps you did not even know that God had a spiritual family and if you did not know this you should go back and start reading the first two lessons that I taught on this subject called “Understanding God’s Spiritual Family Structure”. I have also updated the first two lessons so even if you did read them before they contain new information that you should familiarize yourself with intimately before continuing. I get more people searching on my site for information about God’s spiritual family structure and design than any other search topic. I believe that people are hungry to learn about the hidden spiritual things of God and the only way to learn about this is to read God’s Word with an open mind and have a heart that craves to know the truth. I also find that because people search for this topic so much that it is a confirmation from God that people desire to learn about Him and that is why I teach a lot of things on this subject. In the previous lessons I taught that a natural family found on the earth consists of a husband and a wife with children and I revealed that this was a natural pattern from God’s creation that exposes God’s spiritual family. We also know from other Bible lessons that I have done (Understanding the Trinity of God) that the one true God is a Triune Spiritual Being called God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. If you do not believe in the Trinity of God then you have already been deceived by the spirit of Anti-Christ who also does not want to believe that God had a Son:
1Jn 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.
This is a controversial verse that is hotly debated by many deceived Christians. Satan would like to delete this verse from the Bible and has tried to remove it from several manuscripts. Therefore, it has been easily dismissible by people who are easily swayed. However, I believe this verse because this information is confirmed in many other places in the Bible so it is not a solitary reference. When the Antichrist shows up here on the earth Satan will use him to deny the existence of the Trinity and he will certainly say that God had no Son to everyone that he can persuade and he will claim to be God personally. Have you ever considered why it is so important to Satan that the Son of God did not come to the earth and does not exist in the Bible? Religions like Judaism and Islam teach that God had no Son. You can clearly see a pattern being formed that it is important for Satan to get people to believe that the Son of God is an imaginary figure like Apollo. Jesus confronted the Jewish leaders on this very subject in the book of Luke. Perhaps you remember this question that Jesus asked them? He asked them “Whose son is the Christ/Messiah?” Jesus said this because they believed that the Messiah was the prophesied son of David. Then Jesus asked them “How be it then that David wrote about Messiah in the Psalm and called him Lord”? That was my paraphrase of Luke 20:42. Wow, that was a loaded question for these men to answer? After this experience with Jesus many of them never asked him anymore questions. Jesus really has great questions if you listen to them.
As you continue to read these lessons you should begin to understand why this is so vital to Satan that God did not send His Son into the world. You see, God accomplished several things by having a Son and one of them was the establishment of a new Spiritual Family through a Son who had never been in covenant with anyone else before. There are also many spiritual truths that we can learn from the existence of the Trinity concerning God’s family structure. For example, from the list of trinity members we have two direct male family members named and two implied indirect female family members not named. Of course there is God the Father who is called the procreator of a child who is called the Son of God and then there is also God the Son who is the originator of the New Covenant. It also means that since there is a Father and a Son, there has to be wife and a mother to the Son. This is based upon very self-evident patterns found within creation. A male and a female are always required to create a new life of the same kind. If this is true in the natural realm, it has to be true about the spiritual realm and this will become clearer as we continue through these lessons. We understand that Mary the Virgin is the physical mother of Jesus. But, who is the spiritual mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Uh oh? Who is the wife of God? Finally in the first two lessons I taught you scripturally that a Son by the Hebrew definition of the word is called the “Builder of the Family Name”. You always have a Son to keep your family name from disappearing off of the face of the planet. This is also God’s design and plan for His spiritual family. You might recall that I said Jesus Christ was a Son over His own house (family) (Heb 3:6). I also showed you where Jesus said “His Father’s house was where He came from” and this implies the Son’s house is a new separate dwelling place. These statements imply a new house that has never existed before with a new wife. Uh Oh again? Who is this implied new spiritual wife? If Jesus has married a new spiritual wife; who are the spiritual parents of this new wife? Who are all of these implied spiritual family members? There are two or three implied spiritual women in the family of God by observing just the names of the Trinity of God titles. I am about to explore this extremely new and potentially controversial subject in an attempt to solve these mysteries. If you have already closed your mind to these spiritual things that I have stated in the introduction, then you will be wasting your time to continue reading the rest of these lessons.
God has written the Bible in a way that has vast amounts of hidden spiritual information and I call this “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight”. God has written plain text words and stories about real people, places and things that all have significance and meanings on the surface, but these same words also carry some hidden spiritual information that is greater than what we thought. If you have never read that series I would strongly suggest that you go and do so to learn some of the techniques that God uses to hide information in the Bible and this will help you to understand the complexity of what I am about to teach you today. So evaluate your spiritual maturity and make the determination if you are ready to learn some new things from the Spirit of God.
What is a family (spiritual or natural)? What makes up a normal family unit or a household? We know from the Bible that God created the first natural family on the earth in Genesis chapters 1 through 4. I personally believe that this naturally created family in Genesis was a patterned model of the design of God’s existing spiritual family in heaven and also the future configuration for His new spiritual family that was to come through His Son Jesus Christ who is called the bridegroom of the church. If you have not understood how the Church is the Bride, then you should go read my series called “The Bride of Christ Revealed”.
DISCOVERING THE RIDDLE OF GOD’S FAMILY
What I am going to do today is to show you some seldom taught scriptures in the Bible that reveal the family of God in a spiritually encoded hidden riddle format. These scriptures that I am about to give you represent a monumental spiritual riddle and a perplexing puzzle that is very complex. So if you are a puzzle solver you might enjoy this Bible lesson today. What is a riddle? According to the dictionary a riddle is a question or a statement that requires thought to answer or understand. This is exactly the nature of God and His Word if you did not know it. You can clearly see when you read the Bible that God has hidden spiritual information in the Bible, or at least I can. But there is good news about this hidden information in the book of Matthew, Jesus made this promise to us:
Mat 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
Jesus claims that everything that was hidden in the Word of God will be made known and I personally believe that this will be accomplished before He returns. This belief contradicts with the popular doctrine of preeminence. Preeminence is a belief that there is nothing left to be fulfilled prophetically in order for the Lord Jesus to return. I strongly disagree with that belief. I can see statements like this in the Bible that indicate there are many things left to be fulfilled. Some try to explain this away by stating we will know the whole truth when we all get to heaven, but that does me no good in the here and now. I am a firm believer that God will reveal the truth of His word to us all before Jesus returns and if that is true we still have a lot to learn. You may disagree with that statement, but hopefully as you continue to read you will begin to see things differently. Today’s lesson is the continuation of God revealing His hidden spiritual family. Here are the foundational scriptures to today’s spiritual riddle:
Mat 10:34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Mat 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
Mat 10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
Jesus in the course of teaching His disciples about many spiritual subjects pulls out a hidden obscure prophecy verse from the writings of a very minor prophet of God in the Old Testament and He makes a statement that is totally off the charts of our current levels of spiritual understanding. You should be able to see that in this revelation Jesus is describing to us that this is one of the main reasons that God has come to the earth in the flesh. This verse is clearly not understood, because God has never revealed it to anyone before now. I looked it up in every commentary that I could find and on the internet and no one had a clue what any of it meant. Even Matthew Henry who always had something to say about every verse had some very weak comments on these verses that were clearly based upon his ignorance of the subjects being discussed. So I started studying it in more depth and God begin to unfold it to me so that I could understand it and I was truly amazed at the hidden meanings. I will therefore, attempt to teach this new information to you so that you can also see that Jesus is revealing the spiritual members in the family of God.
The first point that I need to make is to teach you a very interesting technique of how God sometimes conceals the truth in plain sight. Here in these verses of Matthew 10:35-36, God is describing to us a seemingly random anonymous man and his family. Nowhere in any of these verses or the context of these verses does God directly reveal to you who this family is or who each family member represents or even if they are actually fictional or real unnamed individuals. Even if you go back and read the original prophecy you will not find a clue to who God is speaking about. That makes it almost impossible for you to think that God is speaking about Himself or His family. However, I will tell you that this is a repeated pattern that Jesus used in the Gospels when speaking about many of the secret things of God. Jesus would speak to us in parables using symbolism about the Kingdom of Heaven and say “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed a grain of mustard seed in a field” (Mat 13:31). Who is this random anonymous unnamed man who sowed this seed in his field and how does this information relate to God’s Kingdom? This man is certainly a hidden symbol of God. Then in Matthew 22:2 Jesus says “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king which made a marriage for his son”. Who is this unnamed certain King and who is the son to be married in this parable? We clearly have two unnamed males, an anonymous king and his son being described as the rulers of a kingdom. You see these are examples of God’s family in hidden symbolic anonymous terms. Here in this verse we are given God the Father to be the certain King and you should be able to see Jesus Christ as His Son. We also should be able to conclude that there are at least two implied women who are also not named. These two women are an implied mother of the son and an unnamed wife of the son. We could also logically conclude that the son’s wife has a mother also that is not named directly and now we are arriving at a closer match to the family being described in Matthew 10:35. I will tell you very clearly up front that God is talking about His family here in Matthew 10:35 and He is describing every spiritual member of His spiritual family household using symbolic natural family titles with amazing relationship accuracy and clarity. Jesus who was God in the flesh is describing a major reason for Him being born here on the earth, so I have concluded that this family being described must be His family diagram given to us in complex riddle form. Hopefully as we go through this study you will better understand this family at the end of the study, than you do right now at the beginning of the lesson. So hang in there and keep reading.
God reveals so many things in these verses found in Matthew 10:34-36 that it is really awesome and almost overwhelming. For example, my next point that I want to make is from Mathew 10:36 where God says “a man’s enemies are those of his own personal household or family”. Did you know that God has enemies? There are actually many confused Christians who do not know this. You can read about this enemy of God in several places, but I would suggest you go read about him in another parable that Jesus taught us in Matthew 13:39. Knowing that God has an enemy we should be able to understand that God is describing His spiritual enemy as being an internal family member of His household. Do you get the significance of that statement? God is basically making a play on the old saying that declares “You can choose your friends, but you can never choose your relatives”. You probably do not understand this fully yet, but you will. God is revealing to us that His enemy Satan is a member of His inner spiritual family. This is one of the first revelations that you need to understand about who Satan was and is. Satan was a key spiritual member of the family of God before the creation of man. Satan pre-existed man and was called “Lucifer” the son of the Morning in Isaiah 14:12. Son of the Morning is another symbolic reference containing much hidden spiritual informatoin. The Hebrew word translated as “morning” means “early light”. Since God is called Light in 1 John 1:5, you should be able to easily conclude that morning is just a reference to God a long time ago in the past. Therefore, Lucifer is being called a son of God. Not the Son of God, just a little son. Technically Satan is actually more than that as you will learn later. Did you know all of these facts already?
These lessons are really going to get very, very deep in this study, so please pay very close attention to every point being made. I already revealed to you that God was speaking about His own family in these verses. In other words Jesus is not speaking about an unknown random male’s family; He is talking about His personal family in an indirect writing or speaking style. These verses in Matthew 10:34-36 are not allegorical, they are not an analogy, they are not symbolic and they are not a parable; they should be taken very literally in all of their interpretation. You see Jesus never said the Kingdom of Heaven is like a family with family members like these, God is instead saying this is my family. The only real tricky part of the verses is that God is referring to Himself in human terms as being a father who is the head of a family. However this father is definitely not an earthly father, He is the head of the spiritual Household of God in heaven. This is at the least one of the key factors of how God has concealed this information in these verses in Matthew from our view or spiritual understanding for thousands of years. We have looked at them and thought only of natural things and we missed the fact that God is speaking of real spiritual things in these verses. In order to see what Jesus is speaking of you must shift your focus from God speaking about a human man, to God is speaking of Himself in the terms of being a human man with a family. Over 200 times in the N.T. God is called by the title “Father”. Therefore,the father in this family is definitely the Father God and the other titles are the members within the Spiritual Family of God! Over 200 times in the N.T. Jesus Christ is called by the title “Son”. God is using familiar human created descriptive terms to reveal Himself and His family so that we can understand it. Most of us understand the concepts of fathers and mothers, children and families, don’t we? I mean think about this, God created this institution called family for a specific reason. These family units are not here by chance or accident; they all have a designed purpose in the plan of God. That is also why Satan is trying his best to redefine a family in the “modern” world as being between two men or two women. You should really pay attention to what Satan does and then figure out why he is doing it and this will help you tremendously to understand the Bible. Let’s go back and review verse 35 again:
Mat 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
What you should see in verse 35 is the fact that this verse contains a list of very typical family members found almost anywhere in the world. So there is nothing unique or special about the list on the surface and this is also why many people assume it to be any regular natural family. However on closer inspection and analysis of this family, this list is more unique than it appears on the surface and it subtly describes to us a set of family members that actually does not fit very many families found here on the earth anywhere. This is the beginning of the puzzle. After I studied this list, I could not think of any families on the earth that this information fits exactly. Can you think of any? You see you can go to almost anybody’s family reunion and find people with these titles present. First, there is a very common relationship of a man and his father and every son on the earth has a father. Next there is another common relationship of a daughter and her mother mentioned and every daughter on the earth has a mother. Finally it starts to get more complex and it says there is a daughter-in-law and her mother-in-law and you can find these relationships in most every common family on the earth. What we have is a list of six potential named individuals that need a resolution or identities assigned to them. An identity is always a name and that is what we are ultimately after. We are looking for the names of the family members in God’s family. Here is the list of the 6 titles from Matthew 10:35:
- Man
- Father
- Daughter
- Mother
- Daughter-in-law
- Mother-in-law
If you analyze this list it is very tricky how God uses His words. Always pay very close attention to every word spoken by God and look up the definitions and this will help you to understand what is being said. For example the son is called a man, but then his father is not called a man. You see the Bible says very clearly that God is not a man (Num 23:19), so we know that God the Father is a Spirit. However the Bible repeatedly calls God by the male “Father” title (James 3:9, 1 Peter 1:2-3, 2 Peter 1:17, 1 Jn 3:1, 2 Jn 1:3, 2 Jn 1:9 to name a few) and this implies a male. The complexity of God comes in when He becomes a man in His son and the Son of God is Jesus. Jesus is called both the “Son of Man” and the “Son of God” repeatedly in the Bible, and they are easy to find so I will not give you a list of them here. Looking at Matthew 10:35 again, since there are only two males mentioned, this information can still fit the patterns that we found in the Trinity, where there was God the Father and His Son, but we still have all of these unknown women being described to us? I think that I told you already that this verse in Matthew 10:35 is a direct quotation of a verse from a minor prophet, but I do not think I told you that it was the prophet Micah. I think this would be a good time to go back to the book of Micah and see what God says there. If you go to chapter 7 of Micah and verse 6 you will see what Jesus was quoting from and you can read the original information that was given to the prophet:
Mic 7:6 For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
So basically we have the exact same information from Matthew using a few different descriptive terms and titles. The man in Matthew, in this verse is clearly called a son here in Micah. The father is still the father and the others are also still called by the same titles. So we now have two major witnesses to this fact given to us in the Bible. One witness is Jesus speaking in the book of Matthew and the other is a prophet of God named Micah. If you read the context verses of Micah 7:6 you will probably be like me and scratch your head and wonder how Jesus pulled this verse out to teach us about the family of God, but He obviously knew more than we did. Here is the list of family individuals using the titles given to us in Micah 7:6:
- Son (the stated Man in Matthew)
- Father
- Daughter
- Mother
- Daughter-in-law
- Mother-in-law
We have now looked at two witnesses of the same information given to us about a certain family.
Let me teach you a sound technique that I use in many of my Bible studies. When searching for subjects in the Old Testament Hebrew Bible how can we know when God is speaking of the same exact subject in the New Testament Greek language and vice versa? Since the New Testament was written in a completely different language than the Old Testament that presents a challenge of great significance for us to have to deal with. Here in this Bible study is where we can learn how to overcome this challenge. Fortunately for us Jesus was quoting an Old Testament Hebrew text. So all we need to do is to take what Jesus said in the Greek language and match it with what the prophet said in the Hebrew language and that gives us a list of the words in each language that are a perfect match. Let’s do that with the family members for a later lesson where this information will be used:
|
HEBREW |
GREEK |
| Father = H1 | Father = G3962 |
| Son = H1121 | Son = G???? Man=G444 |
| Mother = H517 | Mother = G3384 |
| Daughter = H1323 | Daughter = G2364 |
| Mother-in-law = H2545 | Mother-in-law = G3994 |
| Daughter-in-law = H3618 | Daughter-in-law = G3565 |
This list contains the Strong’s number of the Hebrew words found in Micah 7:6 that match the Greek words in Matthew. As you can see there is only one language match that cannot be completed because Jesus chose a different Greek word in Matthew 10:35 used to describe this family son as a man. However, I will resolve that very soon. What we have just learned is how words from two different languages can be legally connected together as one subject. Now from this information I will be able to search the Old Testament and the New Testament for subject references that might help us expand our understanding on what God is describing. Remember these words because I will use them again.
We are technically no closer to finding a solution to the puzzle and in fact we are probably further away from it at this point. We have just learned both the Greek and Hebrew words that apply to the family member titles and that will help us later. However, there is a third witness to this information mentioned in the book of Luke, so let’s go and read these verses and see what changes:
Luk 12:53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
I should emphasize that these words found spoken in Luke are also in red ink in my Bible, so they are the words coming directly from the mouth of God. To me that makes them significantly more valuable for us to learn everything that we can about them. Whenever God speaks something directly I believe that it has a higher degree of importance. Do not misunderstand what I am saying, every Word in the Bible is important, but I place a higher priority on the direct Words of Jesus and that is just me and how I do it. I believe that God’s words always have power, significance, purpose and meaning and they clearly give us direction, correction, knowledge, understanding and wisdom. These words about a family must have some very significant meanings behind them to be included these 3 times in 3 different books of the Bible. Do you understand this? If you read verse 53 in Luke 12 you should be able to see that God gives us the same basic information found in both Matthew and Micah but with some subtle changes being made. God uses a little bit different terminology, but the overall concept is still the same between the 6 given family titles. We will notice that here in Luke Jesus chose the word “son” and this word is a precise match for the Micah son reference. Therefore the Greek word G5207 will correspond to the Hebrew word H1121. In every verse Micah, Matthew and Luke that we have reviewed the 6 titles are always paired together in the exact same order of mention. But, in Luke each title is stated and then repeated in reverse order and I believe that this is a tricky way of bringing in more information. We have the father divided against his son, the mother against her daughter and a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law. While there is really nothing greatly apparent being changed in this verse there is some very important additional commentary information given by Jesus found in the verse prior to this one. Jesus in verse 52 gives us some very important new information which changes almost everything about how we think of this family and this is really the beginning of the riddle. Let’s read verse 52 and see what Jesus revealed to us:
Luk 12:52 For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.
Anytime God qualifies a noun description it narrows the scope of the possible interpretations. It also makes it very specific to only one family that fits the exact picture being described. We see for the very first time that God is directly speaking of a single family unit and not just any random family. God also reveals the exact number of family members in this house and it is exactly 5. Where did Jesus get this information? It was not in Micah 7:6 at all on the surface. What we are observing is the extreme intelligence of God at work. We can clearly see that Jesus in this verse is stating that there will only be 5 and not 6 members of one family household that will be divided against each other. They will be divided 3 against 2 or 2 against 3. To me this information is very revealing, but I know what it means and you don’t. Obviously we can see using simple math 2 + 3 = 5 or 3 + 2 = 5 and we know that 5 family members is definitely not equal to 6 titles. So we have a major problem and a conflict that needs immediate resolution. We have a list of 6 titles and Jesus told us there are only 5 members in this family. That is an enormous problem and a gigantic puzzle, a complex spiritual riddle or you could call it a huge Godly mystery being presented. Let’s look at the list of the titles given to us again knowing this new information.
- Father
- Son (man)
- Mother
- Daughter
- Mother-in-law
- Daughter-in-law
I hope that you are beginning to see and understand the complexity of the riddle or puzzle being presented to us from God. What I want you to do now, is to use some basic computer type logic to help you to decipher this multipart puzzle. Let’s review the list of basic facts that have been given to us:
- God is describing One Family.
- There are 6 family titles described (Father, Son, Mother, Daughter, Daughter-in-law, Mother-in-law).
- There are only 5 total members in this 1 family.
- There are 2 direct males mentioned (son, father).
- There are up to 4 direct females mentioned (daughter, mother, daughter-in-law, mother-in-law).
- This family will be divided 3 against 2 or 2 against 3.
- The Father will be divided against his son.
- The mother against her daughter.
- The mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law.
If you do not understand that this informaton represents a very complex riddle, then you are probably reading the wrong Bible Study web-site. So let me expand this basic factual information based upon the implications given but never directly named or described. Any time that you have a reference to a woman with the title of “daughter-in-law”, you must have the existence of a wedding and a marriage to a male husband. Out of the list of 6 possible named titles who can be married to who? A son does not marry his mother so that is out. A son does not marry his mother-in-law, so that is also ruled out. A son would never marry his daughter, so that is also out. A Son would also never marry his daughter-in-law and that is also out. All of these statements would also hold true for the Father. The father would never marry his mother, his mother-in-law, his daughter or his daughter-in-law so these are clearly ruled out relationships. Now a father can marry the mother of his son and that is very normal. A father can also marry the mother of his daughter and that is very normal. But, the only way for his wife to become a mother-in-law is for their child to get married and this is again more complexity since we have only 5 possible candidates and only two males in the family. Wow, this is tough, isn’t it? Logically speaking we must conclude that it is the son who marries the woman who is called the daughter-in-law and this is the only possible correct fit for the limited relationships and titles given to us by God. You will learn why this is so important as we continue to study.
I think I will end this Bible lesson here for today and leave you hanging. You may still be debating in your mind that this is describing the spiritual family of God, but that is OK for now, it will come to clearer light as we continue. Hopefully you can see that regardless of whose family is being described, it is a very significant riddle being presented to you. What kind of family has 5 different family members and six different titles and fit exactly the pattern that your were given? Therefore, see if you can use your brain and your logical reasoning power to come up with the answer to this riddle, if you can do this, you will impress me to no end. Picture the facts that have been given to you and it might help you to draw the possible family tree diagrams that might fit the facts that were given to us. I wish I could say this was easy to come up with and to solve but, it is not and this is a brain teasing challenge for you to work on this week. If you can solve this puzzle before I post the solution you will certainly be led by the Spirit of God and I will be very impressed at your ability to see spiritual things as well as your puzzle solving capabilities. I will also tell you that if you have read all of my other posts on this site, you have all of the information that you need to solve this perplexing puzzle. Until next time, God Bless You!
If you want to start reading the solution to this riddle, you may continue with “Part 4“.
Understanding Healing, Sickness & Disease? The Sin Cause and the Sickness Effect! Part 2
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 2 in a series of Bible lessons about where Sickness and Disease Came From. If you have not read this series of lessons from the beginning, then I would suggest that you go back to Part 1 and start there. In the first lesson I taught that God did not create the world originally with sickness or disease present therefore, I concluded you can see these did not originate with God and they were not a part of the original plan of God at any time. There are many Christians who would certainly disagree with me based upon a narrow minded interpretation of some Old Testament scriptures that conflict with a New Testament revelation that sickness comes from Satan. I showed you one of these Old Testament verse in the first lesson and how it was poorly translated to accuse God of putting sickness on the Egyptians. However, I also showed you two prominent witnesses found in the New Testament that said sickness came from the devil (Acts 10:38) and Jesus even called it satanic bondage (Luke 13:16). So we have a major conflict between opposing scriptures brewing. You have Old Testament verses that seem to say that God caused people to be sick and you have New Testament verses that clearly say Satan causes people to be sick. Since the Bible does not ever contradict itself in the true interpretation of the text, we must resolve the question of the cause of the sickness found in people in order to correctly determine who causes people to be healed. There are only a limited number of technical possibilities to answer these questions and they are quite complex in their relationships of responsibilities. Here is the list of possible solutions for where sickness comes from and I’ll talk about each of these in the following paragraphs:
- God causes sickness and God heals sickness
- Satan causes sickness and Satan heals sickness
- God causes sickness and Satan heals sickness
- Satan causes sickness and God heals sickness
- Some other possible cause and effect?
First we could say God controls everything and causes
all people to be sick sometimes and then God heals people sometimes and that would be what many ignorant sovereign God theologians would want you to believe. This interpretation conflicts with several scriptures like “God does not change” (Mal 3:6), with God there is no variableness nor shadow of turning (Jas 1:17) and when Jesus said “When you have seen me you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). Since Jesus never made anyone sick while he was here physically on the earth we can clearly understand Jesus was the revealed will of God in full manifestation. We must therefore conclude that God while in heaven never made anyone sick either. You of course can disagree if you would like to.
Mat 4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
However, when you read the gospels closely you will never see Jesus doing anything, but healing the people. Jesus would heal every type of sickness and every type of disease this verse says. You can clearly see that this was the will of God being revealed to men first hand. Here is God in the flesh walking among us and doing what He could only do in person. If God wanted to teach men that sickness came from Him, He missed a golden opportunity to teach us this in person to dismiss the controversy. When you see God healing people and never making them sick you finally begin to understand the character of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, the mercy of God and the compassion of God. You finally begin to understand how much God wants you to be well and whole.
Mat 9:36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.
You can find that when Jesus walked among us, He exhibited divine compassion. He demonstrated Godly mercy and He did not come to judge anyone. Were people in those days just better sinners then they are now? Too many Christians in the world think that people have gotten to be worse sinners today so they accuse God of sending judgment upon the earth in the form of earthquakes and plagues of sicknesses and diseases. Some have accused God of killing sinners and Christians in massive Tsunamis and natural disasters. One group of highly confused Christians held up signs at a recent funeral of a woman who died with cancer thanking God for her cancer. I do not understand how you can follow a God who would do such a thing. I guess it is purely out of fear and self-righteousness that these people do such things. Because they feel like they are not sinners they accuse God of killing people who they claim are sinners. How ignorant is that? In my opinion if you are afraid of God, it is only because you do not know God and if you are not afraid of God it is only because you do not know Him either. It is a paradox of a spiritual nature that is supremely complex. The Bible says “The fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10). However, this is the respect of God’s power and not the terror that God is going to hurt you. I am not afraid of God, because I have the love of God shed abroad in my heart and I know Him (Rom 5:5). You see my Bible says “Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound” (Rom 5:20). That verse does not say anything about the judgment of God, it says God’s grace is what dominates Him to do good to sinners and the Bible says it is “The goodness of God that leads men to repentance” (Rom 2:4). Don’t get me wrong, there is a coming judgment of God and it is coming soon. But, this is not what is happening right now in the world. When you finally see the judgment of God you will know the difference between what is happening now and it will be nothing compared to the real judgments of God. People today, who have accused God of making people sick, have done so out of ignorance. They clearly do not know the love of God and they ignore Bible verses about God’s love. A loving God does not make His children sick because they made a mistake. Therefore, I have ruled out God as both causing sickness and healing people in order to harmonize scriptures of God’s love, mercy, compassion and grace.
You could also theorize that Satan causes people to be sick and Satan heals people and again this is a very wrong teaching based upon scriptures taught directly by Jesus. When Jesus would heal people, many times Jesus would cast out the evil spirits that were causing the sickness (Mark 1:23-26, Mark 5:2-8, Mark 7:25, Luke 9:42). Jesus was even accused of casting devils out by the power of Satan (Mat 9:34). But, Jesus said in Matthew 12:26 “How can Satan cast out Satan, his house would be divided and his kingdom would not stand”? This is actually a very important verse to understand and it contains a lot of spiritual information that you better know. Jesus was clearly saying no kingdom working against itself will prevail. Therefore, God will never make people sick and then change to make them well again or His kingdom would be divided. Jesus tells you very clearly that Satan also has a kingdom. This is not the kingdom of God and this is not the kingdom of Heaven. So this is a separate spiritual kingdom that Christians must come to understand that it exists. This spiritual kingdom is called the kingdom of darkness. In Colossians 1:13 it says “Christ has delivered us from the power of darkness…”. To be delivered is a salvation from a place we did not even realize that we were in. If you are not a Christian today, you are in this kingdom of darkness. If you are a Christian then you have been set free from the kingdom of darkness by the power found in Jesus. These are all Bible truths that are essential to understand. If you do not understand this then you can easily stray into false teachings that claims God is in control of everything. Jesus clearly taught us that there is an opposing spiritual kingdom in existence and it is not the Kingdom of God. Based upon this information and the words of Jesus it is impossible for Satan to make people sick and to heal them simultaneously. This information also transfers to God’s kingdom and it says that it is impossible for God to make people sick and then to heal them, or His kingdom would be divided. God is saying you cannot have it both ways. Jesus is teaching you that one kingdom makes you sick and one kingdom heals exclusively and that is the only definition of an undivided Kingdom that fits.
Next we could say God makes people sick and Satan heals them, but this is clearly shot down by many of the scriptures that I have given you already. Acts 10:38 said Jesus healed those that were oppressed by the devil. So sickness can never be attributed to God and healing can never be attributed to Satan. This is just basic Bible interpretations of the Gospels and the New Testament that makes it very clear. I have by direct scripture references ruled this possibility out completely. There are just no supporting scriptures for this possibility that exists. I mean you can find scriptures in the Old Testament that imply that God causes sickness, but I have never seen a scripture that implies Satan heals people.
Next, you could say that Satan causes people to be sick and God heals them and this theory is more scripturally accurate based upon the verses that I have shown you today already, but, it cannot be the complete and total truth since there is not any mention of the involvement or the contribution of the human factor. If you believe that man has no choices to make or no ability to exercise their freewill, then you believe in a theory based upon God’s sovereignty and a false teaching called “Predestination”. This teaching claims God has caused everything in the world to happen with a preset outcome. This teaching claims that some people were created to go to hell and some people were created to go to heaven. You could further claim that some people were designed to be sick and some people were designed to be well. There are many problems with this erroneous teaching and you have to ignore vast numbers of scriptures that teach against it in order to believe in it. If you have read my series of lessons on Understanding Bible Faith you should understand that Jesus always claimed it was the person’s faith that caused them to receive healing. Jesus would never point us to any other factor as being the cause for their healing. This did not mean that this person healed themself; it only means that it was their faith that allowed the power of God to flow into them to resolve their situation. In the Gospels, there was always a direct partnership between a man’s faith and God’s divine power and grace that resulted in any person receiving their healing, salvation or deliverance. Therefore, we can very easily conclude that if human faith was a necessary determining factor for a person’s healing to be made manifest, we must also conclude by reverse applied logic or implied antithesis truth that it must have been another human factor like something that the person believed, said or did to allow sickness to come into their bodies in the first place.
Think with me again about the factor of faith allowing God’s power to heal them in the Gospels. Then take this knowledge and look back into time to see how a sickness might be allowed into a human condition. Take for instance the factor of fear. If fear is one opposite of faith, then it might have been possible for someone’s fear to allow Satan to put the sickness on them. In other words I believe that it is almost always the choice of the person on the earth to determine what happens to them. This belief is based upon what God said to people in Deuteronomy 30 that we read earlier. God said very clearly I set before you life and death, therefore choose life that you and your seed may live. Whose choice was it for you to live, God’s or yours? I think you can see this makes it our choice.
However, it is certainly more complex than that simple statement. For example, a person is not all knowing and can be deceived into allowing things to happen and not realize the consequences to what they have done until it is too late. Someone might have gotten hot and sweaty playing a sport in the middle of winter and then walked outside without a jacket and they will probably regret that choice before they make it home. It could also be that someone has a casual one night stand with someone that they just met in a bar and a few weeks later they find out they got a sexually transmitted disease and they only have themselves to blame. It is mostly out of ignorance that people do things that they are extremely sorry for doing after they see the consequences. God says “My people are destroyed (made sick, weak, killed, hurt) for a lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). So making ignorant decisions can result in some catastrophic circumstances. Another known factor that is thrown into the mix is the presence of evil in the world. Sometimes things happen to you just because people are bad and want to do what they want to do regardless of what you want them to do. When a woman is raped, that is not what she had in mind for a good time like the man was thinking. Therefore, she could get a sickness passed upon her by something that was not her choice. You soon begin to see that life is very complex and there are many possible factors that can contribute to anyone being sick. So regardless of what I teach you today, there are other factors that could be involved in the things that you are experiencing. So having said all of that there is a spiritual law that is very applicable to our subject today and I will introduce you to it now:
Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
You see God says that people will always reap what they have sown in life. So we need to figure out if sickness is a fruit of a seed that we have sown. You might recall in the last lesson I showed you in Deuteronomy 30 where God said “I have set before you a choice, life or death, blessing or cursing, therefore choose life…”. 
God appears to place the responsibility for sickness on man as well as for healing, so we must learn how to choose wisely. Could it be that we just need to learn to plant the right seeds for healing? This is a very tough lesson to teach, because there are so many factors and even unknowns that you can never say that everybody’s sickness was caused by only one specific thing. In fact many times sickness is caused by a combination of things and I may have time to talk about that later. Sowing and reaping is a cause and effect reality. You plant seeds and you get crops to harvest. So this truth is certainly heavily involved in the rest of this lesson. What I want to do is to explore what Jesus emphasized in the Gospels as being a potential cause or we could say the seed for the sickness of certain people. Jesus did teach us that there were some special contributing key factors to at least some sicknesses and I will attempt to talk about these today and you can make up your own mind to what the truth is.
If Satan causes sickness to come on people we must determine what permitted or allowed this to occur or can Satan just make anyone sick that he wants to at any time? If you read the book of Job many have concluded that Satan must ask God for permission and then when God says OK, it is Satan’s responsibility to go and carry out the sickness. However, this is a very bad interpretation of the truth and a clearly ignorant man can easily jump to this conclusion on a surface only reading of the text, but the truth of God is almost always deeper than that found normally on the surface. You can see this is a tough subject to teach, but I believe it is one that is certainly important for you to understand, so keep reading. We know from Acts 10:38 and Luke 13:6 that Satan causes sickness, so I will not debate that fact anymore. I have accepted this as the truth of the Bible and I will move on with determining why this occurs.
Mat 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
Here is a sick lame man being brought to Jesus for healing and Jesus says something that is very profound and difficult to accept for many Christians. Jesus looks at the lame man and tells him “your sins are forgiven”. Why does Jesus say this and what do we need to understand about this statement? Were this man’s sins a contributing factor for his sickness? This man is asking for physical healing and Jesus is speaking to him about his sins. Do you understand the difference between spiritual things and natural physical things? There are many people who do not. People look at the external actions of a man and focus only on what people have done and God looks at the internal and focuses on why people do what they do. The lame man was interested only in a natural thing that he thought would solve his problems, and Jesus was focused on the spiritual root cause of the problem. It is also interesting to note that Jesus does not cast out an evil spirit or even blame the sickness on a spirit as the cause. Now we know from Acts 10:38 that whoever Jesus healed was called someone who was oppressed of the devil, but this is not where Jesus is focused in on in today’s lesson. You see there is more than one truth in the Bible and this is some people’s greatest problem with understanding the Bible; they only want to learn one thing and ignore the rest. That would be way too simple if that is all that is required. I have no doubt that this man’s infirmity was caused by Satan, but that does not mean that this is the entire story. Jesus is pointing us to a sin factor that allowed Satan to come in and bring the sickness on the man. This is actually the same conclusion that I came to when I studied the book of Genesis and the creation account. God created everything and called it all “very good” and therefore there was no sickness or disease in the earth before Adam sinned. However, after Adam sinned things started to change in the world and therefore we can conclude it was sin that allowed sickness and disease to enter into the world. I cannot come up with any other basic event in Genesis other than man’s sin that would have caused this evil to occur. Maybe you can go through the Bible and find something else and I would be happy to hear about. Here is God’s commentary on the cause of sin, sickness and death in our world:
Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
You can clearly read that it was the actions of one man that caused sin and death to pass to every man on the planet. If you are smart enough you understand that sickness and disease is just a form of diminished life before death occurs. Therefore, it was Adam who allowed sickness to enter into the world by his sin. So that is another interesting contributing factor. Your current sickness could have been caused by your ancestor’s sin. You see God speaks of a generational cursed upon families in scriptures found in Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:7, Numbers 14:18, and Deuteronomy 5:9 that speaks of the sins of the fathers being passed down three or four generations. I will not teach on this directly today, but I do want you to be aware of it as a factor. You see it does not have to be your sin that causes you to have a sickness. In fact in John 9 the disciples asked Jesus “Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind”. You can see by the question that the disciples were looking at the effect and trying to determine the cause. They also said it could have been caused by the sin of the parents and Jesus did not dispute or contradict them, he just didn’t answer their question. If you do not understand this story of the blind man in John 9, please take the time and read my lesson on this healing called “Who Sinned”.
Let’s get back to Matthew 9 and to what Jesus was telling the lame man. Go and read Matthew 9:2 and the surrounding context verses. Jesus continues to say “which is easier to say rise take up your bed and walk or to say your sins are forgiven”? Jesus then looks at the religious leaders and says “So that you will know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, rise, take up your bed and walk”. In other words Jesus was teaching a fact that these are interchangeable events or words. If you are forgiven you ought to be healed. If you are healed then you are forgiven. Wow, that is probably one of the most important things that I have said so far today, but you need to hear again. If you have been forgiven of your sins, then you ought to be healed. Are you forgiven by God? Let’s move on to another story found in the Gospels:
Joh 5:14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
Here is another major story of healing that has some very profound spiritual truths associated with it. Jesus has just healed another paralyzed cripple man and He tells him something that is very important to note. Jesus basically says “Stop sinning or something else worse could come on you”. Do you understand the connection being tied in here between sickness and sin? Jesus is teaching the direct cause and effect of a spiritual reality. It would appear that sin is an opening of the door for sickness to come in. This of course is very tricky since the Bible says that we are all sinners (Rom 3:23) and we can see that not everyone is sick in the world. Nevertheless we can still learn a potential cause and effect law being demonstrated to us. Do you understand the laws of Physics? An object in motion tends to remain in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Then there is the law that states for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There are just too many natural laws that demonstrate to us the cause and the resulting effect of a natural force, for me to talk about them all. According to laws never is there an effect without a cause. Never is there a cause without a resulting effect. Never is the resulting effect greater than the cause. It would be like getting a crop without planting the seeds, it just doesn’t happen that way. These are just a few of the basics surrounding physical laws.
Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
We can see two spiritual realities being outlined and compared in this verse. These are two spiritual laws of opposing force being revealed. In the natural realm it is kind of like the Law of Aerodynamics has set me free from the Law of Gravity reality. However, Romans 8:2 is the spiritual law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. You can clearly see that sin is the cause and death is the effect. What is the definition of death? In the natural realm it is a secession or termination of life. Then what is the definition of sickness? To be sick is a state of un-wholeness, incompleteness, or even just a state of physical weakness. Jesus when healing people in the Gospels would tell them “your faith has made you whole”. So being whole is a state of health where no sickness exists and being un-whole a state of sickness. Therefore I have concluded that sickness is just a lesser stage of death in operation but not in full conclusion. So when God told Adam don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you do, you shall surely die, I believe God was warning of the coming of sickness into the world but this does not mean that God sent it. Here is a simple verse that is basically saying what I am trying to teach you about sickness:
Mat 9:12 But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
Jesus is saying there are two different states of the human condition; this is either wholeness or incompleteness. Jesus is calling the state of not being whole a sickness. This Greek word translated as whole has a meaning to be healthy, well, sound, and even true. I can clearly understand based upon this definition that there are direct opposite truths to each of these statements. Sick, infirmed, weak, and even false are all words that demonstrate the state of sickness. The Bible calls sickness the opposite of good which is healing and health.
I have given you around three examples in the Bible of people that Jesus encountered and Jesus attributed a sin cause to the effect of their sickness. I also showed you that it does not necessarily have to be your sin that is the cause, but it could have been one of your ancestors. However, there are more complex factors than that found in the Bible, but I have gone long enough in this lesson for today. I will wrap this up by reemphasizing that Jesus basically taught that if you are forgiven you ought to be healed. If you need forgiveness, then repent and ask for it and do it fast to begin to receive healing. Do not over simplify anything that I have taught today and say I said it is only sin that causes sickness because that is NOT what I said. In fact I gave you several other potential reasons for the existence of sickness, one was ignorance, another was the presence of evil, another is sowing wrong seeds, then I could go on and on with other factors that I have not mentioned. In order for us not to be destroyed by Satan in the world we need to achieve to a higher level of knowledge of the truth. So we still have a lot to learn, including me! I hope you come back and read the next lesson about Where Sickness Comes From. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons you can go to “Part 3“.
Understanding Healing, Sickness and Disease in the Bible! Where does it Come From? Part 1
(Ver 1.5) Today is the beginning of another in-depth spiritual study about “Understanding where sickness and disease came from”. I have been teaching a lot on the subject of Bible Faith and I got a comment that caused me to back up and think that I was teaching potentially in reverse order. You see there has been a long theological debate in many churches about the origin of sickness and disease. I have even heard preachers teach that sickness is a punishment or a correction sent from God. Of course this is based upon the erroneous assumption that just because God is sovereign that He always gets His will done no matter what. Also, there has long been a teaching in the some churches that since Paul had a thorn in his flesh that we must endure sickness the same way with great humility. These people have concluded again in error that Paul’s thorn was a sickness and thus they are wrong without reading what the Bible actually said. There are really too many false teachings for me to tell you about them all. What is important for us all to know and learn, is did sickness come from God? If it is something sent by God, then we should not be trying to get healed and this causes many people to stay sick. When I taught on faith I said one of the enemies to faith was doubt. Doubt represents a mental question in an area that you have insufficient knowledge or incorrect knowledge. For example, Jesus actually taught us in the Bible that healing does not occur as long as there are questions in our mind to whether healing is the will of God. Here is the lesson Jesus taught us:
Mat 8:2 And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
Here is a man that was fully diseased with leprosy. He believes that Jesus is fully able and powerful enough to heal him, but he does not know if it is the will of God to accomplish this request. This is a common point of failure to correct Bible faith even today. We have countless Christians in churches today that are taught the same things. It is not God’s will to heal today! God healed through the apostles, but that passed away when they died. I have heard many ignorant men making excuses for why they have no faith, blaming it either on others or God. They act like it was the apostles that were healing the people, when it was only God using the apostles to heal the people. Has God changed since the apostles died or is He still the same today? No God is the same today as He was yesterday! Then there are ministers who are like this leprous man, they believe that God is powerful enough to heal people so they pray “Lord if it be your will, heal this man”. What kind of prayer is that? It is a questioning or questionable faith full of doubts. These men who pray that way do not have the question in their mind answered to whether or not we can know the will of God about anything. But, if that was true then God would not have given us His Word in written form. We have the basis of proof of the will of God by examining the Word of God. As soon as God wrote down His spoken words in a book form, He has committed Himself to do what He has said or He will become a liar. Notice how Jesus answered this question given to Him by the leprous man and see if God is telling you right now what His will is for your healing.
Mat 8:3 And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
You can clearly see the will of God for healing being revealed by the Words of the Most High God. Jesus when He was physically walking the planet, taught us when you have seen me you have seen the Father (John 14:7). Jesus further went on to say “I do nothing of my own, but the will of the Father, I do” (John 5:30). If Jesus Christ is the revealed will of God from heaven, did Jesus ever make anyone sick? Take the time and go back and reread the Gospels and notice everything that Jesus does. Write them in a list on a piece of paper if you like, and then know this is the will of God for you. If you cannot ever find Jesus making anyone sick, then you cannot ever say God made anyone sick even if you have mistranslations in the Old Testament that say otherwise. I searched the Bible and I found Jesus only healing people after he would preach and teach. Healing must be the will of God then. Don’t take my word for it, you go and reread and search for yourself. It doesn’t take that long to learn the truth if you look for it. And if you cannot find it in the Gospels where Jesus ever made anyone sick, then this was God’s will for everyone in personal manifestation. So Jesus by His words and His actions has revealed the will of God is to heal ONLY! Please be smart enough to see this truth.
One religious man who graduated from a theological cemetery told me his wife had cancer that came from God. This man had a zeal for God but, no knowledge of God. If this was true, I will tell you right now that I would not want to follow that kind of God or that kind of religion. How do you tell people in the world come and get saved so God might give you cancer? Does that motivate you to want to get close to this God? Or is this a fear based religion like Islam, where you obey the law or we will cut off your hands. If God gives people cancer because they sinned, then here in the United States God would be easily convicted in any court of law as being a child abuser. Yet religious people think that God answers to a different law than man does. That is a very foolish presumptive thinking. If cancer is what a loving God does to His children, then what would an evil God do to his children? You see when the Bible says God is Love, how do you justify that He gave you cancer? You would have to redefine what Love is and that is a scary way to interpret the Bible. If I loved my wife so much and then I beat her because she did something wrong, I would be thrown in jail. Yet this reasoning is OK for a God you cannot see and throw in jail. It was also very hilarious to me that this man’s wife with cancer from God went to the doctor and received treatment to get out of the will of God for her life on the earth. Why go to a doctor to cure cancer if God gave you the caner? In this situation according to this man who was smarter God or the doctor? Why couldn’t this man go to God for healing instead of the doctor? It is simply because he thought that it was God that gave his wife the cancer so why pray for healing, just go to the doctor. It would appear that the doctor was smarter than God according to this man, if the doctor wants to cure people and God does not that is a major problem. People can truly be blinded by religion and not even know they are wrong. Let’s go back to the beginning of our world and see what God says to us about the things that He created:
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Here is God’s opinion of all of the things that He created. God looks at everything from the six days of creation and says it is all very good. What does “very good” mean to you? Did God create Adam or Eve as a weak or sick man or woman? Did God create them with cancer and call it good? I think you can easily conclude that after creation, there was no sickness or disease present in the world. If nothing else you can see that Adam lived over 900 years on the earth and that does not sound like a sick man at any time. In fact you cannot even find the words sickness or disease in this book of the bible until near the end of the book and into the next books of the Bible. The book of Genesis encompasses the first 2000 years of human history and there is barely any mention of sickness or disease in this time period. It is very clear to me that sickness and disease did not come from God and was not a designed plan of God by what He created in the beginning. But, you can believe whatever you want. If you look up the Hebrew word translated as “good” it comes from another word that can also mean “well”. If you are well, then you are not sick. If you are well then it is good! So obviously God thinks being well is good and being sick is bad or evil. This is not rocket science; surely you can see the truth of God’s word today.
Jas 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
You see if you believe your sickness is God teaching you, correcting you or testing you; then you must conclude that it is something good based upon James 1:17! Is sickness ever good? Is wife beating ever good? Is child abuse ever good? If you think these are all good things then you are clearly confused and vastly deceived. I do not know of anything good about sickness. But, my opinion is the same as your opinion, worthless! Show me a Bible verse that says sickness is a blessing from God and I will believe it. It would have to be a blessing in order to qualify for it being good! Sickness steals your time, it takes your strength, it removes your ability to be a blessing to others, it causes your life to be shortened, it sucks away slowly your ability to do anything positive and your money is wasted in great quantities to get rid of it. Sickness and disease is a thief and a robber of your well-being, strength, your life and substance; I do not know what else to call it but an impressive evil. I have only shown you a few Bible verses and I can tell from this information that God did not send you sickness. If Jesus came to the earth to heal and cure people from sicknesses that God had sent on them, then that would be a house divided (Mat 12:25). God would have had to have been divided against Himself. Jesus would have been working against God and not for God. That would mean that God is schizophrenic, double minded and confused? God makes them sick and Jesus heals them. Too many Christians want to believe in a Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde type of God. Sure God will make you sick so that He can prove His power by healing you. That is a crazy mixed up Theology! Why heal them if you were the one that made them sick by your will. Do you understand the problem with many people’s confusing beliefs? God cannot be the same one that heals people that causes them to be sick or God would not be consistent and never changing (Mal 3:6), He would instead be the ever changing God. This is not what the Bible says to us, is it?
Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
You can clearly read from the Bible where sickness comes from, if you want to know the truth. Here is a verse that I use all of the time because it contains a lot of great spiritual information about good and evil. This verse is a self-evident claim that doing good is healing and this always comes from God. Think about it! How was the human body designed by God? It was designed with a built in immune system that fights against sickness and disease. If you get cut or scrapped, you do not have an eternal sore, your body has a built in self-healing machine mechanism. This was God’s designed plan in action. So when you read the Gospels did you ever see Jesus making anyone sick, lame, blind, crippled or diseased? Do you ever see anyone that Jesus said it is not my will to heal you? If you cannot find Jesus who was God in the flesh doing these things while He was personally here on the earth, then why would think that the same God in heaven does them to people now? Jesus clearly taught us, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father”, so whatever we saw Jesus doing is what God does all of the time and Jesus only went about doing GOOD and healing. Do not make your God an Evil God who goes about doing EVIL and making people sick unless you can find where Jesus did it.
Here is where more people are confused. They allow Satan to blind their minds to the truth so that he can continue to cause sickness and disease to abide in them. A man recently told me that Satan is only allowed by God to do what God wants. So if Satan makes people sick, then it was God’s will for them to be sick. Again this is just more C.R.A.P. (Christian Rhetoric Applied Poorly)! I’m sorry I can be very blunt sometimes and I do not mean it to be hurtful, I only mean it to shock people into seeing the truth.
Where did God say sickness came from in Acts 10:38? God clearly called sickness satanic oppression in Acts 10:38. The devil is clearly Satan and sickness is from him and Satan is not God’s policeman sent by God to make people sick. Therefore sickness and disease is satanic oppression and the direct opposite of God’s definition of good. Go back and read the Gospels again and see who got healed. You have blind people seeing (Mat 15:31, Mat 21:14, Mar 10:51, John 9); you have leprous people’ made whole again (Luke 17:17), a woman with the issue of blood (Mat 9:20), a man with the withered hand (Mat 12:13), the dumb to speak (Mat 15:31), the lame to walk (Mat 15:31, Mat 21:14, John 5:9). These are just a few verses to show you who Jesus healed. There are many others that I did not mention. There are even several verses that teach us that Jesus healed every type of disease and infirmity (Mat 9:35) and everyone present (Mat 12:15) so if you did not see your problem being healed it is included in the other all-inclusive category of the type of people and sickneeses that Jesus healed. What I want you to notice is that God calls all of this satanic oppression. If it was sent by God then it would be Godly oppression and that is not what the Bible said. Neither would God have been there to heal them if He had been the one to make them sick.
Luk 13:16 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
Here is another verifiable witness to the fact of the origin of sickness is from Satan. Jesus is asking a direct question that is still relevant and applicable to you today. He says that this woman is a daughter of Abraham; therefore she should be freed from this bondage of Satan. Think with me again and ask yourself this question; are you a son or a daughter of Abraham? If you are then you should also be freed from the bondage of Satan. Bondage is being held against your will as a prisoner. Did you know that was what sickness was? You could call sickness a spiritual jail cell that has kept you physically locked up from your freedom. It is clear to me that Jesus is saying you ought to be free today and this is why I say that.
Rom 4:16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,
According to God we in the church are called Abraham’s spiritual children today by our faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore what did Jesus say? Didn’t Jesus just say “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham be freed from this bondage of Satan?” When you begin to see who you are in Christ, it should begin to change your perspective on if you should be healed. According to Jesus, you should be healed even on the Sabbath. Let’s back up and look at an Old Testament verse to change our perspective. Many times people look at scriptures in error found in the Old Testament to justify their erroneous beliefs that God makes people sick, so I’ll talk about one of these to potentially help someone:
Exo 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.
You can see a clear conflict in the English translation of this verse. This is why so many people are confused today. They do not research the words or study the definitions and they conclude things based upon Old Testament verses that you cannot find repeated in the New Covenant teachings. Yet, these are tough words to read. It would appear that God is inconsistent and that God shows favoritism and that God treats one nation differently than the other nation. If God heals Israelites and makes Egyptians sick then God is not the same to everyone. That is a major problem to me. It means that you cannot count on what God said and you cannot trust in God doing anything good for you or to you. It tells me that the definitions of God and Good are inconsistent and unreliable. It means the sun might come up in the west tomorrow because we just never know about how God does anything. Why would God give us a huge book of information about Himself if God did not want us to know who He really was? It does not make any sense to me. Let’s get back to the Hebrew words in this verse found in Exodus and become extremely picky to see exactly what God is saying to us. I want to make one extremely important point up front. First it does not say that God put the disease on Egypt. It was the translators that said that. Look at the Hebrew words translated as “I” will and see that in that statement within the context of Egypt there is no Hebrew word in the verse that can be translated directly as “I”. Do you understand this? It is an assumed reference and inserted because the translators thought that God was the one that made people sick. Now look at the end of verse and see the difference in the last part of that statement. “I am the Lord that heals you”. Now God uses a direct Hebrew word that can only be a personal pronoun of who God is and what God does. If God wanted you to believe that He is the one that puts sickness on people He would have used the same personal pronoun in the other parts of the verse so that you can associate it with Him. No, sickness does not come from God it only originates there by the minds of men who credit God with everything good or evil. Here is the same verse with the removal of the words “I” that do not occur in the Hebrew:
Exo 15:26 And said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, will put none of these diseases upon thee, which have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the LORD that healeth thee.
No you can see that someone still put sicknesses on the Egyptians, but we learned from the New Testament that this was not God, but Satan. It does not say God put the sicknesses on them. I am attempting to use the Bible to understand the Bible and to get you to see the subtle differences a few mistranslated words in the Old Testament can make. This verse still says “I am the LORD that HEALS” very plainly. So God is attributing healing to His work and not sickness. You of course can remain in darkness and still believe otherwise.
The major difficulty that people are facing today is the fact that the Bible contains two separate covenants. The Old Covenant was with a natural nation of people and the New Covenant is with a spiritual nation of people. In the Old Covenant, God hid the existence of Satan largely in symbolic references, unnamed references and in ways that allowed you to know something was there but not always understand what it was. In the New Covenant, Satan is revealed for who he is directly. Yet the majority of people today, who are confused, are those that are focused in only on the law of God and the prophecies of God without interpreting them using the revelations of God in the New Covenant given to the church. That is a huge mistake, it is no wonder we have so many different opinions in the world.
Let’s ask ourselves some really basic theology questions:
- Which Covenant are we in today?
- Which Bible pages and verses should hold more importance to us as Christians? Genesis or Revelation? Deuteronomy or Galatians?
- Are we under the Law or are we now under Grace?
Too many times Christians want to emphasize the Old Covenant and ignore the New Covenant reality. They only read things in the Old Testament that are important to them thinking that they apply to them. I can go through your Bible and look at what verses you underline to see what you choose to believe is important. If you spend more time in the Old Testament than you do reading the letters written to the church directly, then you are living under the Law of Moses and you ignore God’s Grace. I would strongly recommend that you take the time to go and read Deuteronomy chapter 28 and see what God says about blessing and cursing under the law. But before you do this go and read what God says about it in chapter 30 first:
Deu 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
God clearly says Life is GOOD and death is EVIL! These are two different perspectives of contrasting opposite events. Births are good and deaths are evil. You could also say healing is good and sickness is evil. You can go down the list of opposites and clearly see God is teaching you something you should understand clearly. Then God says this to you:
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
It appears the choice to live or die has been placed upon humans. This goes against a Sovereign Predestination theology that is clearly wrong. Now go back and read chapter 28 about the blessing and the cursing of the Law of Moses. If you go and read down the whole chapter you will see many diseases being named by name. Then in verse 61 you will find this statement:
Deu 28:61 Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
So the curse of the Law includes “every sickness and every disease” that is not named in this book as well as those that are named. Do you understand this so far? What we conclude from this chapter is sickness is a curse and healing and health is a blessing. What did God tell us to choose? Was it not life to live? These are very simple truths found in the Bible yet many people just ignore them. Here is a New Testament reality that will help you if you can see it:
Gal 3:13 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:
According to God, what were you redeemed from? You soon learn the difficulty in the teachings of confused people who do not know the truth. We can very clearly see that if Christ has redeemed us (PAST TENSE) we have been freed from all sicknesses and all diseases that were listed in that chapter 28 of Deuteronomy and even those that were not named directly. According to God He did not leave out any sicknesses or diseases in that chapter so that means all of them! If Jesus Christ came to redeem you from sickness and disease then there is NO WAY that God is sending you sickness or disease to kill you. This would again be God working against Himself and a clear Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of theology.
I am attempting to alleviate the questions in your mind that God sent you sickness. It is a difficult subject for some people to accept because of the things that they have been deceived into believing about God. I hope if nothing else you will start to go through your Bible and see the Jesus who revealed the true nature of God in the Gospels. Then go and read the Letters written to the church about how God is Love, the Grace of God, the Goodness of God and the mercy of God. Learn to see the real God and who He is today in the New Covenant. If you want to, you can also go through the names of God given to you in the Bible. The names of God in the Bible always reveal the character of God! You will see God called “Jehovah Raffa” which means “I am God Your Healer”! You will never see the name of God called Jehovah Makes You Sick! Yes there is coming a judgment of God and this will occur during the tribulation and the time shortly thereafter. But, do not confuse the Judge God with your Father God. Perhaps I will have time to discuss a balanced approach to understanding the character of God. Ok, I have a lot more to teach on, but I have gone too long today. If you want to learn more about where sickness came from in the Bible, please come back and read with me again. God Bless!
If you want to continue reading in this series about the origin of sickness and disease, please continue with “Part 2“.
Understanding the Signs of the End of the Age! Great Earthquakes in the Last Days!
Mat 16:3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the subject of the signs of the end times. If you have not read from the beginning of the series I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1“. In the news the last few days the great earthquake in Japan has been very disturbing to many people. However, this is really nothing new, is it? Here we have a major Biblical prophecy unfolding before us and people are very surprised that it is happening. If they would only read their Bibles they have had seen God tell them it was coming. Over the course of the last few years we have had major quakes in Japan, New Zealand, Chile and Haiti. As recently as 2004 we had one of the greatest earthquakes ever registered in the Indian Ocean that caused a massive Tsunami that killed almost a quarter million people. They are predicting that the earthquake in Japan has killed up to 10,000 people. In Chile and New Zealand there were both less than a 1000 deaths. But, in the Haiti earthquake last year there were around 170,000 killed. These are not all of the quakes, just some of the major ones that have made the news because of the deaths and devastations that have occurred. I believe looking back over our history; the largest recorded earthquake occurred around 1964 in Alaska and it measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. So this was less than 50 years ago. While I do not like what is happening, I can read the signs that are being presented to us that the earth is coming to the end of the age. I know there are many confused Christians that do not believe that and I’m sorry that you cannot see the truth. From everything that I have read in the Bible, it is not going to get any better; but, according to God it is going to get much worse. In other words what we have witnessed in the last 50 years is nothing compared to what is about to happen on the earth. I do not want to be a doom and gloom preacher, but I feel like it is somebody’s responsibility to be realistic and warn people of what is coming. I am not here to sell you a book by hyping something up. What I tell is for free. Here is some of the important things that Jesus taught us in the Bible about what is happening right now:
Luk 21:10 Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:
Luk 21:11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
I am not acting as a prophet and telling you what will happen today, I’m simply reading the greatest prophet Jesus and seeing what He said to us. In verse 11 Jesus said there are coming “great earthquakes”. Look up the definition of this word “great”. It is the Greek word “megas” that means big, large and mighty. These are just a few things in the Bible that describe what is happening in the world. All of these could be from a story given on the evening news cast. We have seen wars, but these are nothing compared to what is coming.
1Th 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
God says that there are more wars on the horizon to come and therefore, be warned! Many will die! Be warned! God says that when everyone cries for peace and safety in the world that destruction will fall suddenly upon them. Notice I’m not calling for peace or safety in this blog. Did you notice that? There will be Global climate changes, floods and natural disasters that will cause the world’s food supply to dwindle to nothing. Many will die! Be warned! We are not through with the earthquakes either, there are more big ones coming and many will die. Be warned! Fear will become prevalent with all non-Christians. Be warned!
Luk 21:26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Jesus in the same discourse tells us of great fear that will begin to come on men. This fear will cause their hearts to fail and for them to fall dead in the streets. Do not think this is not happening today, it is all around you. Heart failure is the number one killer in the world. Look it up and see if heart failure is not the leading cause of death in the world today.
Luk 21:25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
The potential for Tsunamis is also a growing threat to many people. If you live near a coast, be warned! If you live near known fault lines then be prepared, it is coming! If the seas and waves are roaring as Jesus had said, then there is something causing them like the Japan earthquake this week. The roaring sea wiped out many things, cities, boats, trains, cars, houses, buildings and these all happened in a matter of seconds.
I do not believe that God is causing these things to happen, but yet God knows that they will happen and He tells us of them before they occur. Always remember that God knows the end from the beginning, so nothing is catching Him by surprise, it is only those who ignore His Word that are caught by surprise. I believe that we are very, very close to the return of Jesus. I saw a man on TV the other day that Jesus appeared to in a vision and told him, tell my people I am coming soon. I don’t know about you, but I believed him. Jesus is preparing those who are listening to be ready. To those who do not believe in the rapture, he is saying this is what will happen and why we are gone. You see when we disappear from the face of the planet, there will be many deceivers trying to tell you what happened to us. Since these people were so easily deceived in not believing in the rapture, I think they will continue to be easily deceived into other lies.
Rev 16:18 And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
Here in this chapter of Revelation, it appears things get dramatically worse. We also seem to see that God has gotten personally involved and has sent angels to pour out the wrath of His fury. God predicts the greatest earthquake in the entire human history is coming in Revelation 16. If you have never read the book of Revelation you are missing a view into a seven year descriptive time that is about to happen. I do not know exactly when it will happen, I just know it is not long from now. So I sound like a “Chicken Little” Christian telling you the sky is falling. If you think this year is bad and the worse that it can get, I can only tell you to ignore me and tell me what happens next year, if I am still here. I am not setting a date, I am not telling you the world is ending tomorrow, I just know things are happening very fast right now. It is like time is accelerating to a climax.
So if you don’t agree with my assessment of the world’s situation from the Bible viewpoint, then that is OK. You do not have to write me a nasty comment. If you just wait a few months we will both see who is right, you or me and you won’t sound like a fool if I’m right. If I am right then I won’t be here to look like a fool, because Jesus said this to me:
Luk 21:28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
Jesus personally told me that when I see these things beginning to happen. Did you notice that? Jesus said this was the beginning and not the end of them, so there are definitely more to come. Do you choose to believe what Jesus is saying to you? I definitely do! Jesus told us, fear not, for when these things start to occur you should look up and see that I am coming. I personally believe that Jesus is coming only for those who are looking for Him. So if you are not looking for Him to come, He will not bother you.
Luk 21:27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
We shall behold Him in His Power and Glory in the sky. Therefore, He is not coming to set foot on the earth this time. This is just a coming to catch away His people from the coming turmoil and destruction that will occur on the earth. I really do not understand why people would not want to believe in the rapture, it is right there in front of them and even Jesus describes it to us. Please be wise and heed the Word of God. These are not my words so I am not offended if you do not believe them. Just know that someone tried to tell you what was happening before it happened and you had a chance to hear it. Do you discern the signs of the times? God Bless you to see them!
Understanding Bible Faith! Great Faith? Even Dogs Eat the Crumbs from the Masters’ Table! Part 11
(Ver 1.3) Today is Part 11 in a series of advanced lessons on Understanding Bible faith. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1”. I think I shocked people with my last Bible lesson on faith and sex. It is amazing how many people read it but did not comment. What do you think when God said you can clearly see the invisible qualities of me in the things that I have made (Romans 1:20)? When I read that verse it made me start looking around at the things that God has made and then I would attempt to learn about God from them, but I guess many people close their eyes and ignore the fact that God made things like sex and marriage and they pretend they don’t exist. As a result they miss the obvious spiritual things in the Bible that God is trying to teach them. You need to start becoming a Sherlock Holmes type of Christian detective and start looking for God in the clues that He has created all around you, for you to find. These are the invisible things of God hidden in plain sight. If you like this series of lessons and have learned something, be brave and leave me a comment.
Faith is a complex subject found in the Bible. God teaches us something about faith in practically every book of the Bible. Faith is a predominate theme of the Bible. Yet so many people do not understand it or they would understand that God says that without it you will never please Him (Heb 11:6). This subject of Bible faith is complex because it involves many other dependent factors and subjects that are also taught in the Bible. In previous lessons, I taught you that everyone in the world has faith in one thing or the other. But, few people have faith in God and His Word. If you believe that Buddha is your way to the state of eternal happiness, then you will soon be very disappointed, but you at least do have faith in Buddha. Jesus the God of the Bible taught us that there is a very narrow way to God that few find and He taught us to search for this path (Mat 7:14). Since we know that Jesus is this path (John 14:6) and that He was the only way to the Father we can have confidence in His words as being faithful and true, if we have believed in Him. Today I heard the national news report on an upcoming book written by a self-proclaimed man of God. You must realize that just because a man says he is a Christian and writes a book, does not mean what is written is based upon the truth. This preacher is teaching people in error and has written a book that claims there is no hell. What an ignorant deceived blind man. Here is what God says about this man’s opinion:
2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
We are living in the last days as this scripture is being fulfilled right now. The sinners of the world are departing rapidly from sound doctrine and they want to exalt men who will teach only what they want to hear. A spirit of tolerance and acceptance is what they are after and they will flock to a deceiver whose lies scratch their itchy ears. Beware when a man ignores a large part of the Bible to teach you another part while misapplying it. The word “hell” occurs over 50 times in the KJV Bible. It is also referred to many other times in other scriptures while not being directly named. For example, Jesus spoke frequently about it, telling you there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there (Mat 8:12, Mat 13:42, 13:50, Mat 22:13, Mat 24:51, Mat 25:30 to show you 6 references found in only 1 book of the Bible).
This blind man is teaching that a loving God would not send people to hell. We obviously understand from scripture that God is love and I do not deny this fact. However, this man has exalted one truth in the Bible and has made it the entire truth and this is a very dangerous type of man to follow. You see he is ignoring the Holiness of God, the Wrath of God, the Power of God, and the Judgments of God in favor of only the Love of God. If you do not balance your theology and teaching with every truth in the Bible you are falling into error and deception. You see, I do not deny the fact that God so loved the world that He gave Himself as a sacrifice for us. What I am teaching you today, is that there is more in the Bible than Love. I’ve already written other Bible lessons on this subject of “Why Do People Go to Hell”, and “The Biblical Evidence for the Existence of Hell”. So if you want to know the truth go and read about it, otherwise I’ll miss you in heaven.
I’m sorry I got off the subject of faith, but liars and deceivers cause me to get into righteous anger. I do not appreciate people who are leading others down a path of destruction simply to sell a book and to make some money. Somebody needs to stand up and tell the truth regardless of what it costs them. I have determined to try to do this. Today’s lesson is about “How to have great faith”. If you have read this series you know that your faith is measureable. You also know that your faith level can vary from none to overflowing. Jesus only looked at two people in the Gospels and told them they had great faith. This was not a derogatory put down; rather it was a praise of the highest magnitude from the Supreme Spiritual Power of the Universe. Jesus tells us very clearly in the Gospels that He was looking for people with faith while He was here on the earth. It further goes on to say that He will be looking for people with faith when He returns for us (Luke 18:8). So it must still be important to learn how to have great faith today. When Jesus ran across individuals who possessed a level of faith that exceeded His expectations, Jesus would stop and marvel saying “I have not found so great of faith in all of Israel”. Therefore, we are going to examine these people that marveled Jesus to find out, why they had such great faith and see if we can become a God marvel also. We will begin with this verse about a woman that caught God’s attention:
Mat 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
I want you to notice in this verse that the Bible says because of this woman’s great faith, her daughter was made whole again. The Greek word translated as “made whole” means to cure or heal. We can therefore conclude the daughter was sick or diseased. The majority of the time when people came to Jesus asking for help it was because they needed physical healing. So today’s lesson is about how to receive healing from God and you might need to know this also, because He is still the same today as He was back then (Heb 13:8). This is actually a very good faith lesson found in the Bible to learn from. We will back up in the chapter and go verse by verse through the information to learn from the context of how this woman possessed such great faith.
Mat 15:21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
Here is Jesus going into the outer fringes of Canaan into the Gentile population. In these days the Jews mostly settled in and around Jerusalem, but the cities outside of this realm were heavily populated with the Gentile nations. I want to point out that Tyre and Sidon are not even close to Jerusalem. The cities were on the Mediterranean coast nearly 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee through mountainous terrain. Jesus was obviously getting far away from the Jews to be in such a place. It also had to take Jesus significant time to travel to reach this area. You might recall that I have said before that God will move heaven and earth to get to someone with faith and I believe that Jesus is not in this area by chance or accident. Keep this in mind as we continue through the lesson.
Mat 15:22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
Now we are told about the woman for the first time. She is being described to us as a person that is from the coast. She is also described to be a Canaanite which is the greater region’s name sake. Canaan consists of a broad stretch of land and is often called Palestine by many non-Jewish people. This is a wide land area that encompasses land from south of Jerusalem all the way to the north where Tyre and Sidon are located. We know from Genesis 9:18 that Canaan was a son of Ham, one of the three sons of Noah saved in the ark by God. So the Canaanites were descendants from this branch of the family of Noah. It is also interesting to note that in Genesis 9 that Canaan is cursed to be a servant of his brothers by Noah. These are just interesting Bible background facts that are good to note. When I read this story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew, I wondered how the description and message of Jesus had reached a woman all the way on the coast. It is obvious that news traveled in this land even without cell phones. Also note that she is not a Jew, but she calls Jesus the Son of David a covenant title of respect and honor. It also implies that she understood what God had said to David in the O.T. that David’s Son would sit on his throne forever. God had told David that his son would build God a house for His name and He would sit upon your throne. I also wondered how she knew it was Jesus. Was it the presence of the disciples with Jesus or was it what He was wearing, or how He was acting or speaking? Jesus obviously did not walk around with a giant name tag hanging around his neck saying “I’m the Son of David Your Messiah”. Neither was Jesus identifiable by a halo around His head. The angels of the Lord did not surround Him with a visible wall of protection and His appearance had to resemble every other man. It does not say that Jesus has spoken or taught anyone directly in this area. I could only find the following scripture about Tyre and Sidon in Mark:
Mar 3:8 And from Jerusalem, and from Idumaea, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.
It would appear that information about Jesus spread by word of mouth. I could not find a direct reference where Jesus ever taught in these cities, yet it clearly says the people there heard of Him and came looking for Him. So when a stranger comes to your town, do you automatically assume it is Jesus the Messiah? I honestly do not know how to answer that question. There was something that this woman must have heard about Him to cause her to know it was Him. We have learned that the Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So we can easily assume that since Jesus said this woman had faith, she must have heard the Word of God at some time in her recent past. We are told that she comes to Jesus and asks Him to deliver her daughter from a devil. What was Jesus’ reaction to the words of this woman? This is where the story starts to really get good to me.
Mat 15:23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
Silence was the answer from the Master. That is not what she was after, was it? The disciples who were with Jesus asked Him to send her away. They think that they are the reason for her presence, but they are clearly confused. She had not said anything to them at all. I want to introduce you to a new factor for having great faith and a new partner to receiving anything from God. What does it take to come and ask anyone for help? In the world we live in there are homeless people everywhere you turn. What does it take for them to ask for help? Wow, that is a tough question for people with pride to answer. You can clearly understand that it takes humility to come to ask anyone for help. Of course if you are desperate then you might say people act out of desperation. But, even desperate people can die with pride and not ask for help. No, you have to humble yourself to ask anyone who is capable of helping to help. There is no room for having pride if you need something from God. If you are too proud to ask God to help you, then you are truly in trouble. The Bible says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6). So if you are need of anything that God can do for you, please learn to come to Him in reverent humility. Watch the actions and words of this woman and see what you can learn about what your ways should be.
Mat 15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Jesus finally speaks and says something very strange. He tells the woman that He was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That is a very revealing insightful statement about many things, especially since we see the fact that Jesus purposely left the lost sheep of Israel to get to where this woman was. What is a lost sheep of Israel? First, the name implies that they are no longer in the house of Israel, because they have wandered away and become lost. Do you understand the conflict that is arising in what Jesus has said? Where is Jesus right now? Who is Jesus speaking to? Jesus is in a Gentile costal village of people who He just said He was not sent to. Wow, is God confused? I don’t think so! What we understand from this lesson is that faith will cause God to go out of His way to help someone no matter who it is or how far He has to go. Next notice this, what was the woman’s reaction to the words of Jesus? Jesus had basically told her I was not sent to help you.
Mat 15:25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
Here is where her humility begins to kick in and to shine. Notice how she remained focused, persistent and confident that she was in the right place at the right time. This woman did not give up, nor did she throw away what she had heard because of what she is experiencing right now. You should learn from this woman all that you can to duplicate her efforts. Also notice she is worshipping God. If you want to receive from God, learn to worship Him. If it could not get worse for this woman, it suddenly does:
Mat 15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
Jesus calls this woman a dog and that would cause most religious people to get angry and start yelling about “Who do you think you are?” “Who do you think you are calling a dog?” If Jesus called you a dog, what would have been your reaction? Here is a golden opportunity to get offended at the word of God. Do you know that people getting easily offended is one of the greatest enemies to why they do not possess the Promises of God? I guess I didn’t teach on this enemy before. Offense is a powerful weapon of Satan. Take and learn from this woman, she is not angry, upset, offended nor does she get up to walk away from her answer. This woman was too smart and wise to allow the words of God to offend her and she says this:
Mat 15:27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
This woman simply agrees with God and said you are right I am a dog, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the masters’ table. WOW! Was that a great reaction or what? You see if you have ever had a dog in the house while you are eating supper you know exactly what she is saying. Children and people accidently drop things off of the table and before you can bend over and pick it up they are gone. A crumb falling from the table is not there long enough to be a problem. Learn what she is saying today. The dog is so focused on getting anything dropped, they do not care what it is and it can be a very small crumb and they are all over it. Do you see why this woman is about to receive from God? She is the dog looking for the crumb. Always agree with God and always stay on God’s side. If He calls you a dog, you just smile and agree. Of course if you are His child now, He is not going to call you a dog, just learn what is happening here and do not get easily side tracked.
What is Jesus teaching us in this faith lesson? Do you remember what the woman came for? Her daughter was being grievously vexed by a devil. What does that mean? By looking up the words “grievously vexed by a devil” in the Strong’s we learn that the child was possessed by an evil spirit that caused her to be greatly sick or diseased. We understand one of the reasons that Jesus came to the earth was to do the following:
Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
The Bible tells us very clearly that Jesus was anointed by God to heal those oppressed of the devil. So when a woman comes to Jesus because her daughter is possessed by a devil that makes her sick, this is one of the reasons we are told that Jesus was here. However, notice again what Jesus said in Matthew 15:26. He said “I have the children’s bread and it is not for dogs”. Remember she is asking for Jesus to heal her daughter and Jesus says this “bread” is only for the “children”. Do you understand what Jesus is saying? Jesus is saying healing is the children’s bread. This of course is a hard saying of Jesus to fully comprehend. The woman is talking about healing and Jesus is talking about bread. How did He make that transition? It is clear to me that Jesus is not speaking of physical bread, butHe is speaking symbolically of something spiritual. Therefore we must determine what this spiritual bread is? This is why you have to use the Bible to interpret the Bible or you will be totally confused.
Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Here is Jesus teaching us using another radical shift with the transition of words. Here we have God in the flesh beginning to talk about natural bread and then moving into the spiritual realm and telling you that the Word of God is this true bread from heaven that will cause you to live. Jesus is basically revealing the definition of spiritual bread in this verse. God’s word is proclaimed to be this spiritual food. Of course Jesus is simply quoting this information from an Old Testament prophet Moses found in Deuteronomy 8:3. If you read this verse you will know that the bread from heaven was a type of food given to the children of Israel called manna. This was equivalent to a spiritual food source and Jesus teaches us that this bread comes from the mouth of God when He speaks.
Joh 6:32 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven.
If you read the context of this verse you can clearly see that Jesus is comparing two things. Natural things are being compared to spiritual things. Jesus is calling natural things false and spiritual things to be the true. I hope you can see this. Here is God telling you something very significant about spiritual things. Jesus is saying I have come to bring you the words of life. Jesus is inferring His words have life in them that causes people to live and even to get healed. Here is an Old Testament scripture that will fit in very nicely with our study today:
Psa 107:20 He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.
As you can again see from this verse, God says “I sent my Bread and the bread Healed them”. So when Jesus is telling the Gentile woman that healing is the children’s bread, He is referring to His words as being the bread of life that brings healing. Jesus then told the woman these words are only for the children at the table. But, the woman makes a statement that truly astounds God. She said it won’t take but a crumb from the table to heal my daughter. This is so powerful if you can see it. The woman did not ask for any of the bread, she only needed a crumb and God called this having great faith. The woman recognized that the Power of God was in His Word and that it did not take great power to heal even a significant disease. Change your perspective today to see your disease as insignificant compared to the power of God which is far superior. Many times people are so consumed by their circumstances they lose sight of the power of God’s Word. Shift your focus so that you understand that it does not take very much power to heal any disease. You only need a crumb like this woman needed to fix her problem. God called this great faith. If you noticed this story of the woman, she went away to her home and her daughter was healed already when she got there. Here is a review of the key factors we learned in this faith lesson today:
- Humility, Stay Humble to Receive God’s Grace.
- Persistence, don’t give up even if it looks worse.
- Not being offended when you are called a dog.
- Worship the God who can solve your problem.
- See your problem as being small and insignificant.
- See the Word of God as Powerful and capable of solving any problem.
- Expect a Crumb to solve Your Problem.
Today’s study was another very different faith lesson found in the Bible about the faith of dogs eating crumbs from the table of the Master. Remember what Jesus said? Jesus told us that “Healing was the children’s bread”. Are you one of His children? I know that I am. The Bible calls us His children in several places for example: Romans 8:16-21, 9:26, Galatians 3:26, Ephesians 5:8, 1 Thessalonians 5:5 and 1 John 3:10. If God calls us children and God says “healing is our bread” now, then why don’t we have it? You better learn to partake of the true bread from heaven. I hope and pray that you learned something from this lesson today and that you can apply it to your situation. If the Word of God is not relevant to you today then it will never be relevant to you at any time. You may not need healing, but there is always something that can be challenging you. The Bible faith concepts work for whatever the situation when applied correctly with the right attitude. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lesson on understanding Bible faith you may go to “Part 12“.
Understanding Bible Faith! Are You Expecting? How Far Along Are You? Part 10
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 10 in a series of advanced lessons on Understanding Bible faith. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1”. These words in my title ask some specific questions that you might ask a pregnant woman. Did you know that God created these natural processes to mimic and reveal to us the spiritual process of having faith? You might be amazed to find the parallels in the Bible to these two realities, if you search for them and you can see the connections being taught. Hopefully I will not get to graphic today, but this is a mature Christian subject since I might have to discuss sex. I am personally glad that God created sex and not me. Since it was nothing that I invented it is nothing that I can take credit for. Obviously God created this activity for the bonds of covenant marriage and I might talk about that today also. Do you recall how people get faith? If you do, then make the transition to this next question. How does a woman normally get pregnant? You see my difficulty beginning to teach this subject today, don’t you? In the modern world this can happen artificially, but in the world created by God if there was no sex, there were no babies. We can tell by the nearly 7 billion people and growing on the planet that there has been a lot of sex. Well today I am going to teach you about the spiritual concept revealed in sex and pregnancy that corresponds to God’s spiritual development of you having faith in God. So natural babies, start by people having sex. That is a basic viewpoint that seems rather obvious to me, but yet on the news and in our government they seem to forget this fact when it comes to allowing abortion. If there was no sex there would be no abortions in the world and nobody wants to talk about that. Oh well, I guess I better not go there today or I’ll get off track again.
The concept of the husband sowing seed into his wife to have children is definitely a self-sustaining and self-perpetuating God created design of nature. If you have never read my Bible lessons on “Understanding Seeds” then you might not understand that the sperm of a man is called his seed. The human sperm is the natural seed of human life and it is required to perpetuate our race. Calling multiple things by the same name “seed” is a complex technique used by God to conceal and reveal spiritual information in the Bible. God uses the word “seed” to refer to around 10 different things in the Bible and all of these while different are very similar in design. You see the “Word of God” is also called the “Seed of God” in Mark 4:14 and Luke 8:11. We understand that God is a Spirit so God’s words are spiritual in nature. Jesus said “the words that I speak unto you they are Spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). We can therefore, conclude that God’s Words are the spiritual seeds of life. We are already beginning to establish a direct connection between natural things and spiritual things by God’s interchangeable usage of the word “Seed”. You might recall that in an earlier Bible lesson I taught you where Bible faith comes from. Let’s review a verse that I gave you before:
Rom 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
How does faith come? It comes by you hearing God’s Seed! Did you get the transition that I just made? I can legally interchange “Seed” for “Word” by the laws of mathematics created by God. If you do not understand these laws then you have never taken an Algebra class or you took the class and you didn’t learn anything from it. What God is telling you, is that planting God’s Spiritual Seed into your heart (spirit) is the equivalent to a husband planting seed into his wife and them having a baby. You plant a seed and you get a crop. It is a basic design from God and it is really not that complicated.
Psa 62:5 My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.
You see there are many strange verses found in the Bible that can literally be taken several different ways simultaneously. This one in Psalms is no different. Here is a verse that speaks of someone expecting from God. This is the same concept that my wife told me when she said “you are the reason that I am expecting”. Since I am teaching on the subject of being spiritually pregnant with the Word of God, what does a spiritual pregnancy infer? Technically speaking if you have faith, you are expecting God to do what He has promised. This is the concept of being spiritually pregnant. Now, this concept is certainly more familiar to women, but yet if your wife has been pregnant you have at least an external perspective of the situation. What occurs when a woman gets pregnant? Things inside her begin to change and as time goes along, there is a growing force of eager expectation for the baby to come to fruition. This concept is really no different than a farmer planting a field with a crop seed. He plants the seed into the ground and then goes into expectation mode to wait for the crop to produce so he can harvest it. Harvest time is akin to delivery time in a pregnancy. This is the basis of Bible faith also. God is revealing to you that you better be expecting His word to come to pass. A woman is expecting to be delivered of her child when the time arrives and so it is with having faith. If you expect God to deliver you from your current situation, then He will, however if you do not expect God to do anything then He will do that also.
Pro 10:28 The hope of the righteous shall be gladness: but the expectation of the wicked shall perish.
If you do not look up the definitions of the words in the verses that you read in the Bible, then you can easily miss what God is trying to say to you. Unless you know Hebrew or Greek and can read the original languages, you need to study to figure out what is being stated. There are just too many translation errors in every version of the Bible for you not to do this research. This is the case for this verse, because the Hebrew word translated as “hope” is a word that means “to expect” or “expectation”. This word expresses a human response of “waiting patiently”. Uh oh? That is a problem for many Christians, isn’t it? We have just introduced a new key word to the faith equation of believing God. God is teaching you that sometimes things take time. Most people understand that a woman’s pregnancy term can vary, but that it generally takes 9 months to produce a healthy child. So it is also with crops planted by the farmer in his field. No seed planted is going to instantly produce the end result immediately. Before the concept of harvest occurs there is always seed planting and a duration of time that occurs where we wait patiently for the result. This is why many people start out walking by faith and then they give up because they think it is not working. I have heard many faith critics teach against faith simply because they do not understand the complex dependent factors of how faith works. These types of teachers obviously teach out of ignorance to their own downfall.
It is also important to note the difference between waiting patiently and waiting anxiously. If you are worried you are not in faith. If you are nervous, then you are not in faith. If you are in fear, then you are not in faith. Waiting patiently is another demonstration of having confidence in God. If you are confident in God’s ability, power and His word then you are waiting patiently. If you are worried or anxious if God is really going to do what He said, then you are about to abort your miracle. Fortunately for Christians, patience is a fruit of the Spirit. So learn to develop patients when standing on the word of God.
Heb 6:12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Here is a verse that certainly applies to our series about faith and possessing the Promised Land. God is taking and connecting two different factors to produce one positive result. Faith is intertwined with patience for you to inherit the promises of God. So patience is a key ingredient in your successful positive outcome. This is why the Word of God is so complicated. It takes several simple concepts or ingredients to mix together to produce a good result. That is why I could not teach you everything all at once. It would have been too complicated and overwhelming. So I try to introduce you to new concepts in stages so that you learn in manageable chunks of information. Today subject is primarily about expectation and expectancy but you can see we just learned about a higher dimension of how patience plays a vital role in waiting for the harvest or the delivery.
Rom 4:18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.
Here in this chapter of Romans, God gives us a major faith example for us to live and learn by. God is speaking of the faith of Abraham. Here was a man who was 99 years old with a 90 year old barren wife and God told him that I have made you a father of many nations. If a human situation ever looked hopeless, Abraham’s situation was there for an example for us. This verse says that “against hope, Abraham still had hope”. However, this word for hope is not our modern word for hope. When people in the modern world say “I really hope so”, they are meaning to say “I wish it were so”. Abraham did not wish he would become the father of the promised child, this word says Abraham “expected” it to happen. There was a level of expectancy within the spirit of Abraham that was conceived by the Word of God spoken to him. This is an example of a spiritual pregnancy test that you should be taking on yourself today. When a woman in the modern world thinks she is pregnant, there are things she can buy at the drug store that can be used to determine if she is pregnant. These are natural “pregnancy tests” that confirm what she already thought was happening. So I am making another spiritual transition from a physical reality and telling you that you need to do a spiritual pregnancy test to see if you are in faith. If you do not have the promise of God in your spirit you need to get it into your spirit by speaking it to yourself as Abraham did. Abraham went around calling himself the “father of nations” as his name in Hebrew meant. This seed that was placed in Abraham’s heart developed and grew into a strong belief that God’s word was true despite the outward circumstances and appearances. This is a faith lesson for you in your current circumstances. No matter what it looks like on the outside, you need to look to the picture of a successful outcome on the inside of you. If you are sick, you call yourself well. If you are poor, you call yourself rich. You do what God did for Abraham by saying what God said about you.
Gal 4:19 My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,
Paul of course was a man of God and that means he was a human male. Yet Paul still compares the process taking place inside of him as an internal conception and birth process. There are actually two conceptions being spoken of in this verse. Paul had conceived and Paul was waiting for the people in Galatia to conceive and for Christ to be formed within them. If we are looking at spiritual births, we must back up and see the steps that must have occurred for Paul to give birth spiritually speaking. Paul is using his faith for the good of the people in Galatia. However, this process is referred to in the terms of a child birth. It is not a natural process it is a spiritual process that parallels the natural. The Word of God is sown in the hearts of men and after time it produces the result of the word that was sown. In other words if you need a specific answer to prayer, you better go get the specific promises of God Word that says you have it. You put it into your heart and allow it to conceive there. If you keep it in your heart and do not abort it, it will produce the result that you desired by faith. I’ll give you one more example before I wrap this lesson up today. Here are a couple of verses that demonstrate the spiritual concept of the heart giving birth that I have been teaching on, but in the reverse. You see these are negative things that your heart can also produce:
Isa 59:4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
Jas 1:15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
As you can clearly read God is speaking of a conception in the human spirit again, but this time it is of lust and iniquity. We learn several things from these verses. We learn the spirit of people can conceive either good or evil. Do you remember the lesson that I taught on seeds? One of these lessons I taught on the seed parable that Jesus instructed us about the wheat and the tares. The Wheat was produced by the Word/Seed of God and the tares were produced by an enemy sowing evil seed. You heart is the soil and the words you allow into it are the crops that are producing either the good or the evil in your life. What did God tell Adam in Genesis 2? God said do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or you will surely die. We obviously learn that Adam lusted and ate of the tree of evil and thus conceived and gave birth to death. You see Adam could have chosen life, but his heart caused him to make the wrong choice and die (Gen 2:17). You today have been given a redo opportunity by God. Since Jesus came to the earth and redeemed us from the hand of Satan, we now have the opportunity to conceive life within us. Remember what Jesus taught us? Jesus said in John 10:10 that “I have come that you might have life and that life more abundantly”. Yet here we are still downcast and trodden by the misconceptions of deceit from Satan that it can’t get any better than what we have in our life right now. This is not true however, since God has given us His promises to possess. These promises of God can produce the life that we need today to change our circumstances around. If Abraham would have looked at the circumstances he would have given up. But, since Abraham called himself a father of nations before he was one, he conceived it in his heart by faith and Sarah birthed the promised child. Do you think that God is talking about Abraham and Sarah getting pregnant and having a child by accident or chance? God is making a direct connection between natural pregnancy and that of spiritual pregnancy and you have to learn how to get spiritually pregnant by faith. Let me expound on this point in conclusion. If you understand natural things you know that the human male places literally millions of sperm cells inside of a woman. Why did God do it this way when all it takes is one to get the result you desire? After all there is only one egg and not millions of eggs in the woman. God is giving you a spiritual lesson in this natural information. There is only one spirit inside of your body and if you want to get it pregnant you better bombard it with a lot of the Word of God. God’s Word is God’s Seed and Jesus taught us that from the abundance of the heart, things come out of it (Mat 12:34). Whatever you put abundantly in your hear is what you will get it to produce. If you want to follow after the wrong things in life God will allow this to happen. You can conceive the wrong things in your spirit and die or you can put the Word of God there to give birth to good things. This is how spiritual things work. If you know how to have sex, then you know how to get faith and give birth to the promises of God. Genesis 4:1 says “Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived…”. Do you know God? Do you know God’s word? Then it will conceive in your heart if you allow it to work and stay there the same way. Get to know the Word of God and see if it will not produce life. We still have a lot more to talk about in this series so come back expecting to learn. God Bless you until next time!
If you would like to continue learning in this series, please continue reading with “Part 11“.
Understanding Bible Faith! My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me? Part 9
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 9 in a series of advanced lessons on Understanding Bible Faith. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go and start with “Part 1”. Today’s lesson is about having faith when it looks like it is not working. We all struggle in this area at some point of time in our lives. If you think you are different than everybody else, then you are deceived. You can go through the Bible and read over and over about the stories of men who did great things for God and see that God had done great things for them and they all at one time or the other struggled to say, “God where are you?”. One of the greatest prophets of God was Elijah. He called down fire from God to consume the prophets of Baal. Elijah stopped it from raining on the earth for three and half years and then commanded it to rain and it rained. After all of these things, Elijah went into the wilderness downcast and depressed and asked God to kill him. I am always amazed when I read the Gospels about Jesus hanging on the cross (Mat 27:46). Here is the God of my Salvation dying on the cross for me and He says in the Hebrew tongue “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? These words are translated as “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” Wow, I have difficulty comprehending that! You should read through the Psalms of David and see how many times it looks like David is alone and in despair trying to encourage himself in the Lord. David’s confidence level, clearly was feigning and wavering in the face of his circumstances. In fact these words spoken by Jesus on the cross were originally written down by David in Psalm 22:1. Remember David was the one that killed the lion, the bear and then the giant Goliath. But, yet when he was alone in a cave hiding from Saul, he felt despair. We can see that it does not matter how many great things that God has done, we can all feel like we have been left alone. What we learn is that there will always come times when life’s situations will seem overwhelming to us. I have been there and I’m sure you have been there also. Perhaps you are there today and that is why God is using me to write to you. In this world there are events occurring daily that are extremely troubling. Prices are rising, people are losing jobs, there are wars and riots all over the world, and there are earthquakes and death everywhere. It is very easy to get into despair. In the past few weeks, I have been teaching a series of lessons on having Bible faith in God’s Word. As part of the lessons I taught that having confidence in God is an essential element to having success. If the woman with the issue of blood did not have any confidence in what she heard about Jesus, she would not have gone fighting through the crowd to get her healing. If you have no confidence then you have no faith. So you should judge yourself and see where your confidence in God is on a daily basis. You might have great confidence today and no confidence tomorrow. You cannot judge your current confidence level upon your past experiences as you have learned from the examples of David and Elijah. Today I am doing what I am teaching you to do, I am checking up on my confidence level to see if I am where I need to be.
1Jn 5:14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:
Here is the first great faith verse to know and to understand about prayer. This verse speaks of you having confidence. This verse is talking about prayer to God and asking for Him to do something for you. But, it qualifies the fact that there is a correct prayer and there is an incorrect prayer. God informs us that you better only ask Him for something that is His will or He will not even hear our prayer. How do we know what to pray for then based upon that? If you recall in my Faith series, I taught you about possessing the Promised Land. We are supposed to go through the Bible and learn what God has promised to us and only then will we know what His will is. God’s will is always based upon God’s word. You see if you are praying for God to heal you today, I’m sorry but you may not have any confidence in God. Are you asking according to His will? If you are what scriptures are you using to base your confidence? What is the will of God for healing you? Do you have any divine promises that says He will heal you? If you can quote the verses to me, then you have a sound foundational basis for having confidence, if you cannot quote them and you have to go look them up, then you have no confidence because you do not know what God has spoken.
It is like a man who prays for salvation from God. He is very sincere and he opens his mouth and says “God please save me” over and over again. What is God’s reaction to that type of prayer? I believe that God will say “I came to the earth, I died on the cross, and I shed my blood for your salvation already, what do you expect me to do now?” God would also say “I already did save you; my part is done now you do your part and receive it”. I heard a story of a man who kept telling a preacher, “When God gets ready he will save me”. This preacher tried to tell the man that God had done His part to save him already. But, the man just kept believing, that God was going to save him some day. When this man was very old lying on his death bed he still believed the same thing and died and went to hell. When people think and believe wrong they do without the blessing of God. If you are waiting on God to do something, you are thinking wrong and you better learn to change to see that God has already given you the Promised Land and He is waiting on you to possess it. These are examples of praying in error, believing in error and doing without. When you pray and ask for something that God says has already been given to you then you are basically saying to God “I don’t believe you Lord”; “Please give me the Promised Land”. God is still going to tell you “It is yours already”. But, you are going to say I’m still in the wilderness and I don’t have it and God is going to say by faith you do. That is one of the primary problems that Christians have today, God says by faith you will possess it and by having no faith you will miss out on it and die in the wilderness.
1Jn 5:15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.
If you actually know something then you can have great confidence in it happening. However, it depends upon who is speaking to you, doesn’t it? If I told you that I will meet tomorrow in Washington D.C. at the capitol rotunda, would you have any confidence of the meeting happening? Not, if you do not know me. You see you are only going to have confidence in those that you know who are faithful and true. If you do not know that God is faithful and true then you will have no confidence in Him answering your prayer either. So what did we just learn about how to pray with confidence?
- Find the Bible promises that have been given to you.
- Put them into your heart by speaking them to yourself over and over.
- Pray in faith according to the promise that was given to you believing you receive it.
- Since you prayed and asked God knowing His will, you now know the Bible says God heard you.
- Since you know God heard you, you now know that you have what you asked for by faith.
- Therefore, you don’t pray and ask God for it again tomorrow because it looks like it didn’t happen.
- What I like to do is to thank God for giving me the answer, even though I do not see it in the natural yet.
- Then once it does show up in the natural, then I fight to hold on to it so that Satan does not come to try to take it away from me.
It sounds easy until you realize that it takes time for the answer to arrive from God. When Daniel prayed to God and asked for a simple answer, he waited and fasted for three weeks and finally the angel of God arrived with the answer. I do not know how long it would have taken if it was a really big thing that Daniel needed, but it makes me wonder. We like to think that God is omnipotent and can just cause things to happen instantly. But, this is not what the Bible teaches us. The angel told Daniel the very day you prayed I was sent by God, but the prince of Persia withstood me so that I could not come (Dan 10:13). You see there are spiritual forces other than God in the world and these are not on God’s side. These evil spirits are set to destroy you, kill you and steal from you and they are doing everything in their power to cause God’s blessings not to come to you. These are some of the spiritual giants of the Promised Land that will come to try to keep you out. So just because you pray according to the will of God and you know that He heard you, you will be presented a daily challenge for a time to believe that you have what God has given to you. This is why God says for you to Fight the Good Fight of Faith (1 Tim 6:12). Faith is a spiritual fight to possess the Promised Land and you are responsible for this fight. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph 6:12).
When praying and asking God for anything and it does not happen in a reasonable timeframe, learn to recognize where the problem lies. If you have prayed for something for 10 years and God is still silent about it, then God is not the problem you are. I once heard a minister say this; “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. This same minister said if I pray and God does not answer in a short time, then I change and find out what I’m doing wrong. You see God tells us that He is always faithful and God says He does not ever change (Mal 3:6). So if God is not changing where does the change need to occur in order for you to see your miracle? Wow, I said some really important things today, but this is one of the greatest ones that you need to learn quickly. Quit praying for things that God has already said “I’ve done that!”. Quit praying for the same thing over and over. Either get into faith and receive the answer from God or start to realize that you may just be wasting your breath.
Pro 3:26 For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.
Pro 14:26 In the fear of the LORD is strong confidence: and his children shall have a place of refuge.
Here are just a couple of verses about having confidence in God. It appears to me that having confidence in God helps to save us from trouble. God speaks of a place of refuge which is like a safe house in a major storm. God speaks of not being taken, and that is again speaking of being kept safe. Perhaps I should discuss a little bit about what “confidence” is. If I have confidence in someone, then I can put my trust in them. This is the common bond to a healthy marriage. When each spouse trusts the other, they have confidence in their decisions and actions that they are true. If you spouse is unfaithful you learn very quickly that trust is gone. This is our relationship with God also. We have a covenant with the Most High God. In the eyes of God this is a marriage contract built on mutual trust. I hope you understand these concepts. If you do not, go and read my Bible lessons on “Understanding Covenants”.
Rth 2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.
You see the trust concept plays a huge role in your relationship with God. The better you know Him the more you will learn to trust Him. The less you know Him the minimum amount of confidence you will have in Him. I believe God understands the concept that trust grows. Here in this verse in Ruth, God is saying that the woman Ruth has grown to trust in the God of Israel. After all she was a Gentile who was not in covenant with Him. She had no basis for having any confidence in the God of Israel. Yet she by faith learned to grow in trust of the Lord and became one of the women in the lineage of Jesus.
Pro 30:5 Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him.
God is telling you that you can trust His words. You can put your full confidence in what God says. This is a basic model of having faith in a God that you cannot see and cannot prove exists, yet you believe He will do what He said He will do. I will tell you today that God will move heaven and earth for any man or woman on the earth that will believe Him.
2Ch 16:9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.
This verse tells me that God is searching for someone to bless. It clearly tells us the eyes of God are in heavy search mode looking for someone. What have we learned from reading the Bible is the key determining factor to whether God does anything for anybody on the earth? You better say it is because they had faith. You can go and read Hebrews chapter 11 and see that God’s Faith hall of fame encompasses most of the famously named individuals who did great exploits for God in the Old Testament. God lists these people to show you that faith was the determining factor for their success in life. The basis of their success however was also because they had great confidence in their God and His ability to save and deliver them. So we are not putting our confidence in ourselves or our ability to do anything, we are merely exalting God to His rightful place as the source of all of our confidence and trust.
I had a man today, write me and tell me I sounded arrogant in what I teach. This man clearly did not understand the concept of confidence and trust. If I taught things that I learned on my own abilities then I would be having confidence in me and that would be arrogance and foolishness. However, I teach things that God has taught me and therefore I have learned that I can depend upon Him and put all my confidence in Him so sometimes I come across sounding arrogant to narrow minded people, but hopefully to others, they will also see that they can learn to have the same level of confidence that I possess and grow in it to become even greater. I am not talking about me or you being great, I’m talking about our confidence in God being great and growing. You can learn to have confidence in God also and someday you will see that you may also sound a little arrogant. Just do not confuse arrogance with confidence because they both sound very similar to the untrained ear. You can learn to trust Him. But, you are going to have to find out what He said in His word in order to do this. Read the Bible like it is a personal letter written only to you. Claim what you need and then go and possess it. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about faith then go to “Part 10“.
Understanding Bible Faith! The Spiritual Enemies to Your Faith? Part 8
(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 8 in a series of very advanced studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be a continuation of the lesson that I taught on last time about Using Your Faith to Possess the Promised Land. In this lesson the Promised Land was described to us to be entering God’s Rest found in Hebrews 3 and 4. What we discovered was that the children of Israel coming out of Egypt represented a natural type of the spiriutal church and God’s salvation from Satan and the world of darkness. We definitely learn from this type that salvation was not the end of the Christian journey, but rather the beginning of our spiritual walk through the wilderness where we hear and learn the Word of God personally. You might recall that after the children of Israel left Egypt they had to go through the Red Sea that was parted for them by the hand of God. We are taught in the N.T. that this was a type of natural baptism into Moses that corresponds to Christians that are now spiritually baptized into Christ during salvation (1 Cor 10:2). The symbolism in this O.T. story is quite extensive and has many applications and lessons for the church. The Red Sea is really a type of the Blood of Christ that we have been baptized into. The cloud by day and the fire by night is a type of the leading of the Holy Spirit today in the church. The Bible tells us that those who are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). Just as the cloud led the children of Israel through the wilderness, so the Holy Spirit leads us today. The Promised Land in the story of the children of Israel represents the promises of God that God has given to the church to possess today. You see, the truth of Christianity is not about the promises that we make to God, it is really much more about the promises that God has already made to us. Just as God told Israel “I have given you the land”, God is saying to the church “I have given you the victory over poverty, sickness, emotional despair, distress and the other things that He has given to us as promises in His Word” and we are to go into the this spiritual land and take them by our faith. Here is another interesting parallel. The children of Israel wandered for 40 years into the wilderness until finally a generation came along to possess the promise land. If you consider the church age has been going on for approximately 40 Jubilees then you will realize that we are the spiritual generation prophesied to take the Promised Land. A Jubilee is a 50 year period where God’s plan has recorded many secret parallels. If you multiply 40 x 50 you get 2000 years. All of these are amazing parallels that speak that we are God’s people that will take the land already given to us. Here are just a few of the promises of God found in the Old Testament. I will give you these as examples so that you know what to look for.
Pro 1:23 “I will make known my words unto you”.
Joel 2:25 “I will restore to you the years..”
Joel 2:28 “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh…”
Jer 30:17 “I will restore health to you and I will heal thee of your wounds…”
Jer 33:6 “I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth”.
Nah 1:13 “For now will I break his yoke from off thee, and will burst thy bonds in sunder”.
Zec 3:4 “I will clothe thee with a change of raiment”.
Whenever God tells you that He will do something, these represent God’s promises that have been given to you and He is committed to fulfill them. These are just a few of the promises of God found in His Word that can be possessed by men and women in the earth, if they mix their faith with them. Just as we learned that Israel was given the Promised Land, they did not possess it because God says they did not mix any faith with the Gospel that was spoken to them (Heb 4:2); this still applies to you today also. The only way to possess the promises of God that have already been given to you is by you mixing your faith to possess them. I’m sorry I sometimes repeat myself, but I want you to get it. Hopefully you have read all of these faith lessons in the series and you have been taking notes so that you can learn this important subject. In my opinion, Faith is one of the top three subjects that every Christian should know completely. We have found that faith is more complex than just simply believing in something or someone. We have seen that faith involves several independent subjects working together in harmony to produce a positive result. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
Just as the children of Israel sent spies into the Promised Land to investigate their possession, we can do the same still today using God’s word. You see the spies of Israel went in and found giants and these are a type of something in our Promised Land. There are still many spiritual enemies trying to intimidate you and to try to keep you from walking in the victory that God has already given to you. Today I will be the spy that gives you the report of these enemies and what you do with this information is up to you, just like it was up to the children of Israel what they did. I plan on being a type of Joshua and not a type of the ten spies with the evil report, but hopefully you will learn what to do. The first spiritual enemy that I want to discuss is the giant of ignorance. Here is one of my favorite Bible verses because of what God teaches us:
Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
To be destroyed is the opposite of being victorious so this sound like it applies to our story of the children of Israel and why they died in the wilderness. Ignorance is the opposite of possessing knowledge. What we have here is one of the primary reasons that God’s people are defeated easily. God reveals to us (His New Covenant People) that we will also be destroyed if we remain ignorant and unlearned. Therefore, the knowledge of God should be the number one goal for the people of God. Let’s put this into context with the subject of having faith. We learned that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:17). So if we have not heard the Word of God it is impossible to have any faith. If you have not heard the Word of God, then you are ignorant of the Word of God and therefore you are easily defeated. In order to not be ignorant you are going to have to hear from God and this involves Him teaching you His knowledge.
Pro 11:9 An hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.
God gives us clues in the Bible and here is one of them that I am attempting to teach you about today. God is saying that “knowledge” will cause His people to be delivered from their adversary. It is very obvious to me that the lack of knowledge is being stated as one of the key factors to why you are defeated. Because you never knew or understood what faith was, you were constantly defeated. But, now that you are learning about faith you are a potential threat to the enemy of ignorance and Satan. You see Satan wants you ignorant. He is doing all that he can to keep you from knowing the truth. As long as you are ignorant of the truth you are no threat of taking the Promised Land. Knowing this fact alone should cause you to become a more diligent Bible student. You should try to do what I do and spend hours a day in the Word of God. I know in today’s busy world this is almost impossible, but learn what God said in Proverbs “The knowledge of God is greater than obtaining gold” (Prov 8:10). You see God is saying knowing His word should be your number one priority above you working to get rich. Please understand that God does not care if you are rich, but know this that He does cares if you are ignorant. One of the wealthiest men in the entire Bible was Solomon. His wealth is still spoken of today. However please note how Solomon got this way. Solomon wrote some of the greatest wisdom books found in the Bible. Therefore, Solomon had the wisdom of God and this caused him to be rich mentally and physically. This ought to tell you something about you knowing the ways of God that it will cause you to become wealthy. Israel was primarily defeated in the wilderness because of their ignorance. So ignorance is the first giant of faith land that is attempting to defeat you. Let’s move on to the next giant in the land.
The next spiritual giant that will come against you is the giant of “fear”. The ten spies of Israel brought back an evil report and their words caused fear to spread throughout the people. It was this fear that caused the majority of the people of God to die in the wilderness never to see the good land that God had already given to them. Over the course of 40 years the children of Israel died one by one and were defeated, except for Joshua and Caleb. You see Joshua and Caleb said they were well able to take the land and they were never afraid. Joshua and Caleb did not allow fear to rule their lives or their outcome. Let’s look at a verse of scripture that Jesus is teaching us about the giant of fear:
Luk 8:50 But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.
If you read the context of this verse you will discover that this is another faith lesson within a faith lesson from the Lord God. A man comes up to Jesus and he asks Jesus to come to his house to heal his only daughter because she is dying. While Jesus is on the way to his house, the woman with the issue of blood comes and touches His clothes and gets healed as we have already talked a lot about her faith. Before Jesus could finish with the woman with the issue of blood, some messengers come to the man with the sick daughter and informs him it is too late, your daughter is dead. However, death is not the end of the story, is it? Jesus only looks at the man and says “Fear not, only believe and she will be made whole”. Do you see what is happening here? Here is a faith choice between two reports being given to a man in a highly pressure filled moment of time. One report is very evil and the other is a good report from God and the man has a critical internal decision to make in a split second. This man could get into fear and believe the evil report or stay in faith and believe the report of the Lord. Jesus heard the same report as the man did, but it did not affect Jesus in the least. If you go and continue reading this story Jesus does make it to the man’s house and Jesus makes everyone leave except for the parents. Jesus speaks to the daughter and she arises from the bed healed. Which report did the father believe? Do you think it mattered? I know that it mattered and he believed the words of God. This is again the story of the children of Israel who had a choice to make and they chose fear and death in the wilderness. This man chose faith and saw his daughter raised from the dead. That is pretty awesome if you ask me. Let us look at another faith story about the giant of fear in faith land:
Mar 4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
If you read the context of this verse you will see that Jesus is asleep in the boat and the disciples are trying to sail across a large body of water and suddenly a storm arises. Now, Jesus had already said they were going to the other side so these were the faith filled words of God already spoken informing the disciples of the outcome before it happens. Just as God had told the children of Israel “I have given you the land” they let their fear of the inhabitants of the land conquer them without a battle or a fight. So when the disciples looked at their enemy of the wind and the waves, like the children of Israel in the wilderness they caved to the fear and were easily defeated also without a battle or a fight. They ignored Jesus’ words for the sight of the physical surroundings and circumstances and Jesus is awaken and was not happy at all with them. Jesus stills the winds and the waves with His words and then turns to the disciples and declares there is a major problem here. “Why are you so fearful?” Fear is always the opposite of having any faith. So when you see your situation to be unwinnable or insurmountable and you get into fear, you are about to sink your boat. Jesus was the only one on the boat that had any faith and fortunately for them He was there. What were the disciples expected to do differently? That is a really good question to consider. I personally believe that if they would have believed the words of Jesus, they might have gone to lay down with Jesus and gone to sleep also. I do not recall Jesus telling them they had to sail the boat to get across the body of water. Maybe you and they assumed this, but that is not always good to assume what Jesus wants you to do. Regardless of what they did or didn’t do, I do not believe that they would have drowned or that their boat would have been lost if they would have stayed in faith. Of course what the disciples really should have done was what Jesus did; get up and speak to the problem to cause it to stop. I never think it is wrong to do what Jesus did. Oh, yea they are not God, how can they do this? You see the problem with people is that they think that they cannot do what Jesus did because they think He is God in His omnipotent power. But, that is just not true. Jesus was God, but God had become a man just like you and me and if He could do something, then we can do the same thing. What Jesus did was to set us an example that we can do the exact same things that He did. Do you recall what Jesus said? Jesus said in John 14:12 “The works that I do, shall you do and greater works shall you do because I go to my Father”. Was Jesus telling us that we could do what He did? I believe that is exactly what He was saying to me, you can decide to do with it what you want to and even ignore it if you like. I believe that Jesus expected them to do what He did and they chose to believe the circumstances instead. The spiritual giants of fear, panic, dread, fright, and being afraid are all still very real and they exist today. Satan will cause the circumstances to look just as formidable as the children of Israel were facing and he will even cause people to come to you and tell you how bad it is, to get you into fear. This could be a doctor’s report that says you only have a short time to live. It could be many different things, but yet Jesus taught us that it will come and you will have to choose not to believe it. Let us move on to another faith land giant that is trying to defeat you:
Mat 14:31 And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Here is another faith lesson from the God of creation. Jesus is walking on the water and the disciples are in a boat and Jesus is about to pass them by when they see Him and they think it is a spirit or a ghost. After all men can’t walk on water so they thought. Anyway Peter suddenly gets faith and thinks if Jesus can walk on water then I can do this also. Peter is beginning to catch on to what Jesus was teaching. Peter saw that Jesus was setting them an example showing them what they could do. So Peter says to Jesus “If it is you, bid me to come”. Of course Jesus had no choice but to say “Come” because it was Him. Peter steps out of the boat onto the water and he begins to walk to Jesus and this is a really amazing feat and I’ll tell you why. Peter was walking on the water by his own faith and not the faith of Jesus. He based his faith on the Words of God, but it was his faith that kept him from sinking, until he started thinking about what he was doing. You see the Bible says that Peter began to observe the wind and the waves and this caused something to change in his previous water walking faith level. This is an important faith lesson for you to learn today. It concerns the circumstances that you will also be faced with. If you begin to believe today that you are healed and tomorrow things look worse than they did today, what will your reaction be? You can clearly see by Jesus’s words that He told Peter you should not doubt. He asked Peter “Why did you doubt”. By Jesus asking this question it is obvious that it was Peter’s doubt that caused him to begin to sink, so it had to be Peter’s faith that caused him to walk on the water. What is doubt? Here is a definition from the Strong’s concordance of this word:
From G1364 properly to duplicate, that is, (mentally) to waver (in opinion): – doubt.
This word comes from a root word meaning twice. It is basically saying to us that those who are double minded are those who are in doubt. We can quickly learn that being single minded and focused is the state of faith and being double minded is the state of doubt. This word can mean to waver and this means to hesitate or change your confidence. It is sometimes difficult to understand when we are double minded and when we have thoughts from Satan that are contrary to having faith but we will have to learn the difference. Remember an earlier faith lessons I taught about the factor of having “confidence”? Having confidence today and not tomorrow is being double minded and allowing doubt to rule your life and your spirit. If you believe today that God has done what he has promised and tomorrow when it looks worse you no longer have the same confidence then you are in doubt. The Bible teaches us this that “We walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). This means that we do not observe our surroundings with your physical senses and allow them to control us. What if Peter would have ignored the environmental circumstances while he was walking on the water and not looked at the wind and the waves, what would have happened? This is actually a very good faith lesson to learn and it teaches us to ignore the circumstances of life and to only focus on the rpomise of the Word of God. Keep your eyes on Jesus and the Word of God and ignore your external circumstances. Of course I’m not saying for you to stop taking your medicine or to do something stupid. I’m just saying keep your eyes on Jesus no matter what is happening around you. I believe that if Peter would have only looked at Jesus, they could have walked to the other side together. So this is the giant of doubt that will come to try to keep you out of possessing the Promised Land. I can almost guarantee you that all of these enemies will show up to fight against you. Even Jesus had opportunities to get into fear, to doubt, or to become worried, to waver or to allow the circumstance to overwhelm Him. But, He set the example for us to follow and we need to learn to follow Him and all of His ways. These are probably not all of the enemies in your faith battle, but they are some of the most important ones for you to learn about that I know of. Overcome the giant of ignorance by gaining the knowledge of God. Overcome the spirit of fear by resisting it. When the giant of doubt comes, keep your eyes focused on Jesus and He will see you through to victory. I hope that you enjoyed my Bible faith lesson about Possessing the Promised Land and that you can take away something that will cause you to become victorious. I still have a lot to talk about on understanding this subject of Bible faith, so please continue studying the Bible with me. God Bless.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons about Bible faith you can continue to “Part 9“.
Understanding Bible Faith! How to Use Your Faith to Possess the Promised Land! Part 7
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 7 in a series of very advanced studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be an extended message on a subject that I just barely mentioned briefly in my last lesson. Sometimes you cannot cover everything in one lesson and so you have to spread the information out to give the details in limited proportions. I try not to overwhelm people with too much complex information all at once. Hopefully the way that I teach a subject is in an arrangement of understandable chunks that allows you to learn it a little bit at a time. When I learned computer programming, this is exactly how they taught it in school to me. They taught an introduction to computer programming class first that was the basic concepts of the subject. This introductory class was a prerequisite to the next subject of computer programming and each class became progressively more advanced. If they would have covered the advanced subjects first, they would have had no one graduate or pass, but since they started with the basics and moved to the more complex subjects many more people were able to learn it and become programmers. Well this is the way you should approach your Bible study also. Subjects in the Bible range from basic to expert levels. My Bible studies are generally very advanced complex subject studies. They are intended for people who know the basics of the Bible already. Paul called this teaching the meat of the Word of God and Paul had the same problem that I do sometimes. Paul told the Corinthian church, I could not feed you meat because you were babes in need of milk (1 Cor 3:2). I do teach some milk basics occasionally, but not always. If you do not understand Bible basics you should find a really good Bible teacher who goes over these concepts or you should ask me questions and I will try to answer them so you will be able to better understand the complex things that God wants you to learn and grow in spiritually.
We have been progressively moving through the subject of Bible faith and today I want to teach a lesson on possessing the Promised Land using your faith. Of course this is a strange concept to teach since we are not of the nation of Israel who lived in the Old Testament and many of us therefore think that this Old Testament story does not apply to us. However, God teaches us something very profoundly different in the New Testament and this is what I will cover today. If you have not been reading this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” first and work your way forward. Learn to look up the Bible verses that I include in these lessons in your Bible, take notes and learn to make hi-lights and underline important parts that you did not know or have never thought of before. Learn to see what the Bible says while you learn how to study the Bible and that will help you infinitely more than the things that I teach you today. If you can learn how to fish you will be much better off than depending on me to do all of your fishing for you. I hope you understand what I just said.
Heb 4:2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
Here is a very strange verse about faith. God is comparing two groups of people, us and them. But, who is us and who is them? You have to back up and read the context to find the answers to those questions. If you go back and read chapter 3 you will find references to the children of Israel coming out of the nation of Egypt. The entire chapter is focused in on the subject of entering into God’s rest. It is implied that the promise land was the land of God’s rest. But, the rest of chapter 3 informs us that the majority of Israel perished in the wilderness and did not enter into God’s rest. God’s rest is exactly a type of something that we are focused in on today. It says in chapter 3 very clearly that the children of Israel did not enter in because of their unbelief. I have only mentioned this maybe a couple of times in this series, that unbelief is the opposite of faith. Actually unbelief is belief, just wrong belief in the wrong words. You may recall that Israel sent 12 spies into the promise land and ten returned with an evil report saying we are not able to possess it. The majority of Israel believed the evil report and as a result entered into unbelief of what God had said. So the “them” in this verse that I gave you is concretely confirmed to be the children of Israel. Now, if you go to Hebrews 3:1 you will see who it says is the “us”:
Heb 3:1 Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;
Obviously then Christ Jesus is said to be the Apostle and High Priest of the church. The “us” in this verse is referring to those who have believed the Gospel that was preached. These are the Joshua and Caleb type of Christians who will actually get to enter into God’s Promised Land. Is that you also? I know that is me, but you may not know that this is you. Only you can believe for you. I cannot have faith for you to be saved. Everyone is required to have faith for themselves. So that is a basic faith lesson that you should have already learned or understood from the first six lessons in this series about faith. It might have never been taught to you directly, but it was an implied teaching in many of the lessons. Just learn that faith is personal and only your faith will cause things to happen for you. Jesus never looked at anyone and said “Be of good cheer, My Faith has made you whole”. Did Jesus have faith? I believe that He did, but I also believe that Jesus could not force His faith to work for anyone else either.
So we have discovered a concept of us versus them being stated. God says, according to Hebrews 4:2, the gospel was preached to both groups, but only one group called “us” is profiting from it. The concept of mixing faith with the Word of God is what is being taught and many people do not even know this is a requirement. If you think, you can see that there are many people who hear the gospel in churches and on TV and they are never saved. Why is that? God tells us, that it is because they did not mix any faith with what they heard. You can clearly understand that faith is a freewill choice of man and a personal responsibility that God cannot override. Mixing faith with the Word of God is described to be a partnership agreement. Think of it like God gives you some faith ingredients to make a faith cake. You are taking what He has given you and putting all of these faith ingredients for a faith cake into a large bowl and then you are supposed to turn the mixer on to combine the ingredients. This is exactly what God is saying. Bible faith consists of several key ingredients that I have mentioned to you and each of these is supposed to be added in the correct order to get the proper results. Using the analogy of the cake, what if you left out the eggs or the flour? Would the cake turn out? If you have ever cooked before you know that following the recipe is a requirement for repeated results. Well, this is what God is teaching you now. Learn the ingredients of Faith and then mix them together in the correct order to get results. God does His part and you are responsible for doing your part. I have heard numerous ignorant people try to tell me I am wrong, but I ignore them because they lack spiritual knowledge. I have also heard several misinformed preachers try to tell me that God is not a formula. That salvation is not a formula. That faith is not a formula. In their minds they have rejected the truth in the Bible for their own personal interpretation of reality. If God did not want you to learn about this subject, why would God have put so many examples, definitions and scriptures about it in the Bible? You see you can clearly find that it must be very important to learn and to implement if you can actually understand what it all says. So I’m not teaching you a formula for success, I’m just teaching you the Bible and you can do with it whatever you want.
Faith as you recall always starts with hearing the Word of God. Faith then progresses through a series of steps that includes you understanding what you heard and then choosing and deciding to believe it to be the truth. I then taught you that those who believe will speak what they believe and then do what they say. This is just a basic reality of how faith works and today I am going to show you why you still need to mix faith with the Word of God to produce any positive results.
Heb 4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.
Here is God telling the church that there is still a promise land left to possess. This verse is written to you and you are still required to possess the promises of God with your faith. God taught us that this is entering into His rest. We read verse 2 earlier so let’s skip down to verse 3 and see what God is saying to the church:
Heb 4:3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Wow, this is very difficult to accept. Remember what believing is? Belief is the opposite of unbelief, so we are back to having faith. Remember that belief is accepting the Word of God as fact and that unbelief is rejecting the word of God in favor of someone else’s opinion. We learned this by studying the children of Israel and the 12 spies that they sent into the promise land. This verse in Hebrews 4:3 says those that have faith and believe the Word of God have entered into the rest. Wow, again and double wow! Do you feel like you are in rest? I just watched the evening world news and it is almost scary what is happening in the world. The evening news is reporting riots and people being killed. The price of the world basic necessity of gasoline is going sky high with no end in sight. The news is reporting escalating food prices and food shortages because of weather related catastrophes around the world. The government problems with the out of control economies of the world are in dire straits. There is trouble and confusion in every city and it appears to be getting worse and not better. So are you in rest? After hearing about the trouble it is a very difficult thing to consider. However, God clearly tells us that those who have believed have entered into rest. Rest represents the promises of God and the symbolic Promised Land. I personally believe that God is calling those things that be not as though they were and I’ll talk more about that soon.
If you recall, the children of Israel came out of Egypt by the mighty demonstration of the hand of God. God used His servant Moses to deliver the people of Israel from their bondage of Egyptian slavery that lasted 430 years. It is almost comical to not see the spiritual implications given to us in this natural historical story of deliverance. The children of Adam in the world were in bondage to Satan for 4030 years when the servant of God named, Jesus died on the cross in another mighty demonstration of the hand of God. Therefore, the deliverance from Egypt is a type of the salvation of Jesus from the dominion of Satan. Now, there are vast numbers of Christian churches that only emphasize deliverance from Egypt. They teach salvation like it is going out of style and then neglect to mention what happens in the wilderness? Does the story of the children of Israel stop with salvation? You see the story does not end at deliverance and salvation; it is only there that the beginning of the new story of life after salvation starts to appear and open up. Salvation is not the end all results for Christians in the world. If it were the end results, then we should get people saved and kill them so that they go directly to heaven. Obviously this does not make any sense does it? What we learn in reading about the children of Israel is that God had given to Abraham a land and this land was theirs but yet they did not possess it yet. God called this entering into His rest. That almost sound like an oxymoronic expression since Israel was required to take the promise land by force and to kill all of the giants that were in it. God called this fight a rest and it sounds much more like an extended effort of battle or work. That is the complexity of the Bible, isn’t it? Surely you can still see the parallels being given to us (the church) that we are required to possess the promise land. What exactly is this Promised Land that we are supposed to mix our faith with to possess today?
1Jn 2:25 And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life.
Do you understand that God has made you promises in His word? What is the definition of a promise? This Greek word “promised” means the following “to assert something respecting oneself”. A promise is always a word based commitment to do something. If I said I promise to meet you at 3:00 PM in the lobby. I committed to do something to cause the meeting to happen like I said. This is the nature of a promise and it is totally based upon the integrity of the person who spoke the promise. If someone makes you a promise that has no moral character or integrity, then you should know not to count on it happening. This is where the integrity of God comes into play. If you are a Christian then you should know Him well enough to realize that it is impossible for God to lie. Then you must accept that the Bible is God speaking to you personally. Therefore, if it is impossible for God to lie and you can find a promise in the Bible from God, telling you personally that He will do something, then that is your opportunity to go and possess it by mixing faith with it. This is the New Covenant Promised Land which comes from an Old Covenant pattern and I’ll give you another Bible verse to help you begin to see it:
2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
What does God say in this verse? Does He not say that you have been given promises? These are not just any normal promises according to this verse. God calls them exceedingly great and very precious promises. That means that they are free, but they did not cost Him nothing to provide them to you. What God is saying is that they are highly valuable to possess, but yet we do not all possess them do we? This verse says “that you might become partakers”. You could call these people the potential possessors of the Promised Land. But, this promise land is always conditional and it is never dumped into your laps with you doing nothing. You see using the natural nation of Israel as our examples, there were many of them who died in the wilderness and never entered into the best that God had already given to them. This was the land that flowed with milk and honey and many, many never saw it. What can we learn from this lesson? Obviously according to Hebrews 4 we saw that they did not mix any faith and therefore they died without it. They heard that God had given them the land, but refused to believe it. So they did not enter into it and died in their unbelief.
2Co 1:20 For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.
Here is another verse from the mouth of God telling us that He has given to us “Promises”. Is there only one promise? According to these last two verses there are many promises. We obviously do not know very many of them, do we? It would be very much worth our time to go through the Bible to discover what God has promised to give us. Maybe in a future Bible study series I will do this. God definitely tells us that He has given to us promises, but like the children of Israel we are required to mix faith with these promises in order to possess them. Let’s review another Old Testament example of God’s promise and how it was fulfilled to learn some more of the concepts of mixing faith.
Rom 9:9 For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.
Here in this verse we are told that God made Abram and Sarai a promise to have a son. If you have read this story in Genesis, you know that Sarai was a barren woman unable to have children most of her life. So when God comes to Abram and Sarai they have a great desire for an heir, but did not know how to cause it to happen. God appeared to Abram and told him that his seed would become as the stars of the heaven and the sands of the sea shore (Gen 22:17). Yet, years and years went by and nothing happened. Sarai got desperate and gave Hagar to her husband so that they could have a child this way. We can learn that Abram and Sarai knew how babies were made, so that was not the problem. This turned out to be a huge mistake and we still see the conflict going on in the world today. This was man’s attempt to fulfill the promise of God and this never works. You cannot do by works of the flesh, what God has given to you to possess only by faith. So how did God get Abram into faith? That is a very interesting question to consider. Remember what I taught you about the woman with the issue of blood? “For she said” and then it happened. God tricks Abram into having faith. Before this next verse that I’m going to give you, Abram asks God “what will you give me seeing I go childless?” Abram saw himself as a childless man and this is not faith. What if God in the first chapter of Genesis saw only darkness and He could not envision light? Would light have come? Light came only because God could see the light inside of Him and then He spoke it out and then light was. This is the concept of “calling those things that be not as though they were” that I talked about earlier. Read this next verse that I will give you from the story of Abram:
Gen 17:5 Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.
God tells Abram I have made you a father of many nations even before he has had a child through his wife Sarai. This is God calling Abram a father before he was a father. God tells Abram, “no longer is your name Abram, but it shall be called Abraham”. This is a very tricky way of getting Abram to have faith. If you read my last Bible lesson you understand that almost every Hebrew name has a hidden meaning and the name Abraham is no different. The name Abraham means “a father of a multitude”. Now everywhere Abraham goes and speaks his name, he is calling himself a father of many. Is Abraham speaking what God said? Is Abraham now calling himself the father of many sons? Do you understand that this is the concept that the woman with the issue of blood also did? She called herself healed before she was healed. God told Abraham you are the father of many nations and now Abraham believes God and because he tells everyone his name, he speaks it before it happens. This is an amazing faith lesson and you should pay very close attention to it. Abraham’s faith was based upon the Word of God and your faith must be based upon the Word of God. Abraham had a promise from God; you must have a promise from God also. Abraham believed God and you must believe God before you see the evidence. Remember faith is your only evidence that you possess before it happens. Abraham learned to have confidence in God and you must learn to have confidence in Him. By Abraham speaking his name on a daily basis, he began to expect it to happen and in less than a year, he had the promised son through his wife Sarah. This is how faith works according the Word of God.
So go through the Bible and find your promise that you need and then mix your faith to possess it. If you want to live a full life, then go find the promise that says “With a long life I will satisfy you” (Psalm 91:16). If you want to be healed, the go find the promise of healing that says “By whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). These are just two of the promises of God and there are hundreds of others. If you want to possess them, do what Abraham did and call yourself with them. If you have no children or are unable to have children and you want children, begin to say I am the father of a son or a daughter. I am the mother of a son or a daughter. When you call yourself one and believe it, God says you will have it. This is how you poses the Promised Land and enter into the rest of God. Do not be naïve to think that it will happen like magic, be prepared for the enemies of this spiritual Promised Land to resist you tooth and nail. There are always spiritual giants that still exist today. However, possessing God’s Promised Land is a spiritual internal battle that will be fought on inside of you mostly in your mind. I believe that it will be worth the effort if you want to possess it. I’m sure that Joshua and Caleb were very glad after they had taken the land that was said by God to be theirs 40 years earlier. I literally poured my heart and my tears into this lesson so that I could help someone that is faced with a challenge today. I pray that you will learn to become a doer of the Word of God and not a hearer only. God Bless you all as we strive to enter into His rest. In the next lesson I will be teaching about the spiritual enemies to your faith fight.
If you like to continue reading this series of lessons about Bible Faith please go to “Part 8“.
Understanding Bible Faith! What Is Bible Faith and What Makes it Different than Other Types of Faith? Part 6
(Ver 1.4) This is Part 6 in a series of very advanced studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be a discussion concerning the definition of Bible faith, then we will have a discussion about what faith is and then finally how your Bible faith is different from another person’s faith like those that believe in Islam, Buddha or whoever. If you have been reading this series of lessons, you should know that the subject of faith is a very complex topic to completely understand, like most other subjects found in the Bible. In the last lesson I discussed 8 basic factors that all contributed to you having faith. I also went into the Old Testament and even showed how faith was demonstrated in the life of David and how all of the steps that i listed were still valid for what was written about concerning David’s faith. You should be able to draw out these steps in the lives of anybody in the Bible that is said to have faith. Go through the list of faith heroes found in Hebrews 11 and see who God has inducted into the faith hall of fame and then go read about them again in the Old Testament. See how they heard God say something, see how they received what was spoken, understanding it and then believed it. Then watch and listen to everything that they say and do. See if they expect anything to happen. See if they have any confidence in God coming through for them. Elijah is a great faith man. He called down fire from heanven. He spoke words that caused it not to rain for three and half years. Go and read these stories again and you will see that God honored their faith when nothing else would work. Even though God never mentioned faith as a factor, God always moved the mightiest when a man was established in faith and believed God’s Word. Here are the steps that I have listed for you to review:
- Your Will
- Your Ability to Hear
- Your Understanding of the Word Heard
- Your Beliefs
- Your Confidence
- Your Words
- Your Expectation Level
- Your Actions
These are what I call the Faith Partners that must be present and working in unity to produce results. I hope that you have read all of the previous lessons for I will not be repeating that information in any great detail and it was all very important to know. So if you have not read from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
In speaking of faith it is interesting to note that everyone in the world, saved or unsaved has faith to some degree. That sounds like a contradiction to a statement that I made in an earlier lesson where I told you that the Bible says “For all men do not have faith” (2 Th 3:2). But, what we must realize is that there are different types of faith and God is speaking of Bible faith in 2 Thessalonians 3:2 and not common human faith that everyone possesses. Faith is a basic human characteristic created by God. Faith is based upon ignorance and since every human is ignorant, we all have to have faith. Let me try to explain that last statement in different terms. Since none of us are God, our knowledge is extremely limited; would you agree with that statement? We therefore, on a daily basis accept many things by our faith and we do not even realize that this is what we are doing. For example, the sun rise this morning came by natural human faith. Now just because we have seen thousands of sunrises in the past does not necessarily prove or mean that there will be another one tomorrow. If you believe that there will be one then you are in effect placing your faith in your past experiences. You believe that the sun will rise tomorrow and thus your confidence and expectations are set based upon only on your past experiences or your current knowledge of how the earth rotates around the sun. There is no proof or evidence for the sun coming up tomorrow, because it has not happened yet. After it happens then you have the proof or evidence, but before it happens you can only believe that it will happen. This is common human faith, just not Bible faith. Let me try to give you another different example of having common faith. If you make a date with someone to have dinner at a certain time and place and you show up, then you had faith based upon what? Your faith is based upon the word of agreement from that person that you were supposed to meet with. Now depending upon who that person was, your confidence level and expectation level of them showing up might be great or it might be very small based upon your past experiences with them. This is acting out your faith in the real world, but this is not Bible faith. Showing up at a dinner date is an act of faith, you start with words with a friend, the two of you agree with the words that were heard to make the arrangements, you understand the arrangement, you believe the arrangement and then you wait for the time and go to the restaurant to meet with them. If your confidence level was correct you expect them to show up on time. That is how common faith works and we do it every day. Do you understand how human ignorance plays a role in both of these examples that I just gave you? In both cases you must believe in something that you cannot prove will happen. So let’s discuss what is different about Bible faith. The only difference is God is the one that we are expecting to show up; it is based upon His word that we are putting our confidence in. It is the Word of God that we must hear spoken and we must understand these words. Next we must believe the words and put our full confidence in Him and His Word. That is Bible faith and it is the exact same process that you went through to make a dinner reservation with a friend. Here is the challenge to Bible faith; no one has ever seen God. You cannot prove that God exists. So you take His existence by your faith and this is beginning of Bible faith, but not the end of it. God can then do many great things as your faith progresses upward to greater levels.
Do you realize that the Bible says it is impossible for God to lie? (Heb. 6:18, Tit. 1:2, Rom. 3:4) There are very few things in the Bible that it says that God cannot ever do and lie is definitely one of the few things that God is completely incapable of doing. Why is that important? It is important because it helps establish your confidence level in what the Bible says and the Word of God is the basis for Bible faith. If God says something in the Bible and you can claim it for yourself then God says you can have it (2 Cor 1:20). Many ignorant Christians have derogatorily called this a “name it and claim it” false religion. But, that is their problem and not mine, I’m just studying the Bible and seeing what it says and you can do whatever you like and ignore the parts of the Bible that do not fit your theology, if that is what you want to do. What these Christians do not realize is that faith is how they became a Christian and if they have no faith, then they are not Christians. The word of God is a handbook written to you personally. The words in it are written to you as a personal love letter and this is the basis or the foundation to your house of faith. You are building a faith house and your faith foundation must be the Word of God.
I am trying to teach you that everyone in the world has faith, but few have faith in God and even fewer have actual faith in His Word. Jesus taught us that wide is the path that leads to destruction and many are those that find this path (Mat 7:13). Jesus went on to say that narrow is the path to life and few are those who find it. Since both paths contain people with faith it is extremely sad to me that only a few get to live with God forever. What do the people on the wide path to destruction, have their faith in? They either believe there is no God, no judgment, no hell, no eternity, etc., or they believe in Buddha, Mohammed, Hare Krishna, the Dali Lama or some other false religion. Everyone believes something in the world, even the atheist believes there is no God, and the Hindu believes there is another chance coming in the next life, and on and on. Man was created by God to believe in something and this is what people do every day for good or evil.
That was my introduction to the definition of faith. As you can see it is complex while being based upon simple binary concepts. I learned this approach as a computer programmer. You take the complex system and reduce it to rudimentary understandable pieces and learn those and then as each part works together the complex system works as a whole. A binary concept is one where only two possible answers exist. In the binary world of computers everything is based upon either ones or zeros. That is the basis for the concepts of faith. You either, hear or you don’t hear. You either understand or you don’t understand. You either believe or you don’t believe. Just basic binary choices, yet making the right choices can result in great things and making the wrong choice can lead you down the wide path to destruction. I want to give you the classic Bible definition of what faith is according to the Word of God. This definition is found in the first verse of Hebrews 11 which is the famous “Faith Hall of Fame” chapter found in the Bible:
Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
There are many people who have read this verse but do not understand what it means and I was one of those in the past. As you can see this verse contains the classic Bible construction of a definition being revealed to us. Whenever God gives us this information, it is a classic spiritual redefinition of a word that we thought we understood. This verse says “Faith IS” and then goes into what faith should be to us. I will take it word for word and hopefully elaborate on what it actually is saying. 
The first word in the verse is the word “Now” and this is a reference to time. Time is a concept expressed in three different dimensions. Time can be past, present or future. So we can clearly see that faith is said to be a present tense reality. In other words your faith that you had yesterday is not a factor and your faith that you will have tomorrow is also not a factor. It is only the faith that you have right now that is a factor to what happens to you right now. When people came up to Jesus, He would always rebuke them for having no faith or He would commend them for having great faith. When was their faith important or not important, effective or not effective to Jesus? You can clearly see that faith only mattered at the exact time when Jesus was speaking to them. Jesus never cared if they had faith yesterday and Jesus never cared if they might change and have faith tomorrow. Jesus never told anyone to go get more faith and come back tomorrow. If you had no faith right then and there, you got nothing from Jesus. The woman with the issue of blood got healed because she had right now faith at the instance when she needed it the most. All of the other people in the crowd had no faith while they were touching Him and none of them got healed. Do you understand now how important faith is? The next word in Hebrews 11 is “Faith” and since “Faith” is what we are defining, I will not be discussing that word.
So let’s move to the definition part of the Hebrews 11:1 verse and the words translated as “the substance”. This Greek word translated as “substance” is not easily understood unless you look up the definition in the Strong’s concordance and read what it says. This Greek word translated as “substance” means “confidence”. Here is one of the key 8 faith partners that I gave you earlier. Do you have any cofidence?
- Do you have confidence in the existence of God?
- Do you have confidence in the ability of God?
- Do you have confidence in God’s Word?
- Do you have confidence that God will do what He said?
Confidence is a multi-dimensional critical building block to having faith and I just listed four things that you need to have confidence in. if you have confidence in only 3 out of 4 of those things, then your confidence is lacking and you need to learn more of the Bible. Today, you might have confidence in one area but not every area that I just raised. Only you will be able to evaluate your level of confidence in each of those areas.
What is confidence based on? If you have experience with someone then you base your confidence level upon your experience. So what if you are new to someone? What do you have to base your confidence in? Confidence is a factor of trust. The better you know someone the more you trust them. This is another reason people fail to receive from God. They do not know God. They do not know the character of God. They do not know the integrity of God. They do not know the promises of God. You are going to have to ask yourself, do you trust God?
Psa 115:11 Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.
There are too many verses in the Bible for me to give you them all about trusting in God. The word trust also contains multiple concepts. First, it means to have confidence in. Next, it means to be sure of. Next, it means to be certain of. There are a number of synonymous terms like be assured, be confident, be convinced, be firm and to be unquestioning. Trust and confidence go hand and hand and they are both essential partners to your faith.
The next Greek word in this verse is translated as “things hoped for”. This again is a very difficult word to understand unless you look up the definition in the Strong’s. The word translated as “hoped” is actually poorly translated in today’s English language. When we hope for something in the modern world we normally just wish that this was what was happening. I have heard many ministers about to pray for someone and they ask them “will you be healed now when I lay my hands on you?”, and the answer is usually “I sure hope so”. This means the people wished it would happen but that they did not actually have any confidence that it was going to happen. Let’s take this back to the woman with the issue of blood. Remember what she said? She said “If I touch His clothes, I will be made whole”. There is absolutely no doubts in that statement to her not having any confidence that it would not happen. What would have changed if she said “I hope I will be made whole”? You see she would not have been healed. Hope is not having full confidence and this Greek word in Hebrews 11 does not mean to “hope“, it means “to expect” and this is based upon your confidence level. So we are back to having confidence and expecting something to happen as the woman with the issue of blood did. The last part of this definition says this “the evidence of things not seen”. As we come to the conclusion we see that having faith from the Bible definition is our evidence of what we do not see with our physical eyes. What is evidence? In a court of law “evidence” is the “proof” of innocence or guilt. Why is God introducing you to legal terms and court room procedures in this definition? It is because God is the Supreme Judge and His ways are the Spiritual Laws that govern what happens to us. So you better understand that faith is the component that will either exonerate you or your lack of faith will convict you on judgment day. Did you know that Faith was a spiritual Law? This is why God is introducing legal court terms like evidence:
Rom 3:27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.
According to the Word of God, Faith is a spiritual law that is the opposite of another spiritual law called the “law of works”. Those in the Old Covenant were trying to achieve salvation by the law of works. Israel was given 5 books of the Law and these contained instructions from God of the does and don’ts of everything that was permissible on a daily basis. Jesus came and changed everything and said “He that believes on me shall have eternal life” (John 3:16). Jesus came to reveal the law of faith which professes salvation that is based upon believing. This was obviously a radical departure from the law of works. However, the Bible tells us very clearly that Christians have been justified by faith and that no flesh shall be justified by keeping the Law of Moses (Acts 13:39). You see the term “justified” in the Greek language means to be found innocent. Again we see the legal ramification of terms and words that are usually only associated with a court of law.
Let’s take this information and relate it back to the woman with the issue of blood. What evidence did the woman have from the time that she left her house until the time she touched Jesus’ clothes? At no time before touching Jesus did the woman feel differently or feel like she was healed, yet she continued to press through the crowd until she reached Jesus. Technically speaking at no time did the woman have any physical evidence to being healed or that she would be healed. But, by the definition of faith given to us in Hebrews 11:1, we see that her faith must have been her evidence. Because she heard and believed on Jesus and had confidence in what she heard to be the truth, she expected to get healed when she touched Him. Here is the law of faith and how it works. Faith must be present internally to see the external results. Because she believed that she was already healed internally in her spirit, the external manifestation of this reality showed up on the outside. This is still exactly how faith works in the modern world without Jesus being here physically. Like I told you before, you cannot go and touch him physically today, but that does not mean you cannot touch Him spiritually and that He is still looking for your faith to give you what you need.
If you would like to conintue reading in this series about Bible Faith, please continue to “Part 7“.
Understanding Bible Faith! Having Faith While Living in the Modern World? Part 5
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 5 in a series of advanced studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be a further expansion of the basic foundational truths surrounding faith and a discussion of the differences between having faith today in the modern world versus that of having faith back when Jesus walked the face of the planet. Are there any differences to having faith today to that of when Jesus was walking among us? In the modern world we are faced with an enormous set of challenges. There are the distractions of technology, the media and the internet. We have had numerous natural disasters, economic pressures, threats of violence, wars, riots, terrorism and other things that can consume our focus in recent days. Maybe you have been where I have been and have thought the same things that I have thought. I have personally thought it would have been nice to live in the days when Jesus was physically walking around and living with us. Life was just so much simpler back them and you could have seen the God of creation in the flesh. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see Him physically speaking, healing, walking on water, raising the dead and doing the things that we can only read about today? Sometimes people think that if I had just lived back then, it would have been easy to get healed and I would not have to put up with this disease anymore. I wouldn’t have to put up with this sickness or this disease if I only lived when Jesus was here. If, I could have just gone to see Him and bam I would have been healed like everyone else. However, when you study the Bible you actually come to a much different understanding of reality and that is what I will discuss today. If you have not been reading this series of lesson from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”.
I want to start today by turning to the book of Mark chapter 6 and reading a story of Jesus that is often ignored. In this story of Jesus, He is visiting some old friends and relatives and we see a very different reality of how difficult it was back then to get healed even from the Son of God walking among you.
Mar 6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.
Mar 6:6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
People like to think that Jesus was God in His omnipotent power and that He could do anything that He wanted to on the earth when He was here. However, that is not what the Bible actually teaches us. According to these verses in Mark 6, it says that Jesus wanted to heal them, but He could not. Wow, that is very earth shattering to the theology of many confused Christians. This verse does not say that “He would not heal them”, it says very clearly that “He could not heal them”. That clearly tells us this is not God in His omnipotent power. What would cause God not to be able to do anything? What would limit God’s ability on the earth? You should really think about that before you try to answer. If you have been reading this series of lessons on Bible faith you have learned that Jesus rebuked people for having no faith and praised others for having great faith. Jesus would always emphasize a person’s faith and no other factors were given for anyone getting healed. So if no one gets healed here in this story in Mark 6, why didn’t they? Verse 5 says Jesus tried to do His mighty works there, but was not able to and then in verse 6 it reveals to us why He could not do anything there. In verse 6, it says Jesus marveled at their unbelief. The term “marveled” comes from a Greek root word to “to see” or “to perceive”. Jesus saw that they had no faith and was astonished. If you learned what I taught in the last lesson, you saw that believing was a key factor for having faith that grows and works. You first had to hear, you then had to understand what you heard and next you had to believe what you heard. This was the people’s problem in this chapter of Mark 6. These people heard that He was anointed, understood what it meant, but refused to believe it by a purposeful act of their own freewill. Pay attention to what I just said, it was not Jesus’ choice to not give them faith; it was there choice not to believe that caused them their problems. That is the first thing that you need to know about that I did not cover in the last lesson. You see I could not cover everything in one lesson or I would have overwhelmed you with too much information all at once. What you need to realize is that faith is more complicated than just four simple steps and miraculously you are healed, saved and delivered from every problem. Your “will” is a determining factor to whether or not you believe what you hear. What I am trying to show you is that faith is an internal choice that you make after you hear and understand. You can choose to believe or you can choose not to believe, it is always your choice. You can read in John chapter 5 about a story where Jesus teaches us this lesson about faith and you will see this point being emphasized. In John 5:6 Jesus approaches a lame man at the Pool of Bethesda and says this to him “Will you be made whole”? Why is Jesus asking this man, this question? Apparently it is not all up to God’s will but it was up to this man’s will to whether or not he was to be made whole again. That was a very direct question that reveals the man’s will played a major part in the man getting healed. What we must realize is that Jesus is not diminishing the man’s faith to be a factor; He was only emphasizing the man’s will needed to be adjusted. The man when asked this by Jesus said “I don’t have anyone who will help me”. In other words the man was making an excuse why he was not healed by blaming others that did not help him and this was what Jesus was trying to correct. Jesus was in effect saying to him it is not their fault that you are not healed, it is your own fault and that does not go over well with people who like to blame everyone else and not take any responsibility upon themselves.
Let’s discuss briefly what is your will? Your will is a key part of your internal unseen soul realm. Your soul is made up of your mind (ability to think, reason and your memory), your will (ability to choose and make choices) and your emotions (love, hate, happiness, sadness, etc.). Your will determines what you do today. If you get up in the morning instead of lying in bed all day, then you exercised your will to get out of bed. If you ate breakfast, you exercised your will to determine what to eat and then to eat. Your will is a conscious decision to do something. Jesus is basically informing us that if you are going to get healed then it is up to your will and not God’s will that makes it happen. In other words if you are waiting on God to heal you, you are not going to get healed. Let’s examine the woman with the issue of blood again and see what she did that fits this reality. She heard about Jesus, understood what she heard and believed it and then she did what? She made a decision to go get healed. If she had done nothing or waited for Jesus to come to her she would not be mentioned in the Bible. It was only because of a conscious act of her will that she is found in the Bible at all. So a decision that she made with her will played a huge role in the fact that she got her healing. I wish that was all of the factors, but that is not all of the factors and it gets more complex than this. So hang in there as we learn some more about faith’s prerequisites and partners to get answers using your faith.
Let’s get back to Mark 6 and see why these people did not let Jesus do any mighty works there. These people failed in step 3 of God’s faith building Bible class. Unbelief is a diametrically opposed force to faith. You cannot have faith and unbelief at the same time and get healed; they in effect cancel each other out. There is one story in the Bible that seems to show you can have both, but I believe that faith and doubt can occur in two different realms of reality. Real Faith is of the heart, and doubts can occur in your mind. What you are supposed to learn today is that Bible faith is of the heart or the spirit and it does not occur in your mind. However, to get faith into your heart takes a trip through your mind and I’ll talk more about that soon.
Luk 24:25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
Where does Jesus say you need to believe? You can actually see that Jesus is associating true faith to the spirit of man. To believe with your heart is the goal that you are after. That also implies that you can believe with your head as a mental choice and not with your heart. The mental realm is a doorway to your spirit, but it is not your spirit. In order for God’s word to work you are going to have to get it into your spirit. How do you do this? In elementary school as children, you would say the multiplication tables over and over out loud until you knew them by heart. Guess what that is how you get God’s word into your heart also. When you get something in your heart abundantly you do not have to figure out the answer, it will just automatically come out. In other words when asked what is 6 times 9 you would just say 54 and you do not have to do a calculation to figure out the correct answer. This is what you are after with the word of God also. You should be able to say exactly what the Bible says about your situation without looking it up. You do this by speaking and mediating on it day and night as God told Joshua in Joshua 1:8:
Jos 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
This is God speaking to you today. If you think that this is a private message to Joshua, you do not understand God very much. God is saying that you must keep His words in your mouth all the time. The Hebrew word translated as “meditate” means to “murmur”. To murmur is a term that means to speak under your breath as in to mutter to oneself. God is telling Joshua how to be successful in life and this applies to you also. The net effect of this action is God builds faith in the heart of Joshua and he is able to lead his people into the Promised Land. It is very difficult to explain the difference between head faith and heart faith. If you learn God’s word and say it over and over until you get it inside your spirit, you will know when you have it and I won’t have to explain it to you. There will come a time when it will be obvious to you also. I will talk more about this soon.
What caused these people Mark 6 not to believe? You can obviously learn that believing with your heart is a key component to whether you will get healed or remain the same from this lesson. The people in Mark 6 were the people of Jesus’ hometown where He grew up as a child to become a man. All of these people knew Him intimately and personally, they saw Him physically for many years and yet after being baptized by John and anointed by God, they refused to believe that Jesus was anointed by an act of their will. You see the problem they had was that they could not overcome the mental conflict that was occurring in their minds when they recalled all of the years that He was with them and never did anything extraordinary. They had put Jesus into a box of familiarity and it caused them to miss the great works that He wanted to do. Apparently living back in the days of Jesus is not that much of an advantage to getting healed as I thought originally. It would seem that the more you knew about Jesus the less likely you were to believe that He was anointed and chosen of God. Did you ever think about this? Why did Jesus choose a bunch of strangers to be His disciples? It was simply because they did not know who He was that allowed them to follow Him blindly. It would appear from this information that knowing Jesus would have been a major stumbling block to you getting healed rather than the other way around. So after I read this story, I was glad I did not live back then and see Jesus personally.
In the last lesson on Bible Faith that I did, I gave you one of the greatest faith lessons found in the Bible about the woman with the issue of blood who was sick for 12 years and when she had heard of Jesus she risked public stoning and pressed through the crowd to touch His garment and she was healed. I have been using this story repeatedly because it holds valuable lessons on how faith works that we need to understand. In this lesson I further described that Jesus said it was her faith that had caused her to be made whole. In studying this story you should become aware that it was only this woman who got healed and no one else present was healed who was in the crowd. When Jesus asked “Who touched me”, the disciples told Jesus that everyone is touching you. Why were all of these people touching Jesus? They must have needed something. I do not think that Jesus was seen to be a rock star personality in those days. Jesus did not get up and sing love songs and the women would faint and scream. The crowds of people were there because Jesus had claimed to be anointed by God, but yet none of these people knew that it required more than just a physical touch to get their answer. What we learn from this information is that Jesus does not place any priority on people, but He does place a huge priority on faith. I want to go over another scripture in this story that I intentionally left out of the last lesson to teach you some additional factors about this woman’s faith. I want to show you why this woman had faith and no one else in the crowd did and we will begin reading in verse 27 of Mark 5:
Mar 5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
We can clearly assume that everyone that was there to touch Jesus that day was there because they had heard the same thing that this woman had heard and that was He was anointed by God. So hearing was not the issue for anyone present, everyone present must have heard about Him the same way. They all must have understood what an anointed one meant. They all must have believed that He was anointed. They all came to touch Him, but only one woman got healed. It must have been another factor that caused this woman to get healed while others did not and that is why I want to show you what is found in verse 28:
Mar 5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
We understand from reading this verse that it is out of sequence in time. In other words these are words spoken by the woman before she got to Jesus. Do you understand that? I want to describe the Greek word translated as “for” first in the verse. You see this word in the Strong’s means “to assign a reason”. In other words God is giving us the reason for this woman’s faith. That means it is important to understand. I alluded to this factor in my last lesson and I talked a little bit about it earlier when I mentioned Joshua, but today I want to emphasize it with some extra teaching on the subject of “speaking your faith”. If you have read my other Bible lessons, you know that I teach a lot about the power of words spoken. Here is another example, of this reality using this lesson in Mark 5. We already saw in verse 31 that Jesus said, “Daughter, thy faith has made you whole”. Therefore, we know that the woman had faith before she got to Jesus. Here is how I know that the woman possessed faith before she ever physically saw Jesus:
Luk 17:6 And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.
Here is God speaking to you right here and right now. God says “if you had faith, you would say”. The opposite truth to this statement is “if you had no faith you would be silent”. Wow, that is really good stuff. Does God say that speaking is doing faith? Remember what step four of my last faith lesson was? God said you must 1) hear, 2) understand, 3) believe and 4) do. Step four is always doing your faith. We can clearly see that based upon God’s word here in Luke 17:6 that this woman had faith and was doing her faith because she has said something positive. Remember earlier I tried to teach you that real faith was of the heart and you get this faith by speaking to yourself over and over. This is what this woman must have done. Jesus taught us that “from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Mat 12:34). So whatever comes out of your mouth is what you have abundantly put into your heart. We can clearly understand that this woman had faith from her heart that God says resulted in her healing and that she possessed this before she arrived to where Jesus was because she was saying something.
However, it was not just saying something that was important; it was really more what she believed and then what said. She said “If I touch His clothes, I will be made whole”. Was this prophetic? Was this an amazing coincidence? You have to understand the power of words to see that she got exactly what she said. We should all learn to watch what we say after reading stories like this in the Bible. The woman is never focused on her sickness; her words are only directed at her being whole. If you walk around talking about how bad you feel and how sick you are, you are probably going to stay that way. God is teaching you a concept found in the Bible that is radically different than any concept you get from your doctor. Thinking positively, believing positively and speaking positively will result in good things happening to you. Do you remember what God says in Joel 3:10 “Let the weak say I am strong”. Why would God almighty teach weak people to say what they are not? Wow that is very strange isn’t it? However, God’s ways are not our ways and if you want the God kind of results you are going to have to change to do it His way. This is the major difference between this woman who got healed and the others who touched Jesus but did not get healed. It is obvious to me that none of the others believed or said that they would be made whole. They were just there to try it out and see if anything happened.
It is virtually impossible to teach about faith and not talk about spoken words. These two subjects are intimately connected to each other. The woman with the issue of blood was in effect calling herself whole before she was whole. This is a Bible faith concept revealed to us in Romans 4:17. In this verse God tells us that He called Abraham a father of many nations before He became the father of many nations. In this story of Abraham God changes the name of Abram to Abraham and this causes him to start saying what God said. Abraham was an old man now, but as soon as he starts saying “I am Abraham” which means “father of nations”, He becomes a father that year. God uses your words to produce the results in your life whether you want to believe it or not that is how it works. This faith concept of calling things that are not as though they are, will also work for you today. If you are sick and you want to get healed, be like this woman and start calling yourself whole before you are whole and don’t stop doing this just because it looks worse tomorrow than it does today. This woman could have given up and said there are just too many people for me to get through to Jesus. It is just too hard and it looks impossible. But, she went and made her way through the crowds of people pushing to get to Jesus and when she made it and touched His clothes and she was healed. Would it have mattered if she said “I might be healed”. I think it would have mattered a lot. You see might is a word that implies “might not”, or “depends upon something” I don’t know or some other factor that demonstrates a lack of confidence. If you have no confidence in the Word of God or the anointing you would say “might” or “maybe”. But, if you have great confidence and expect to get healed when you touch Him, then you would say “I will be made whole”. Because the woman had faith in God’s word and His anointing she could say this the way that she did. So I just introduced you to two new determining factors or faith partners that contribute to you having faith. Your confidence level determines your expectation level and these two factors are essential to receiving anything from God. I further showed you that “saying” is a part of doing and some tines it can be all you need to do.
As you can begin to see, Bible faith is a complex subject that is related to many other subjects. We have seen that being willing to hear something new is the introductory level of obtaining faith. Then we learned that you must hear the Word to get faith started. I then showed you how understanding what you heard is a determining factor to having correct Bible faith. I then showed you how believing is an essential factor to having Bible faith. Today I introduced you to your will playing a role in what you decide to believe. Then I taught you that doing is a part of having your faith work for you. Today I introduced you to “speaking” as being a part of doing and getting faith abundantly in your heart. I also showed you that what you say will be dependent upon your level of confidence in what you believe. Finally, the woman with the issue of blood expected to be healed when she touched Jesus, so expectation is another essential piece of having faith that receives. If you don’t expect to get healed you will not get healed. Bible Faith is complex, like a transmission in a car is complex. If you do not think so, you should go unbolt your transmission off of your car and take it apart and see if you are smart enough to put it back together correctly. It takes a lot of training and experience to be a great transmission mechanic and to rebuild a transmission. This is the same way with faith. There are many cross related subjects that you must study to fully understand this complex Bible subject. I wish I could simplify it more, but I did not write the Bible and I did not invent faith so I must learn to work with God’s definitions and the information given to us in the Bible, just like you must do the same.
When you begin to understand how faith works, you will better understand the examples of faith given to us in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. Take for example, the famous story of David and Goliath. Did faith have anything to do with what happens in this story? You should go back and read it again and see what you see that is different now. David heard there was a giant and asks what will be done for the man who kills this giant. It would appear that hearing was a factor in the story. When you read this story notice what David says very carefully and see if he is not speaking words of faith. It is a very powerful faith filled story with words that come from the mouth of David. David said “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?” In other words who is this one that is not in covenant with the almighty God of Israel? Then David says to Goliath “this day will I take your head from your shoulders and feed your carcass to the birds of the air”. Before David did anything, he always said what he would do. Then David did it acting out his faith in His God. This story exhibits David’s high confidence level in his God’s ability and thus David expected to win the battle and not to be defeated. There were no doubts in the heart of the future King of Israel. But, also realize that before David killed the giant Goliath, David had faith experiences with a lion and a bear. In other words, faith is a progressive undertaking of experiences and previous victories that causes your confidence level to increase. If you start small, your faith can grow to the giant killing level, but if you start with the giant level, you might be easily defeated. Here is a modified list of faith factors that has increased significantly since the last lesson, but hopefully you can see and understand them better now.
- Bible Faith is based upon truth in the Bible.
- Being open to the truth allows truth the opportunity to come to you.
- Hearing the truth is the beginning of obtaining Bible faith.
- Understanding God’s Word spiritually will open the door to allow it into your heart.
- Believing and speaking the Truth will plant it firmly in your heart in abundance.
- Choosing to decide to believe it and do it are both conscious acts of your will.
- Your confidence in the truth determines your level of effort, your commitment and your expectation level for it coming to pass in your life.
- Expect the answer to occur even when it looks impossible. Expecting is like ordering a package from the internet and knowing it will arrive any day very soon.
- Do what you said and receive the answer.
These are the basic steps and factors to having Bible faith in the modern world. It just so happens to be the same as we found in the days when Jesus was walking the face of the earth that we learned about from the woman with the issue of blood. These faith steps also apply to other Old Testament saints like David and Joshua. Faith has not really changed at all, and Jesus has certainly not changed. So whatever He did back then is what is available to you today. I know you cannot touch His physical garment, but you can do everything else that the woman with the issue of blood did and get healed the same way by touching His Spirit. God still sees your faith today and it will still work the same. The Spirit of God is everywhere all at once and His power is available to you right now, but it is only accessed by your faith. In closing I want to emphasize one point that I have seen in the past. There are some people who believe if they throw away their medicine they will be healed. They look at this as an act of their faith. However, that is usually presumptive foolishness that gets you killed. Taking medicine does not heal you and not taking medicine certainly does not heal you. There are no examples in the Bible of people throwing away medicine and getting healed anywhere, so you cannot base your faith on this. Go to the doctor, take your medicine and believe and say that God has healed you and made you whole anyway. When you are healed you will know when not to take any medicine. Your words are much more important to your healing than you not taking any medicine. You begin to say that you are healed and whole and still take your medicine. “Let the sick say I am whole”, that is what Joel 3:10 could say if you want to see it that way. I also want to say that I write these lessons speaking about sickness because many people need to be healed and that is why I have focused in on only one part of receiving from God. But, I want to emphasize that every part of the steps that I just listed will work for whatever you need from God. Maybe it is a job? Maybe it is some money to help pay your bills? The only things that is going to change on my list is what scriptures you need to hear in order to get faith for your need. The Bible contains God’s promises and the New Covenant is built upon better promises than the Old Covenant. So go find the promises of God written about your need and use those to build your faith for what you need today. The rest of the steps are still the same. I hope that clarified a question that someone might have had about faith and how to make it work for a different need other than healing. Thanks for taking the time to study the Bible with me and to see God’s truth.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of Bible lessons on Faith you can go to “Part 6“.
Understanding Marriage, Can Our Marriage Continue Throughout Eternity?
(Ver 1.1) This will be an extremely advanced Bible study about a subject that many married Christians have thought on at one time or the other. Today, I want to focus in on a challenging question that I had presented to me from a reader. It was an excellent question and I appreciate getting stimulating questions form people. She wondered if her marriage between her and her husband would still be able to continue after this life ends. She told me that they loved each other greatly and did not want the marriage to ever end. She had read some of my other lessons where I taught some potentially troubling things that concerned her future marriage to her husband and thus the reason for the question. I do want to say up front that I admire this couple’s resolve and dedication to each other. It is a highly commendable attitude to take hold of and to keep. Anyone going into a marriage should be fully committed to that marriage for however long it might be and for whatever negative things that might occur. Recently on the national news a very prominent Christian TV personality was caught cheating on his wife. This couple after several years of counseling and help from God has decided to remain together and are attempting to rebuild the trust that was lost. While I do not admire the actions of the man to cheat, I do admire that he sees fit to change and get it right and for his wife’s ability to forgive. So this is a very hard question to answer without potentially offending someone or causing anyone to become discouraged, but I will try to do the best that I know how from my current level of knowledge of the Bible and then I’ll let you decide what you want to believe. Let’s first start talking about what marriage is.
Mal 2:14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
Jer 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
You can surely see from these verses in Malachi and Jeremiah that God says a marriage is defined to be a covenant in His eyes. A Bible blood covenant is a legally binding contract between the husband and the wife based upon the Word of God. God told Israel, that I made a covenant with you when I took you out of Egypt and I was your husband. That would make Israel His wife in covenant with God. These are very clear definitions to what a covenant and a marriage are. A covenant and a marriage are clearly synonymous terms for the same thing. When a Christian couple unites in covenant marriage they become “one flesh” according to the Word of God and the law of marriage. You can read this fact in several places in the Bible, but the first time it is mentioned is when Adam and Eve are created in Genesis 2. The body of the wife was taken from the body of her husband and God says they are one flesh (Gen 2:24). This is God’s natural law of marriage covenant between a male and a female and this law is still in effect in the New Testament (Mat 19:5, Mark 10:8, Rom 7:2, Eph 5:31). You do understand that Adam and Eve were created before the Old Covenant. So anything that happens before the old covenant is still in effect after the old covenant has ended. In the eyes of God if you marry someone and consummate that marriage, you are now one flesh that cannot be legally separated for any reason except two Bible exceptions that are given to us by God. God gives us only one legitimate reason for divorce and this is infidelity (Mat 5:32, Mat 19:9). Divorce is the legal end to a marriage covenant contract and God says that this is only permissible if your spouse is unfaithful. If your spouse is adulterous and sleeps around, you are free to divorce them without fear of punishment, legal recourse or retribution from God. This is what the Bible says, so if you divorced for any other reasons you will have some future issues with God. I’m not going to go there anymore since divorce is not my primary subject. The only other legal end to a marriage covenant is when one spouse dies a physical death. According to God’s word that marriage is over.
Rom 7:2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
According to this verse it is very clear that God says the law of marriage is null and void when death occurs. As long as you both are alive and neither is unfaithful you are bound by the law of marriage and God. But, as soon as your spouse dies, then you are not bound to that legal covenant any more. We can recognize that death is a legal separating force for the termination of covenants. This is actually a very important Bible concept that I might not get into fully in this lesson. This concept is introduced when Ruth says to Naomi I will go where you go and your people will be my people. Then Ruth 1:17 says until death part thee from me. This is a popular wedding vow phrase that many have spoken when they were married. The bride and the groom were promising to be faithful until death do we part. You can read about this in some of my other lessons of why God did this and how He used it to terminate His covenant with Lucifer. I want you to see the Greek definition for the word translated as “loosed” found in Romans 7:2:
From G2596 and G691; to be (render) entirely idle (useless), literally or figuratively: – abolish, cease, cumber, deliver, destroy, do away, become (make) of no (none, without) effect, fail, loose, bring (come) to nought, put away (down), vanish away, make void.
It would seem to me that this word is a very strong definition for the termination of a marriage covenant. You can read in the definition “vanish away”, “make void”, “render idle”, “abolish”, “cease”, “destroy” and you can clearly see that there is really no other way to take these statements other than literally. A death when it occurs in a marriage covenant represents a separating force that renders your previous obligations ineffective, useless and vain. So while you would like to think that your marriage is eternal you must take the words of the most intelligent being (God) to be a greater witness to what actually occurs. If you choose to ignore God’s words for what you want to believe it does not cause God’s words to fail or not to come to pass.
I heard a minister say once that he and his wife had made a covenant to stay together in heaven. They enjoyed each other so much that they could not bear to part like my reader. While he did not give any scriptures to back this promise, I’m totally convinced that it might be a possibility for them in some degree. You see I do not know of any scripture that says you cannot speak to others in heaven and establish relationships or friendships. This would further mean if you can speak with someone then you can do other things with that person as well, like walk the streets of gold, eat, fellowship, or whatever. While Jesus was on the earth, He constantly said “According to your faith…” and “As you have believed…”. Jesus seemed to emphasize the faith and beliefs of the people to be a determining factor to what happened to them on the earth. Is faith still a determining factor in heaven? Is how you believe still a defining influence to what you get throughout eternity? That is an excellent question to consider. I personally believe that God would not have gone to such extensive efforts to produce a people of faith, if faith was not a future eternal gift to possess and use. Here is a Bible verse that tends to give that impression also:
1Co 13:13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
God says that there “abides” faith, hope and love and God seems to indicate that these will continue forever. Faith is mentioned first, but God says Love is the greatest of these three. Since the Bible says that God is Love, we know that love is an eternal concept that will never end. If Love will be a dominant characteristic in heaven then faith will surely be there also. The Greek word translated as “abide” means “to continue”, “to be present”, “to endure” and “to stay in a given place”. This word seems to indicate that faith will be present in heaven and if it is like it was on the earth, what you believe is usually always what you get out of life, good, bad or indifferent.
So I have concluded that it might be entirely possible to remain in a relationship in heaven if that is what you both believed for. Now the complexity factor is increased because of this additional emphasis which you must place on the Bible. Bible faith or beliefs are always based upon what God tells us in the Bible. If God says anything is for you, then you can believe it is yours and possess it. Then there is inverse truth to that law which is that you cannot believe God for something that violates His Word and expect to get it. Therefore, if you believe for something that is sinful, hurtful, harmful, lustful, or a violation of the Word of God you will probably not get what you were expecting. Let’s say a man wants to live with a woman in eternity that was another man’s wife on the earth, would that be permissible or even remotely possible? You can begin to see the complexity that is involved in multiple personalities wanting the same thing and what is the resolution? I guess what we need to do is figure out what the Bible actually says on the subject and then believe for that. In our world, people marry and divorce like it is no big deal. There are many people in the world who have married multiple times. Some have done this because their spouses have all died, but others have done it because they thought the grass was greener on the other side of the hill. What happens when a person in our world is married multiple times and then they are saved and go to be with the Lord? Jesus actually was presented this hypothetical question in the Gospels and here is this story:
Mat 22:24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
It is very interesting to note that the Law of Moses does not tell a woman to remain unmarried if her husband has died and she has had no children. In fact the Law that God gave to Moses actually commands the opposite. It is interesting to note that God is not opposed to being married multiple times and you should think about that. It is more important to God why you have been married multiple times and not if you have been married multiple times. Here in this story the woman’s dead husband’s younger brother is supposed to marry her and raise up children for his dead brother. This means to have sex with her and give her children. So we can clearly see that God is saying something can’t we? Now the additional complexity comes in if they have already had children, then there is not a requirement to remarry and it is permissible for her children to take care of her in her old age. The law was intended to give a childless widow an option that would cause her to not stoop to prostitution to feed herself. I believe that God was looking out for the widow in this law and that it has spiritual meanings attached to it that I cannot get into today.
Mat 22:25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:
So in the hypothetical question being presented to Jesus there are said to be seven brothers and one woman. The first brother dies and leaves his wife to his brother, like the Law of Moses so states.
Mat 22:26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.
They continue to go through the list of brothers in ordered succession and each has had their turn to be married to the same woman in this world. This is one woman who had seven different husbands. Surely you have read this in the Bible before? But, did you understand it?
Mat 22:27 And last of all the woman died also.
Finally the woman dies and is buried and then what? This is where we are today in this lesson of what happens next after this life? The men that were standing with Jesus are about to ask him a question. Here is the question finally presented after the long background discourse:
Mat 22:28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.
Jesus was being questioned by a group of Jews who did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they were trying to get Jesus to see their point of view by asking a hypothetical question about it as a trick. The Pharisees did believe in the resurrection based upon words, from something that they had read in the Old Testament it gave them the impression that death was not the end of the journey. So the Sadducees ask Jesus which husband will this woman belong to since she was “one flesh” with all of them. Wow, that is a tough, tough question to answer unless you are God who knows how to handle hard questions.
Mat 22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
So here we go with the response of the creator of the universe and this is a potentially explosive answer that can be interpreted many wrong ways. If you look at just the first part of the entire response you could say that these guys did not understand the scriptures and Jesus was saying there was no resurrection coming. But, that is not what Jesus said at all. Jesus literally said “You are in error not understanding the scriptures or the power of God”. This verse actually gives us some tremendous insight into two things. The answer to their question was clearly found in the Old Testament, if we can see it and understand it. The next item to consider is that the Power of God is involved in the solution to the mystery. Jesus was in effect saying if you understood how powerful God was, you would not be asking such a foolish natural question. Wow, that is tough right there to handle isn’t it? It almost sounds like my reader’s question of can I still be married to my husband in heaven? Would Jesus give the same answer to my reader’s question as He did to the one that these guys asked? I do not know for sure how to answer that. I just know that God says “With Him ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE”. So I’m not sure if I helped or hurt with that last statement. Let’s continue through the answer that Jesus gives us and see what else He has to say:
Mat 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
Here we have a very interesting statement where Jesus continues His answer to the men’s question. Did you see what Jesus said? Jesus definitely said there is a resurrection coming, it has not occurred yet, so it is a future event within God’s calendar. Next, Jesus said after the resurrection that people will neither marry or be given in marriage. Let’s stop there and think about that part of the statement. The Greek word translated as “marry” means to wed and applies to either sex, male or female. God says males and females will not marry after they are raised in the resurrection. Then the Greek word “given in marriage” is a term only for females when a daughter is given to her future husband to become his bride. These are very familiar topics and subjects that we are all familiar with in this world. We see this happening all around us. But, Jesus clearly says that this is not what will happen after the resurrection occurs. The question then shifts to why? Does it mean it is not possible or just not permitted or could it be a third option that you have not considered? You see in the world today you see things from a very narrowly focused point of view. What will change after the resurrection occurs? Is it possible that you will not have the same desires and your focus will experience a transformation which will permit you to see things completely different? Read this verse very carefully:
1Co 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
There seems to be some clues in the Bible that we do not see things very clearly in this world. In other words our spiritual vision is clouded and our perspectives are skewed. I believe what God is saying to us is that what we hold as valuable in this world, when reflected on could become very minor to us when viewed correctly in the next world. Think about this statement very closely and consider the words written there for you. If you can only see a small part of this world and only know a minor slice of the greater truth that will be revealed later, how can you make a determination now what you will want in the next spiritual dimension? Your desire to stay married with your present spouse might just change dramatically once you see the awesome power of God. Your spouse might be the center of your world today, but in the presence of God they could fade and become much less important to you. I do not mean to say that you will not love them, but according to this verse in first Corinthians you will see them more clearly along with God.
I can almost feel the disappointment that my reader no doubt might be feeling right now. But, let’s continue with the answer that Jesus is speaking of in his response to marriage after the resurrection. After Jesus says we will not marry, Jesus says something else that is very profound; he says “we will be as the angels of God”. We can clearly understand from this statement that angels pre-existed man. Angels were not created to look like us; we were created to look like them. But, how are the angels of God? Jesus implies that angels do not marry each other either. The implication is that they could marry but that this is not the design of God for them to marry. You can take this to mean that there must be both male and female angels can’t you? If there were not any female angels then God would not be able to compare us to them. We could never be like them, if there were only males. Do you understand that? You see when I read in Genesis where the “sons of God” (angels) had sex with the daughters of Adam (women) on the earth and created a race of giants, I wondered if there were any female angels. It is clear that God says there are male angels. If God created male angels with male sexual organs and no female angels it would not make any logical sense to me. I guess I’m getting off of the subject somewhat, but it is a very fascinating concept to consider. I have to conclude that if people who are resurrected can become like the angels and female humans are included in this group there has to be female angels that exist or they would not really be like anyone else. The major thing to learn from this statement is that after the resurrection, we will be like the angels of God. Whatever they do, we can do, whatever they are we are very similar, however they live, we will live also. Please remember this and I will try to talk more about the angels later. However, Jesus is not through answering the question and we must see the rest of the answer and put it together correctly:
Mat 22:31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,
Here is Jesus beginning to give us another very deep revelation of the spiritual realm. As you can clearly read, Jesus has not finished speaking about the resurrection. This next statement is a direct revelation that is very powerful to know:
Mat 22:32 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Wow, this is a hard saying from God. It will go over your head if you are not careful to observe the words that are being communicated on the subject of the resurrection. What was Jesus saying with this statement? The words of the prophet were written many hundreds of years after the physical deaths of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is saying that at the time the prophet wrote these words, these three men were not dead. These words confounded the Sadducees who were listening and put them to silence. You see I have had several very ignorant commenters try to teach me about what happens after physical death occurs and they should have noticed what Jesus just said before they try to tell me what they think. Some have said the soul and spirit sleep and do not know anything until the time of resurrection. Some of them have tried to say that the human life is ended when a person dies and there is nothing else for them. But, God Himself says that they did not die and they are alive and the resurrection has not yet occurred. Here is one of the most important things you should learn from today’s lesson about spiritual things. If you are a Christian and your body dies in this world, the Bible says your spirit departs and is present with the Lord (Php 1:23). Jesus is saying that physical death is not the end; it is only a change of address. Death is a departure from the physical realm and an entrance into the spiritual realm. Did you understand what I just said? If you did not you should go and read it until you do understand it or just ask me some questions about the parts that you do not understand. What you need to see is that Jesus when speaking to these men on the earth said God is the God of the living and not the dead. God said Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who had died physically hundreds of years earlier, were not spiritually dead but were called alive. Let me give you a verse that I alluded to earlier about changing your of perspective after you die:
1Co 2:9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
What I see from studying the Bible are people’s desires, viewpoints and perspectives are purely based upon what they know and have experienced up until this point in time. In other words your favorite food might be apple pie on the earth, but who knows what it will be when you get to heaven since God could have things there that you have never experienced. People think that because the love found in their current family has been so special and real to them, that it cannot get any better so I will be happy if I just have this throughout eternity. However, God says in 1 Corinthians 2:9 that we have no idea or clue to the great and awesome things that He has planned for those who love Him. I tried to tell you this before, but when you are standing on the streets of gold surrounded by mansions and an innumerable company of angels with the awesome light coming from the throne of God, if you still think and feel the same way that you do today, then God has failed in you knowing Him.
I heard a minister teach about a vision of heaven that he had once where he appeared there and saw things that were so amazing that they are difficult to describe in human terms. He saw spiritual things and even people he knew and talked to them. One of his relatives a sister was there and he got to speak to her. She had died a number of years earlier and she asked him questions about her family that she left there was doing and I think these questions shocked him. You see she did not know what was happening on the earth in the physical realm so she had to ask questions about it to her brother who had just came from there to visit. Her brother did not tell her that her husband had remarried but, said that they were all doing fine. You see people in heaven do not see things the same way and they do not care about the natural realm in what you ate today and what we are wearing or even who you are married to. People in heaven do not care what kind of car you are driving or what kind of house you are living in. Things in the natural realm are very unimportant to people in the spiritual realm. It is a complete opposite perspective to what people on the earth are focused in on. Those in heaven only care if you know Jesus and are saved and that you are growing up spiritually. The eternal things are so much more important than the natural things of this world, that our perspectives are totally different after we leave here. Here is a verse that certainly applies to what I am trying to say to you today:
1Co 7:34 There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
God is comparing two women in this verse and it clearly says there is a major difference between them. But, do not take it out of context or try to say that God is saying you should not get married. You see if people did not get married and have children, there would be no harvest for God to come back to get. God is simply showing us how a perspective changes when you are married. You see things differently than someone who is not married. You can also take this into the spiritual realm comparison between someone who is spiritual versus someone who is naturally minded. If you are focused on Jesus, then you want to please Him and if you are married your focus is shifted to your spouse. When you get to heaven, who do you want your focus to be on? What do you think God wants your focus to be on?
So I am not saying today that you will not love your spouse when you get to heaven. I’m not saying you cannot spend a lot of time with your former spouse in heaven. I am just saying that in heaven you will see things more clearly than you do today. You will be able to see God for the first time there and you will know Him better than you have ever known Him. I personally believe that the experience of heaven will truly be overwhelming. I believe God has some awesome things prepared for us and when we begin to see them, the past will become just what it was, a spec of inconsequential meaning that pales to the definition of an eternity with God. The human mind cannot fully comprehend infinite and eternal concepts of time. No doubt we will be able to do things in eternity that we never imagined in our short life span on the earth. So I have much more to say on this subject, but I have gone long enough today. I’ll give you a list of key points from today’s lesson about marriage before and after the resurrection.
- Marriage is a blood covenant union between a man and a woman.
- Divorce is not permitted except for infidelity.
- There is a physical resurrection coming where we get a new glorified body.
- Just because you die physically does not mean you are not alive spiritually. You exist just not here in the physical realm.
- After you die physically, your marriage in the natural realm is over.
- This does not mean Christians will not know each other in the spiritual realm in fact you will definitely carry over your memories and experiences in this life into the next.
- We will see things clearly then and not be limited in our perspective as we are now.
- Jesus said in the next realm we will:
- Not marry
- Not be given in marriage
- Be as the angels in heaven
I see marriage, children and families as natural things that God has created for us to teach us about spiritual things. If we did not have these things we would not be able to understand the future spiritual reality that we will soon all experience with Him. So my reader asked me if her marriage could continue and this is a difficult question to attempt to answer today. I hope I have not disappointed anyone in my answer with what the Bible says. I do not believe that you will be disappointed after you get to heaven in any degree. There are many things that you do not know yet, so keep learning them and you will see things more and more clearly as we approach Him who is calling us to a greater and higher ability to see.
Understanding Bible Faith! How Faith Comes? Part 4
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 4 in a series of advanced Bible studies about the subject of Bible Faith. Today’s lesson will be a basic foundational definition to how to get Faith. There are many people in the world who claim to have faith and yet when pressed for a definition of what faith is to them, they cannot tell you. Then if you asked them how did you get this faith, again they cannot tell you. Therefore, we are going to explore the basic Bible subject of faith to help people understand what faith is and where faith comes from. Technically speaking you do not have to know how transmissions work, to drive a car and faith is the same way to some extent. You can drive a car by just automatically learning which gear to be in and press the gas and you are off and running. Salvation can be this way also. You do not have to know that it takes faith to use your faith to be saved, yet your faith is still the determining factor to whether you are saved or not. So we could liken your faith to be your spiritual transmission and God and His power and Grace to be the spiritual engine to the car. Without both of these two key components working flawlessly together in harmony, your spiritual car is not going to move. Hopefully you will understand this analogy better as we continue through this lesson. If you have not read this series of lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and read starting at “Part 1”.
In order to understand what faith is, let’s first find out how faith comes. If you did not know that faith comes then you did not read my first lessons very closely. In a previous lesson I described a verse found in Romans 12:3 that said that all Bible faith comes from God. This verse told us that God has dealt to every man (among you) faith. I explained that verse in that lesson, so I will not repeat the explanation here. Just read it and recognize that God has faith to give, so we as men and women must receive it. Also, in a previous lesson I taught that faith is measurable and quantifiable ranging anywhere from zero or none upwards to full of faith, the maximum that you can have. Remember that your faith can vary in that range of measurable numbers based upon something. Jesus would look at His disciples and rebuke them for having “no faith” and then for a few people that Jesus ran into, He would praise them for having “great faith”. Obviously there is a great deal of difference between those two ranges found on the faith value chart. We can conclude based upon the information that we learned in lesson 3 that faith comes in stages and can grow or increase up the chart to the highest levels. But, how do you get faith and how do you increase your faith that you already have. If you were a car, and your gas tank was empty you would simply go and fill it, does this simple concept also apply to faith? Can I go to the Faith station and fill my Faith tank? That is where we are at in the lesson today so let’s go to the Bible and see what God has to say to us.
Rom 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
God gives us a major revelation concerning faith in this verse of Romans. God ties the amount of faith that you possess to the amount of Words of God that you hear. Of course, it is much more complicated than that simple statement. If you could get faith by just hearing God’s Word, then you would just need to go buy the Bible on CD and play it all the time and you should have faith to move mountains left and right. Obviously it takes more than just hearing to get faith. But, hearing is where you faith lesson begins today to teach you about how to get more faith. Let me teach you the progressive steps to getting faith and then we will look at this in the scriptures to find if we can prove what I just said. Faith depends upon you doing the following steps and there are 4 possible reasons why faith does not come and only 1 instance where your faith actually grows. Read these 5 examples very carefully and see if you can see what God is teaching you:
Faith Comes by Hearing, but they:
- Don’t Listen or Refuse to Hear!
- Listen but don’t understand what is Said.
- Hear, Understand but don’t believe it.
- Hear, Understand, Believe and then don’t do it.
- Hear, Understand, Believe and then do it and finally they have faith that grows.
Wow, I do not know if you understood what I just said but it was good. These same concepts are how you learn things in school. You go to class, you either choose to hear your teacher or reject her words by closing your mind to them. Then you can hear her words, but not understand what was being taught. Right there is your opportunity to ask questions or remain ignorant. Next you can hear your teacher teach you about history and then not believe that it happened. Next, you hear your teacher teach you about algebra, understand it, believe it but just not do the work and you will fail that class. Finally, when you achieve to all of the first four requirements, hearing, understanding, believing and doing is when your faith will grow and increase and you can move to the next higher faith grade level. That was how faith works in a nutshell. It is the basis of how faith comes and how you put it to work for you. Let’s examine if we can find faith demonstrated to us in a Bible example that we are given and see if this is how it really works:
Mar 5:25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,
Mar 5:26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,
Mar 5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
Mar 5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
Mar 5:29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.
Here is story of a woman who was diseased for 12 years. But, did you notice what the Bible says happened to this woman? I tried to underline some of the important parts for your careful consideration. It says in verse 27 that she had “heard” of Jesus. How does faith come? According to Romans 10:17 faith comes by hearing. So right there we know that this is the first requirement for having faith. She obviously heard something that gave her faith and it must have been the Word of God according to Romans 10:17. What did she hear? While we are not told what she heard directly, we can make an assumption based upon other scriptures that it had to be something from the Old Testament. Remember what Jesus did after being baptized by John? Jesus went into the synagogue one day and open the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and read from it “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and He has anointed me” and then he continues to say “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21). If you think that Jesus did this only one time, you would probably be making a wrong assumption. I personally believe that Jesus read this verse of Isaiah everywhere He went to build the people’s faith. So I believe that this woman with the issue of blood had heard what Jesus had said. Now right there she must have understood what was spoken and you clearly see that she believed it by what these verses in Mark 5 say that she does after hearing. Here is a woman that should not be out in public, but she has heard of Jesus and decides to get healed. She does not ask Jesus or anyone else if it is permissible to do anything; she simply presses through the crowds that were also touching Jesus, sneaks up on the back of Jesus and touches His garment surreptitiously. The Bible says that instantly she felt in her body the disease was gone. Immediately, Jesus felt power had flowed from Him and he turned to ask “Who touched me”. Wow, this is one of the best faith lessons in the Bible that I know of and it clearly demonstrates the principles that I have outlined. A woman hears about Jesus, understands what she heard, chooses to believe it and then acts upon her faith and goes and gets healed and Jesus did not know it was happening until after it happened.
Mar 5:31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?
The disciples look at Jesus like He is crazy and say to Him, Master everyone is touching you. Here is a definitive clue to the difference between a physical touch and a spiritual touch. The crowd was touching Jesus physically, but this woman with faith touched Him spiritually and there is a major difference between those two realities. That is why I get some critics who write me and tell me how wrong I am and I get some people who have spiritual eyes to tell me “Wow that was good”. If I could make everyone see things the way God sees them, I would certainly do that, but I can’t and God won’t so we have what we have in the world today. Faith is a spiritual force and not a physical feeling.
Mar 5:33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.
The woman was caught, but now that she is healed it is legal for her to be in public again, so she goes to Jesus and falls down before Him. She is obviously grateful and thankful and she tells him the truth.
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Jesus confirms to everyone present and to us His readers that it was the woman’s faith that made her whole. You see if it was only up to God’s power, everyone would be falling down before Him thanking Him for their healing, but no one else present got healed. Jesus clearly tells us that it was her faith that was the determining factor for her healing. It was her faith that made her whole. The Greek word for “whole” is the word “sozo” and it means to “save” or to “deliver”. This is the word that is translated many times as “saved” or “salvation”. Faith as you can see was the cause for her salvation. People, who do not want to see this, claim that everything that happens to them is what God has caused to happen. If is funny that God does not say this in the Bible anywhere. Jesus could have told the woman with the issue of blood “Be of good cheer, my power has saved you”, but God does not say this. Are you able to see the truth? I pray that you do. So what does this story in Mark reveal to us that the woman did:
- She heard the truth.
- She understood the truth.
- She believed the truth.
- She acted on the truth.
- She was saved because of her faith.
That was faith in a nutshell again and it confirms what God taught you earlier. So did you hear it? Did you understand it? Do you believe it? What will you do with it? Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the Word of God. So if you want to increase your faith that is what you need to do. It technically means that you have to be an open and receptive type of vessel in order to hear. If you are not being open to the Word of God you will not hear it to begin with. So decide in your heart to be a vessel that is willing to change and then go and hear the word of God until you understand it. Next, if you believe what you have heard is the truth, then you are ready to take hold of the hem of His garment and receive the power of God for your answer. Your faith is the transmission that causes your spiritual car to accelerate and to go places. God’s Grace is the Motor that supplies the power to your spiritual car to change your location. You can keep your car in the garage and never use it to go anywhere in the world or you can do what Jesus taught “If you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you would say…”. I hope that you enjoyed this basic Bible faith lesson and that you learned something that can be useful with your walk with God. Until next time, I will let you go and review this lesson and see if you truly understood it and then you can write me and tell me about how it worked for you. God Bless.
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons on faith, you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Bible Faith! Your Faith is Measureable! Part 3
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 3 in an advanced series of lessons on understanding the basic concepts of faith found in the Bible. To have basic and advanced in the same sentence is almost an oxymoronic expression, but I am attempting to simplify a very complex subject so that anyone who wants to can understand it. In the first lesson I gave you an overview of the origin of faith and how that God had faith when He created the world so therefore I taught you that faith was not a brand new concept found only in the New Testament. I further showed you definitive scriptures from Hebrews 11 that described Old Testament faith examples even though God never emphasized or taught this to be a required quality to possess. However, you can clearly see that many people are included in the Bible simply because of their faith. For example, we are told that Rahab the harlot had faith and then we are told in Matthew that she becomes a key figure in the life and genealogy of Jesus (Mat 1:5) because of her faith (Heb 11:31). I taught you that faith is a rudimentary subject of Bible theology which is foundational to you being a real Christian. I also showed you that faith was an essential element for your salvation. Many people want to emphasize God’s sovereignty and ignore man’s faith. I had a commenter like that yesterday. He blasted me pretty well with his religious rhetoric and I’m just going to smile and ignore it. When you discover the balance in the Bible of putting things together correctly you learn to ignore unbalanced ignorant people who know about God but, who do not know God personally.
We have not yet technically defined what faith is, or determined where faith comes from fully, or how you get faith to grow or described how faith works, but we will eventually get there, but probably not today. Today I want to show you some more very important foundational Bible concepts about faith that God reveals to us from a series of scriptures that describes to us, that the amount of faith that we possess is quantifiable or measureable. In other words not everyone has the same amount of faith and that is going to upset some people’s theology greatly. You see I have heard it taught in some churches that God gives everyone the same amount of faith and that all faith comes from God. However, both of those statements are only partially true or I should say just a part of the complete truth. When people teach things like this, they claim that it is not up to us to do anything to have faith and they alleviate us from having any responsibility or accountability for our actions. They in effect seem to place all of the responsibility upon God and that relieves them from having to do anything. This is what I call the “Blameless Christian” theology; a theory of which some confused men on the earth teach. They believe that whatever happens to them in the world, it was just not their fault and therefore they could have done nothing to change it from happening, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. Wow, someday these men and women are going to be very disappointed when God begins to ask them some very basic direct questions about what they were thinking. If you have not read this series of lesson from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start reading with “Part 1”.
What do I mean when I say that faith is measureable or quantifiable? Here in the U.S. we have a set of standards that may be different than you are used to in your country. However, the concepts are identical regardless of the standard being utilized. We measure the size of boards when building a house and precise calculations are made to keep the house level, plumb and square. Then here in the U.S., almost everything in the grocery store is sold by weight, volume or some other identifiable and quantifiable quality that makes them more fairly priced. If you go to the market and buy some grapes, they are normally weighed and then the price is calculated from that. This is the only fair way of buying and selling grapes since grapes can vary in size and the number of grapes on each vine differs. This is what I am trying to teach you today, that faith even though you cannot see it, it is also a measureable spiritual substance according to God and He is able to tell how much that you possess, even if you can’t. Like buying grapes, God is also able to measure your faith to determine how much you enjoy. In the natural realm, this would normally involve a measuring device like a scale along with a computation or calculation for the total amount found, but since we are discussing a spiritual reality this is going to be a little bit more complex than that. I think I want to start this lesson with a Bible verse that is widely taught that confuses people. Here in this verse it would at first seem to imply that faith is a substance that God has given to everyone in equal amounts, but upon closer examination, I believe it says something much different:
Rom 12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.
Here is God teaching us where Bible faith ultimately comes from. If God can give faith to a man, then all Bible faith must ultimately come from God. This is a further confirmation that faith existed with God before God created man. I mean it only makes since that if He can give something away, then He must first possess it before He can hand it to you. I certainly believe this statement that Bible faith comes from God and the Bible. That is the first key element to note in this verse. However, just because God has given you something, does not mean that you have possessed it or that is all there is to give. In other words I could give you a drink of water in a cup, but you only took a sip and threw the rest away. Did you possess everything that I gave you? Was it up to me to make you drink the water? Do you think that I had any more water or was that all of the water that I had? Do you understand the complexity of spiritual things based upon a simple example of a glass of natural water? There is absolutely no way that I can make you have all of the water that I have and drink it. I could have another pitcher of water to refill your cup after you drank that one. I could have a well of water that is able to refill that pitcher after you drink that much. It could be a never ending supply of water. So to say that God gave faith to every man and that they all received the same amount is pretty crazy using my cup of water example.
Bible faith is clearly a spiritual substance given to us by a spiritual God. Then it says that God has given every man “the measure of faith” and this is where the controversy begins to get deeper. This verse cannot be talking about every human on the earth or it would contradict what the Bible says in other places and God’s Word does not contradict itself ever when interpreted correctly. You see the Bible clearly tells us in other places that every man does not have faith and if you look in 2 Thessalonians 3:2 you will see this is true. Therefore, we have a potential scripture conflict that needs resolution. The way to resolve this conflict is to note the context of the given verses. If you read the entire chapter in 2 Thessalonians you will see that God is speaking about unsaved wicked and evil men not having faith and in Romans 12:3 the context is clearly written about men who are Christians because God says “to every man among you”. Romans 12:3 is written to church members who have to possess faith to be a Christian. So we can conclude that even if God has given faith to every man (saved or unsaved), that everyone does not possess it because they have not received the free full gift from God. This is like if you have a party and invited 12 people and you put out 12 pieces of cake for them and say come and get it. Whose responsibility is it now to take the cake and enjoy it? The host of the party is not responsible to make you take your cake and eat it, so if you choose not to come and get it, you lose out and the host of the party has done their job. This is how salvation works, God is not responsible to make you take your salvation cake and eat it. It is totally up to you to partake of Christ by faith and taste and see that He is good. You see you may not know that you like cake, until you try it by faith. I guess I got off the main subject of did God give to every man “faith” and the same amount. Here is where the controversy continues. I have heard several preachers say that this verse in Romans 12:3, proves that we all have the same amount of faith, but in actuality that is not what God is saying and if you teach it that way you contradict several other scriptures that clearly teach a radically different truth. Let’s start by analyzing the word translated as “dealt”. If you were playing a card game you would normally deal out the cards equally to every participant and this is where people probably get the initial idea or concept of everyone having the same amount or an equal distribution of faith cards, but here is the actual definition for this word from Strong’s:
From G3313; to part, that is, (literally) to apportion, bestow, share, or (figuratively) to disunite, differ: – deal, be difference between, distribute, divide, give part.
Nowhere in this definition does it ever say or even imply that the portions divided are equal. In fact I get the opposite inference from reading this definition that the portions are greatly varying from each other. Do you see this when you read it? But then I have heard that it is the words “the measure” given in this verse that implies everyone is given the identical portion of faith. However, let’s look at the definition of the word “measure” also from the Strong’s:
An apparently primary word; a measure (“metre”), literally or figuratively; by implication a limited portion (degree): – measure.
Here in this definition it does not say “the” measure it says “a” measure and that changes it dramatically. When you read all of the definition it says that out of all of the faith that is possible we have been given a very limited portion of it and if you try to say that means we are all equal you would be assuming incorrectly. The translators of the KJV Bible obviously thought wrong and put the word “the” in their translation instead of the word “a” and came up with this incorrect wording. If you like you can check other translations like the NASB and Young’s Literal Translation and see that they translated it correctly to say “as to each God did deal a measure of faith”. What I will do now is try to show you this position of everyone possessing differing amounts of faith using the Bible to help us establish this truth. Let me give you some Bible examples of this in order to make my point more clear.
Mar 4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
Here is a verse of scripture where Jesus and the disciples are crossing over a large body of water which appears to be the Sea of Galilee and a storm arises that appears to be their demise. However, Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat and the disciple have to wake him up and after Jesus calms the sea and winds, He looks at them and rebukes them for having no faith. The state of “No Faith” would have to represent a complete absence of the spiritual substance of faith from them. If you had a scale that weighed grapes, this would be zero or the state of having no grapes. If you had a bucket this would be the state of it being empty or void of any substance. You do understand this don’t you? If Jesus is saying “where is your faith”, then Jesus is clearly expecting them to have faith and they do not. Why is Jesus looking for faith? You should ask yourself that question and try to come up with the correct answer. In reading this story it would appear to me that Jesus is not a happy faith leader and He clearly tells them they better get with the God faith program. I also believe that He is talking to you and I right now also.
Mat 17:17 Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.
Here we can read another rebuke from the God of creation to His followers. I have only noticed one thing in the Gospels that Jesus ever rebuked His followers for, maybe you can find something I did not and if so please let me know. But, it appears to me that Jesus is blaming the disciple’s lack of faith for their inability to cast out the devil from this man’s son. This is a further confirmation that faith represents the power to remove an evil spiritual force or enemy. So clearly faith is a number one priority to Jesus and these are two examples where Jesus declares that He expected His followers to have some faith and He could not find any when He looked at them. So this is two examples of where people had no faith. Now let us go up the spiritual faith scale to where Jesus said someone had just a little bit of faith.
Mat 6:30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Here is the first occurrence of the word “faith” in the New Testament. Jesus is speaking and it is clear to me that Jesus has some inside information that we do not normally possess. Jesus is comparing some natural things that God accomplishes by clothing the grass of the field and He compares this to clothing people who He says are much more valuable than grass. Then Jesus says something very profound. Jesus said these people that he was speaking to had “little” faith. The word “little” here means “puny” or an “insignificant” amount of faith. If I had a 5 liter bucket and I poured a couple of drops of milk into it that is what Jesus is talking about here in this statement. Jesus is clearly saying that faith is a measureable substance and that you can have just a very tiny portion of it. Do you understand this? There are five times found in the Bible that Jesus refers to people having “little faith” and these can be found in Matthew 6:30, 8:26, 14:31, 16:8 and Luke 12:28. Let’s move on to another very different example of contrasting faith that Jesus gives us from that of no faith or little faith:
Mat 8:10 When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
Here is the second time faith is mentioned in the New Testament and this time it is dramatically different than the first time. Jesus is speaking about a Roman centurion here in this verse. A Roman centurion was a military man that Jesus said had “great” faith. The term “great” means a very large amount in quantity. You can clearly see that this is the complete opposite of the term “little” faith. In my bucket analogy it would be like pouring in milk to reach almost the top. These verses fascinate me tremendously. They clearly tell me that Jesus was looking for faith by His reaction to when He found it and didn’t find it. It also clearly tells me that the amount of faith that people possessed was not up to God or Jesus. Otherwise Jesus would have not been surprised to find a Roman centurion with great faith and the children of Israel with little faith to no faith. If it was God who was dealing out the faith and He wanted Israel to have great faith, then they would have clearly had it. Do you see my logic here? This tells me that “faith” while it comes from God it does not depend upon God solely and completely for how much we have. In other words we have a major part and role to play in the situation and we will definitely talk more about this in other lessons. Let me give you another example of great faith:
Mat 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
There are only a very few number of people in the Bible that Jesus ever commended for having “great” faith and this woman in this chapter of Matthew is certainly one of them. Later in these lessons on faith we will discuss why some had great faith and why some had little faith but that is not my subject today. What I want to demonstrate to you is the fact that Jesus said “faith” was measurable and that the amount that a person had was not dependent upon God’s actions alone. It is very interesting to note in this story that this woman is another example of a Gentile being ministered to by the King of the Jews who clearly said that He was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Yet Jesus ministered to her and the Roman centurion and Jesus said both of them had “great” faith. It is very clear to me that great “faith” gets God’s attention no matter who possesses it. I firmly believe that we as Christians should be doing whatever it takes to achieve to this level of great faith so that we can be praised by God. Did that sound arrogant? Do you want God to say to you “well done thou good and faithful servant”? If you do then I believe it is going to take you having great faith.
Mat 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
Here is a scripture that I have touched on some before, but I will give you another perspective on this verse given what we have learned. We have clearly seen that Jesus rebuked his disciples for having no faith. Jesus also said of others that they had little faith. Then we saw that Jesus clearly said some had great faith. Because, Jesus does not appear to measure or qualify the amount of faith that is being observed, I make the logical conclusion from that information that Jesus puts their faith somewhere in the middle of the scale. In other words their faith was not just a little bit and it was not a huge great amount, I believe that it was just right faith for the situation they were in. I’ll call this the Goldilocks Faith, just for the sake of argument. In the Goldilocks story she is always looking for the just right fit for her size. It is an interesting concept to consider, if you can have varying degrees of faith from zero to a whole bunch, then you should be able to evaluate your faith and measure what you can and cannot do with it. Many times people want to have million dollar faith when they don’t have the faith for 50 cents. This is where faith gets a bad rap in churches and people begin to teach this faith stuff doesn’t work. You should read the life story of a man named Smith Wigglesworth and learn that he did not start out raising people from the dead and that this only came after years of developing his faith to this level. Smith Wigglesworth also started an orphanage that when he began he had nothing with little faith to even get it going. But, by the time of the end of his life came he ran a home for hundreds of orphan children that cost big bucks to sustain. Smith Wigglesworth learned the conepts of faith from God and learned how to grow his faith. He wrote a book about this called “Ever Increasing Faith” teaching us that faith grows. Let’s think briefly about the men who carried the lame man up on the roof, if they had no faith or little faith, they would not have gone through such extraordinary ways to get to Jesus. However, if they had possessed great faith, they would not have had to go through such extraordinary efforts to get to Jesus. It is a complex paradox of how faith works. The Roman centurion told Jesus “You do not have to come to my house to heal my servant, just speak the word only and he will be healed”. You see if the Roman centurion had middle of the road faith, he would have had Jesus come and lay hands on him. If the Roman centurion had no faith or little faith he would have not even come to Jesus and his servant would have probably died. Wow, I just gave you a quick introduction to how faith works and what faith does depending upon the amount of faith that you possess. That was an introduction to stuff to come.
It is also imperative to make another observation from these few verses that we have read in Matthew. Jesus has not died on the cross, been raised from the dead nor ascended back into heaven and yet Jesus is speaking of “faith” as being a critical element to who receives a miracle from Him and who does not. This fact further proves the existence of faith as being an essential and present factor in the Old Testament even though it has not technically been revealed in the Word of God up until this point in time of the physical ministry of Jesus. Let’s move on to another quantifiable measure of faith found in the Bible.
Act 6:5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:
Here we have a measurement of faith that should be the ultimate goal of every Christian. Here in this verse of Acts God describes a man named Stephen. In this verse God says that Stephen was “full” of faith. Using my bucket analogy again, that would mean a bucket that overflowed with milk; in other words a bucket that you could not put any more faith into. This was the condition of this man and this concept is totally difficult for me to even comprehend. God is clearly contrasting the amounts of faith in at least five different levels. We had no faith, little faith, just right faith, great faith and full of faith and we could logically assume that there are varying ranges of faith in between these levels given to us like a gas gauge. In fact using my bucket analogy we could have a totally empty bucket all the way to the overflowing bucket level.
We have learned a lot about faith today. Faith is a measureable and quantifiable spiritual substance that the total amount of faith contained in every human can vary dramatically from none to overflowing amounts. We have seen repeatedly that faith was a substance that God expected to be present in every person that was ministered to by Jesus and we can conclude that God expects this in us Christians the same way. Here are some other facts about faith that we have discovered today:
- Bible faith ultimately comes from God.
- However Jesus and the Bible said some had No Faith.
- Jesus taught us that some people had only Little Faith.
- Jesus taught us that some people had “Just Right” Faith to be made whole.
- Jesus also taught us that a few people had Great Faith that exceeded His expectations.
- Later in Acts we saw Stephen being described as being Full of Faith.
- All of these are differing levels of the same spiritual substance from Zero to Maximum.
- We again saw that Jesus was looking for faith in everyone that He encountered.
- People were praised by God for having faith and rebuked by Him for not having any or just having a little bit.
- Finally, we can logically conclude from all of this infrmation given to us today that since faith is measureable that the current level of our faith can be increased no matter where we currently are at on the faith scale.
Do you understand the importance of studying this subject of Bible Faith? Are you beginning to see the significance that God put on this subject of faith in the Bible? I hope you have learned something that will help you in your walk with God and that this new knowledge will be put to use to help further the Kingdom of God. God Bless you until next time.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on Bible faith you can go to “Part 4“.
Understanding the Brotherly Love of the Lord in the Family of God!
(Ver 1.1) Today is a lesson to me because I am challenged at times with turning the other cheek when people write me hateful self-righteous comments on my website, my flesh wants to strike back, but my spirit feels compassion and love for them. This is a very constant internal struggle that we are all faced with over the course of our lives. This is a battle of our wills, between what our flesh wants and what our spirit wants to do and as long as we live on the earth this is a never ending cycle. Satan is bent upon getting real Christians to come out of the spiritual dimension and to get them back into the physical fight with our brothers and sisters but, we must learn that there is a higher path and ground to stand on. So when a commenter left me a message yesterday telling me I’m not a Christian, my flesh wanted to write them back and tell them they were a self-righteous idiot to stand in the seat of judgment against a fellow Christian. They didn’t know me, so they had no idea what I was or was not. They obviously just read some words on a web-site and I guess I didn’t believe like they did so they have concluded I don’t know God. Wow, I find that attitude very humorous. People can act so foolishly and not even know it. The Bible says in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to you who call evil good and good evil”. In the very next verse in Isaiah God says “Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes”. In other words God calls someone who judges incorrectly and raises their own self higher than others, a person who is in jeopardy of being judged by God.
So rather than doing what my flesh wants to do today, I will teach on love towards your brother. In doing this I will feed my spirit on the right things to do and build up myself to become stronger in this area. You see I technically do not know if my commenter was my brother or not, but I will give them the benefit of a doubt since they were reading a Christian’s blog about Advanced Spiritual Bible study.
Rom 12:10 Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another;
To be kind means that you have the opportunity to not be kind at times. It would seem that this occurs more often than you might think. People can be easily misunderstood; their words can be taken incorrectly very easily. Reading someone’s writing is not like hearing a person’s voice where you can pick up on voice changes, inflections, sarcasm, humor and emphasized or deemphasized expressions or whatever. I have found that writing online is probably harder than just talking to someone in person because of these challenges. So while I do not intend to offend anyone, I know sometimes I do. The term translated as “kind affection” is a Greek word that is interesting to note in this verse. The word means an “emotional cherishing or fondness of a family member”. Did you know I was in your family that is if you are a Christian? Obviously if you are not a Christian you are not in my family which is the family of the Most High God. I am in the family of Jesus Christ and I know this for a fact whether you do or not. Did you know that God has a spiritual family? Christians need to learn this first and then learn how to treat their fellow family members with kindness.
Here in this verse we have another word that is translated as love, but is a different type of love. The Greek word “philadelphia” is the word that is translated as “brotherly love”. Brotherly love is a “fraternal love” of your family again. If you did not know that there are different types of love in the Bible you should do a study on that subject. Most intelligent people understand that you love your wife differently than you love your sister. Unless your sister happens to be your wife, like Abraham’s wife was. In John 3:16 it says “God so loved the world that He gave…”. In John 3:16 the Greek word for love is “agape”. This word in John 3:16 is the God kind of love where God loved us while we were even sinners and died for us when we did not deserve it, earn it, or ever could. The Bible tells us that God is “Agape” in 1 John 4:8. It does not say that God has Agape, it says He is Agape. Then if you are a Christian this Agape is now a part of your spirit. Agape is an unconditional God kind of love that every Christian possesses in their spirits. However, getting “Agape” out to the external is a different subject entirely. Philadelphia is similar but yet different. It is kind of like the saying you can choose your friends but you cannot choose your relatives. Well sometimes your natural relatives can be the most challenging to love, so it is in the spiritual family of God also. In the real world you can walk away from someone being hateful, but if this is your brother doing this at the family dinner, then you have an opportunity to overcome the same internal challenge that I have been going through today. Do you retaliate or do you try to smile and say something kind. Wow, that is a bigger challenge than you can imagine.
Next, in this verse it says “in honor”. This is an interesting concept. This word in the Greek means “something valuable” or “a great price paid”. This word in 1 Peter 2:7 is used to describe Jesus Christ as being the “precious” stone that the builders rejected. This is the exact same Greek word used in Romans 12:10 as “honor”. Anything that is “precious” in the eyes of God should be precious to you also. I believe that God is saying to treat others as being precious as you are. Wouldn’t it be a nicer church if people would just do what God said? I hope and pray that someday they will become a doer of the word of God and not just a hearer only. The last phrase in this verse Romans 12:10 says to “prefer one another”. This is another amazing truth that is very profound. This Greek word translated as “preferring” means to “lead the way for others”. Wow, is that a strong statement. So obviously when someone hits you verbally and you want to hit them back, God instructs us to become an example to them so that they can be directed into the right path. I use to have a sign in my office that said “He who leads when no one follows, only takes a walk”. So today I am attempting to take a few people on the internet down a path of brotherly love and I am hoping someone will learn to follow.
1Co 11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.
I’m not Paul and I’m certainly not Jesus, but I’m trying to follow their examples. The Christian way is a complex life style that can be simplified if you approach your existence using God’s words to guide you into the right things to do. Because people do not know the Bible they do not follow the Bible. God says in Hosea 4:6, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. Instead of getting the right knowledge from God, a lot of the time people are deceived into a distracted priority for a lesser way of learning and doing. I am attempting to come up to a higher spiritual dimension today and to set an example of what to do when someone calls you names unjustly. This will probably not be the last time that someone does this to me, so this will probably not be the last time that I write about love on this website. I trust that those of you, who can see the difference, you have some understanding in what kind of spiritual battle I have been going through today. Now that I read the Bible about love and looked up the definitions, reminding myself of the truth, I have a better and stronger resolve to do the words of God towards others. So if you have been a faithful reader of this website, I apologize for writing a Bible lesson directly and mostly at myself. I hope that you will display some grace towards the things that we probably all face at one time or the other and to my brother who left me this hateful comment, I will tell you that I love you anyway and I will pray that you will do the same in the future. God Bless!
Understanding the Davidic Covenant and the Rapture Connection!
(Ver 1.2) This is a basic rebuttal to a man who left me a very ignorant comment on one of my posts. He was adamantly opposed to the concept that Jesus could possibly come back and catch His church up before the tribulation occurred. He basically took some verses out of context and gave them some natural interpretations to justify his ignorant position and beliefs. I have learned not to reply to my critics and their hateful words because they are not interested in getting help or learning the truth. I may read their comments to see if I can learn something, but I then delete them and move on. So if you want to leave me a hateful bunch of reasons of why I’m wrong, please do not waste either of our times. So today’s lesson is not for my commenter but, only for those who are willing to hear the truth and to change. That is what makes me different than my commenter, I am perfectly willing to change if anyone can give me spiritual Bible verses that say I am wrong, and then I will change very fast. What this man was guilty of is an attempt to put his limitations and definitions on what God can do. It is very clear to me that God will never violate His word. You can always count on the fact that God will do whatever He says. However, it is also very clear to me that there are many people in the world who do not understand God’s word so they have come up with erroneous conclusions that put limitations on what God can do in their mind. It is interesting to note that God is not limited in His ability to what you have in your mind and what you think that He can do. Your interpretation of God’s word does not limit His ability to do what He said He would do. Your wrong interpretations of His word will only affect you personally and what He will do for you and it will have no effect when He comes to rapture me out of here in a very short time from now. I am going to start by giving you his main scripture that this man said was proof for why Jesus could not come back before the tribulation ended and then hopefully show you how narrow minded and blind his argument was.
Act 3:21 Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
According to my very ignorant commenter, he claimed that this verse says that Jesus has returned to heaven and must remain there until the time when all things that have been written about have been completed, fulfilled, accomplished or performed. In other words according to him Jesus cannot ever come back to the earth to rapture the church before the tribulation because every prophecy has not been fulfilled in his mind. I wonder who died and made this reader God. Clearly he acts like he knows more than God when he can tell God what he can do and what he can’t do. Clearly he does not know how to read the Bible and see that Jesus has already been back to the earth several times since ascending into the heavens and being seated at the right hand of Majesty. He is attempting to put God into his little box and God is not interested in his mindless interpretations. According to my reader he saw where Scofield said that Israel must be restored to the seed of David before Jesus returns. Therefore he has concluded that a pre-tribulation rapture of the church is impossible without understanding that the Seed of David has already been restored His Kingdom. I went and reviewed Scofield’s notes on the subject and I do not have any idea how this man came to his conclusions based upon this information. It is very clear to me that he is thinking of spiritual things in the terms of natural interpretations, definitions and realities and not seeing that they have already been fulfilled in Christ. Let’s go back and see what God said to David:
2Sa 7:16 And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever.
The basis of the Davidic Covenant is established when the prophet Nathan comes to speak to David in 2 Samuel 7. You can go and read the entire chapter if you like. I just want to focus in on one verse for now and this occurs in verse 16. God says to King David that He will make David’s house and kingdom an eternal everlasting one. Since David died physically and has not been resurrected, God was obviously not speaking to David who was incapable of fulfilling this prophecy. In fact there were no sons of David who were ever capable of fulfilling this prophecy until God became his son in Jesus. If you understand the genealogies of Jesus given to us in Matthew and Luke you know that these are two different ancestries of two different people. If you do not know this you better go and study it again in detail. Both lineages go through David, but after David the one in Matthew is through David’s son Solomon and the other one in Luke is through David’s son Nathan. So it is very clear that they are not the same person who comes to the end of this list. Both do not end up at Jesus, only one does. So how do you resolve this problem? You have to realize that the genealogy in Matthew is that of Joseph and the genealogy in Luke is that of Mary the mother of Jesus and I do not have time to prove this to you in this lesson. Use your brain and read it and hopefully you will see it. What we understand from the Bible is that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, so in order for Jesus to be born a physical son of David his physical mother must have been a daughter of David. This is the only way the Davidic covenant would ever be fulfilled eternally. Jesus Christ is the only son of David that is alive today to take his father’s throne and since Jesus is eternally alive His kingdom is also eternal.
What I am going to do now is to change subjects for a bit to show you that Jesus is not limited to the words of an ignorant commenter to what He can do. According to my commenter, it is not possible for Jesus to return to the earth because we read in Acts 3:21 that heaven has received him until all things have been restored in the earth. It is very obvious to me that my commenter is expecting an earthly Kingdom to be reestablished like David’s kingdom and that only this would fulfill the prophecy in his mind. However, Jesus is not limited to your interpretation of the scripture, so He can return to the earth as often as he likes and you can’t do anything about it. Let’s look at a couple of examples in the Bible where it clearly tells us that Jesus came back to the earth after being seated in heaven:
Act 9:17 And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.
Uh oh? What did this verse say? Did Jesus appear to Saul on the road to Damascus? Didn’t Jesus know this was not permitted according to my deceived commenter? I guess Jesus didn’t read Scofield commentary and decided to show up and talk with Saul anyway. This verse also says that Jesus was the one that sent Ananias personally to Saul. How did Jesus accomplish this while being in heaven? Apparently Jesus appeared to Ananias and told him to go to see Saul. You can read this in the surrounding verses of chapter 9 how that Jesus appears to Ananias in a vision. What is a vision? A vision is the appearing of Jesus in a spiritual form on the earth where a man is permitted to see him spiritually. Maybe you do not understand spiritual visions because you have never had one. So that is probably the most difficult obstacle for you to overcome. You need to learn about what visions are and how visions occur using the Bible. I wrote a Bible lesson about this subject so you should go and read that if you want to know if they are “Real or Fantasy”. Here we have a verse that says very clearly that Jesus appeared to two different people on the earth after going back to heaven and you will have to ignore them completely to hold on to your deceived ideas of what Jesus can and can’t do in the earth before the tribulation occurs. Here is a much more detailed account of the appearing of Jesus to Saul on the road to Damascus and you should pay close attention to this story to see if God is saying this is the way it happened or not:
Act 26:12 Whereupon as I went to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests,
We can definitely see that Paul is describing his journey and the reasons behind the journey. Saul was given authority of the chief priests to persecute the church of Jesus Christ. That is what he intended to do when something happened to interrupt his plans:
Act 26:13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.
A very bright light shines from heaven into the natural realm on the road to Damascus and Saul and his traveling companions see it. This light is compared to the light of the sun. Of course Jesus is called the Sun of Righteousness in Malachi so this is not uncommon to describe the appearing of Jesus as being a very bright light from heaven. In fact if you look through your Bible you will see that Jesus is described to be either light or various synonymous terms for the sun around ten times just in the New Testament. If you do not know where these verses are you can check out my post on the “The Names, Titles, Symbols of Jesus”.
Act 26:14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
You see in my Bible, the words of Jesus are in Red Ink so that they are easily recognizable. If Saul is on the earth on the road to Damascus, how is it possible that Jesus can appear and speak to him, since Jesus is obviously not permitted to come back to the earth until the restoration of all things be accomplished? Wow, I wonder how stupid you have to be to come up with some of these false teachings. People really need to open their spiritual eyes and see what the Bible actually says before they open their mouths and prove how ignorant that they are. It is very clear to me that my commenter has a scriptural dilemma to resolve; a conflict of monumental proportions. Either the prophecies that he says have not been fulfilled and God is a liar or the prophecies have been fulfilled in the spiritual realm.
Act 26:15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
This verse must baffle the minds of many of the mindless deceived people in the world. Saul was persecuting the church and Jesus says he was persecuting Him personally. How is that even possible? If you think only naturally it is not possible, but if you begin to think spiritually it is very possible. You see the problem is when people do not see things spiritually they are limited to their natural view points and these are clearly not what God intended for us to use. The Bible clearly says that the people in the church are the “body of Christ” and members in particular (Rom 12:5, 1 Cor 12:27, Eph 4:12, Eph 5:23). Just as the human body is made up of millions and billions of individual cells, God is saying my spiritual body is made up of millions and billions of individual people. I’m about to blow some of your minds with my next statement of revelation so get ready for a new bomb shell. You can clearly see according to the Bible that Christ has NEVER technically left the earth fully yet! As long as the church is here Christ is here since we are His body and He is our head. So obviously my ignorant commenter is just a bit confused and does not know what he is talking about in this instance. If Jesus never left the earth then it is perfectly legal for Him to return anytime He likes for any reason He likes and this would include the rapture of the church, His body. When the church is raptured and only when the church departs the earth has Christ fully left the earth. However, it is more complicated than that since even after the rapture occurs more people on the earth can become Christians also and choose to believe.
Act 26:16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;
So according to the words of Jesus himself, He has appeared to Saul to make him a witness to the truth. Wouldn’t it be nice if Jesus would do this with everybody on the earth? However, there is no Bible verse that says He will do this so do not pray for Jesus to come and appear to you, for more than likely your prayer will be answered by Satan and not God. You can clearly see in this verse that Jesus is saying that He has appeared to Saul for a specific purpose and then in the final statement of this verse Jesus claims that He will come back to teach him more things in the future. The statement that Jesus made goes from present tense to future tense and it is very important for you to see this. Jesus is able to appear to anyone that He wishes at any time. It is His choice to do this and not yours. I have heard more than one modern minister say that Jesus appeared to them in a vision and that He taught them something very important to tell us. So if Jesus wants to come back to the earth, He is not going to check with you and see if it is OK for Him to come. Get it? He is the head of the church and not you!
Act 23:11 And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.
Here is just another Bible example of how Jesus came to Paul and appeared to him on the earth without asking for anyone’s permission. Please understand the precedence that is being established and is presented to you. If the Bible records these specific instances where Jesus appeared on the earth after His physical ascension into heaven, then there is absolutely nothing stopping Him from coming to rapture His church body out before the tribulation has started. This is really not rocket science but you do have to have the eyes that see spiritual things. You do understand that Jesus does not have to set foot on the earth to catch His church up to where He is, don’t you? So technically speaking the rapture of the church is not Jesus setting foot on the earth at all. We are going up to meet him and he doesn’t have to come down to get us. Therefore, your argument for no rapture is purely fictional rhetoric.
So back to the Davidic covenant; let’s return to this and see what else the Bible says. We know that Jesus Christ is called the son of David in Matthew 1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30-31, 21:9, 21:15, 22:42-45, Luke 1:32, Rom 1:3, 2 Tim 2:8, and Rev 22:16 to name a few of the verses that reveal this information to us. Then you can read in Revelation 1:8 that Jesus says “I am alive forevermore”. So clearly Jesus has been resurrected never to die again. Based upon these scriptures Jesus certainly qualifies to be the eternal ruler of his father David’s throne which was prophesied in the Old Testament.
Luk 1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
Luk 1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
Luk 1:33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
What we must do after reading this angelic prophecy given to Mary about her coming son Jesus is determine if God is declaring a natural kingdom or a spiritual kingdom. There are obviously many Christians who do not understand that there is a difference and this is their first mistake. What these Christians do is to think naturally first, without considering or finding out if there is any other way that this prophecy could be fulfilled in the spiritual realm. For example, in many of my Bible lessons I have taught you that the Bible declares that there are three different cities named Jerusalem. So when you read a prophecy of Jerusalem you must determine which city is being spoken of. I guess this concept blows the mind of many people and they are just not making the connection. I believe that they are having trouble making the leap from natural into spiritual things. There is only one city in the natural named Jerusalem in the Bible and this is all they can wrap their minds around, but the Bible teaches us that there are two other cities in the spiritual realm called by the exact same name. This makes correct Bible interpretation infinitely more complex. By assuming that a scripture is speaking of the natural city you are more than likely missing the truth. You see we can find many verses in the Bible that reveal there is a major difference between these two realms. For example, read Matthew 5:34 and 23:22 to see God’s throne being described as a place in heaven. This is clearly a spiritual location, a spiritual throne and a spiritual kingdom based upon the fact that God is a spirit (John 4:24). If you can see the existence of parallel realities in the Bible you will be far above the capabilities of many people who read the Bible using their natural one dimensional mind. I guess I need to do a Bible teaching on the reality of the spiritual nation of Israel. I have avoided this subject because of the potential controversy that it can stir up. You see I have read other people’s blogs after they have written about spiritual Israel and they are attacked vehemently by narrow minded spiritually blind people who cannot see the truth and what the Bible says. Let me ask those who fight this Bible subject so enthusiastically if there is like the Bible says a spiritual city called Jerusalem, what is it the capital of? We can clearly understand that natural Jerusalem was and is the capital city of the natural nation of Israel here on the earth. Can you not think logically enough to conclude that a spiritual nation of Israel must exist if God names his new heavenly city Jerusalem in Revelation 21? I mean come on and use your brain.
I guess I have gone long enough in today’s lesson. I have not fully covered the subject about the Davidic Covenant and there are many other scriptures that we could add to this discussion. I want you to think with me if God tells David in 2 Samuel that his kingdom will be an eternal one, what do you think that implies? To me it is obvious that it is not a natural kingdom here on this earth. There are many Bible verses that say that Jesus will come back and establishes a 1000 year reign of peace on the earth. This is God’s day of rest prophesied from Genesis 1. I think that there are some confused people who are expecting Jesus to set up His eternal kingdom in this 1000 year time frame and that is why they say that the rapture cannot take place until this happens. However, this is just more misguided interpretations of the Bible while they clearly are not looking for the real answers. Did you know that the 1000 year natural reign of Christ is not forever? I mean think! It clearly only lasts a 1000 years and then what? The Bible tells us that Satan will be released from the pit to deceive again. So everyone who is born during the 1000 years of the righteous reign of Christ will be given the opportunity to make a choice and to be deceived like we have all had these same choices to make. There is an eternal Kingdom of God and the Bible says it is in me right now. Jesus clearly taught us where His kingdom was located when He said “the Kingdom of God is in you” (Luke 17:21). So men are looking for external things while God has established His kingdom on the inside of us in a spiritual realm you cannot see. Either change your perspective to see the truth or choose to remain in your deception. Thanks for reading my Bible lesson on the Davidic Covenant and why the rapture can take place at any time. God Bless!
Understanding Bible Faith! Your Faith is the Determining Factor to You Being Made Whole! Part 2
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 2 in a series of lessons on understanding the basic concepts of faith found in the Bible. In the first lesson I gave you the overview of the origin of faith and how that God used faith to create the world; so therefore I taught you that faith was not a new concept found only in the New Testament. I showed you conclusive scriptures from Hebrews 11 that described Old Testament faith examples even though God never emphasized or taught this to be a requirement. In reading Hebrews 11 you can clearly see that there were many people included in the Bible because of their faith. I told you that Faith is a rudimentary subject of Bible theology which is foundational to being a real Christian. I also showed you that faith was an essential element to become saved. I then taught you that “Salvation” is a word than means to make whole the spirit, the soul and the body. We have not yet fully defined what faith is, where it comes from or how it works, but we will eventually get there just probably not today. Today I want to talk about faith being the critical factor for anything that you receive from God. I want to reemphasize the importance of you having faith so that you can begin to understand why you need it. This of course means that you must understand that just because God has given you something like salvation for free, that you must do something to receive it. There are many Christians who do not understand that concept who have obviously never had anything in the world given to them. However, in the Bible you can read story after story of how God gave man something by His grace and how that man was required to receive it by his faith. What we see is a spiritual partnership being established between God and man. God is trying to give you something by His grace and teach you how to receive it by your faith. If you have not read from the beginning of this series I would highly recommend that you go and start reading with “Part 1”. Otherwise turn to your Bible and read with me:
Mat 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
Here in this story of the lame man is revealed a lot of profound spiritual truths. Jesus is teaching a large group of people in a house that will not permit the lame man to get to Jesus. So the lame man’s friends take him onto the roof top and they cut a large hole in the roof so that they can lower him down to Jesus. The Bible says something very amazing here and if you are not careful you miss it. The Bible tells us that Jesus saw their faith; the faith of the friends to help and the faith of the lame man to get up on top of the roof to get to Jesus. This revelation clearly tells us that faith is visible and observable externally in our actions. You need to remember that as we go through this lesson on Bible faith. The next thing you need to take note of is that faith is the only thing that Jesus observed, so it must have been a very important part of determining if this man would get healed or not. Do you see anything else mentioned in this verse? Why can’t people just read scriptures and see what they say? There are certainly other things to learn in this verse, but I will skip them to move on with our subject of faith today and give you another example of Jesus and the faith of people to receive:
Mat 9:22 But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
Here in this chapter of Matthew is the woman with the issue of blood who has been sick for many years. But the Bible says that she pressed through the crowd in order to touch Jesus and she got healed. Nowhere does it say that Jesus knew this was going to happen or that He caused it to happen. So even though it was God’s power that healed the woman Jesus reveals to us the determining factor that caused it to occur. Jesus makes another statement that is essential to our subject today. Jesus turns to the woman and tells her that it was “her faith” that made her whole. “Made whole” is the Greek word “sozo” and this is the same word translated as “saved”. So Jesus clearly tells us again that faith was a determining factor for her salvation. What we can observe from this story is her faith was set in motion by her actions and the two of these caused her to become healed. You can clearly see that in the context of this story that the disciples say the crowd was touching Jesus on every side. But, the Bible does not say that any of them got healed. So it was not because she touched Jesus like the others did that got her healed. It was because she touched Jesus in faith that caused the healing to come from Jesus. Of course it was the power of God that was on Jesus that healed her, but it was received by her faith and that is how Bible faith works. It is a joint partnership between God’s grace and man’s faith. Let’s look at another example of this in the Bible:
Mat 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Here is another example of a verse that Jesus directly mentions a woman’s faith to be the key factor of her receiving her daughter’s salvation and deliverance. Jesus does not mention anything else, so I conclude that this is the only reason that she got her answer from Jesus. Why was Jesus so obsessed with only faith? Why didn’t Jesus ever say anything else? Jesus never looked at anyone and told them “It was my power that healed you” as most confused Christian in the world think. You need to understand that faith is being emphasized more than anything else and that this is by God’s design and purpose to teach you that faith is the important part to learn about. There are many Christian who believe that God has the power to heal, but do not understand how to get God’s healing power to work for them. They want to pray and leave it all up to God and that is not what we find in the Bible that actually happens in the majority of the cases being presented to us as examples:
Mar 10:52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
This is now the fourth example found in the Bible of a blind man who Jesus said “his faith” made him whole, saved him, healed him and delivered him from blindness. Jesus never took the credit for it being His power alone. In fact Jesus never mentions His power as being a factor to whether people got healed ever. Again we see the same Greek word being translated as “made whole” which is later used for our salvation. Therefore we understand again that it is our faith that is the determining factor for if we receive from God what God has given to us by His grace. I’ll give you one more example found in the Bible, even though this is not the last example that I could give you of faith being mentioned:
Luk 17:19 And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.
Here in this chapter of Luke Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem and is passing through a village where he is met by ten lepers. These men ask for Jesus to heal them and Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priest. As they were going one of them notices that he has been made whole and comes back to Jesus to worship and thank Him. Jesus again mentions that it was “his faith” that made him whole. Every time Jesus only mentions one thing and every time it is the same thing. Jesus never commends anyone for anything else other than when they had faith. What you should do is go through and reread all of the Gospels and see if you can find anything else that Jesus ever emphasized to be a determining factor for anyone being saved, healed or delivered? I know there are times in the Bible that Jesus does not mention anything as being a factor, but every time that I saw Jesus mention anything, it was always the faith of the people that was the determining factor to if they got healed or not. This is the way the Bible was written and it gives man the choice to believe it or to reject it. But, if you can see it and understand it, I believe that it will dramatically change your perspective on what God thinks is important. If Jesus who was God in the flesh says that faith is a critical spiritual reality to possess, then I believe that we need to study the subject to find out what it is that we are missing. I’ll end this lesson with one more scripture found in the New Testament that is very revealing.
Luk 18:8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Here is a key verse that describes to us about when Jesus comes back to the earth, what exactly He will be looking for in His people. You can again see how faith is being emphasized as being a critical factor to possess. It also seems to put the responsibility in our court to whether we have it or not. Why would God be looking for something that He knew we already had? It really does not make any sense, if it is not our responsibility to get this faith before He returns for us then Jesus would not need to look to see if we have it. If it is not up to us to get it, then Jesus does not need to check for something called faith to exist when he returns. I hope that you understand this logic.
Let me end this lesson by giving you some more scriptures where Jesus emphasized faith to be the determining factor for man to receive from God:
Mat 9:2 And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.
Mat 9:22 But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
Mat 9:29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.
Mat 15:28 Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
Luk 7:50 And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.
Luk 18:42 And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.
These are some of the major scriptures found in the Gospels that reveal faith to be the determining factor for receiving from God. It is very clearly the only thing that God was looking for and it is the only thing that pleased Him to allow the people to receive. Reread these verses very carefully and you will begin to understand the importance of faith today to receive from God. The Bible instructs us to let every word be established in the mouth of two or three witnessess (2 Cor 13:1). I have just given you two different writers and six different verses and that satisfies the requirement exclusively. If you choose not to beleive them then that is your problem and not mine.
Here are the key points from today’s very important faith lesson so that you can go back and review:
- Faith is visible and observable in the actions of people.
- Faith is the determining factor for salvation, healing and deliverance.
- Jesus never mentions any other factor for a person being made whole, other than their faith.
- Jesus is expecting to find faith when He returns for us very soon.
- Do you have the faith that Jesus is looking for?
Faith appears to be a critically important subject in the New Testament and it is certainly taught to be the determining factor of whether or not you are a Christian and whether or not you are ever to be made whole. Jesus rebuked his disciple constantly for having no faith or little faith. Then Jesus would look at people who got healed and tell them that it was their faith that caused it to come into reality. Jesus obviously thought faith was important and you need to understand this importance in order to figure out what Bible faith is. We will discuss more about Bible faith in the next lesson, so please continue to grow in the knowledge of God. God Bless.
If you would like to continue reading about Bible Faith, you may continue to “Part 3“.
Understanding Bible Faith! The Genesis of Faith! Part 1
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of lessons on understanding the basic concepts of faith found in the Bible. Faith is of course a rudimentary subject of Bible theology which is foundational to being a real Christian. According to the Bible, without faith it is not possible to even be a Christian. However, you do not technically have to know how you became a Christian to be a Christian. In other words you do not have to understand that it took your faith to become a Christian to have the faith to be a Christian. I know that was a complex statement that I just made. But think about it logically for a second, it is very much like a new born little baby does not have to know or understand how they got to be here to be a real baby in our world. But, any Christian who doesn’t know how they became a Christian is practically incapable of knowing how to get others to become a Christian with them. That is why so many people join a church and they think they are Christians, but are not. It is like a natural child cannot have another child. It requires a maturing physical process of the human body to be able to have children, so it is within the spiritual realm also. You need to learn to grow up spiritually in order to know how to have spiritual children. One of the basics of the spiritual birth process is found in the concept of “faith”. Having faith in Jesus Christ allows God to come into your heart to abide. Today’s lesson title is called the “Genesis of Faith”. Genesis is a word that means “beginnings”. So we will attempt to learn where faith came from and when it started to be important from a spiritual Bible perspective. The Bible says a lot about this subject, but most of the direct references of the subject are only found in the New Testament. Why is that? I believe that is a very good question to understand and I will attempt to start to explain it today using several Bible verses. Is faith something new to the New Testament? I’m going to start by explaining why faith is important to know and then we will get to where faith came from and when it came into existence and finally we will touch on a small portion of what Bible faith is.
Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Here we have a popular verse that is widely taught and greatly misunderstood. The primary subject of the verse is “salvation” and that is what you should see first. The next thing you should understand is that salvation is the gift that is given to us from God. God is directly teaching us two key factors about the gift of salvation. Salvation is a term that means to be completely delivered, physically, mentally and spiritually. The word “saved” actually means to be made whole. This definition informs us that unsaved people in the world are clearly missing key factors that cause them to be incomplete beings. A human being is a spirit that lives in a body and that has as soul. So God’s salvation must address all three of these human dimensions in order for us to be made whole. Therefore, God’s salvation is an all-inclusive work. In other words God did not save a small part of you and leave the rest of you out in the cold. Of course it is much more complex than that and I cannot get into that level of detail in this blog. Just keep in mind that salvation is a gift from God. Meaning we did not buy it, earn it or even deserved it, yet He gave it to us freely. But, like any gift salvation can be rejected, lost, thrown away or discarded if not cared for, esteemed and held as valuable. There is nothing that I could give you that you could not completely disdain and treat with contempt. So it is with God’s gift of salvation, we can understand that we must value this gift and take care of it in order for it to remain in our life. The first of the two predetermining factors to salvation mentioned in the verse is “grace”. Grace is of course what God has given, extended and done for us even though we did not deserve it or could do anything to earn it. The grace of God is often associated with two other deity qualities called mercy and compassion. God exhibited His mercy and compassion by extending us His grace. To allow a guilty man to go free instead of being put to death is an act of either stupidity or great mercy depending upon what that free man does with his new freedoms. This is the state of the human race today. They have been granted God’s clemency and God is watching to see what man will do with it. The next key factor in the verse is of course my main subject today and it is called “faith”. So we understand that in order for anyone to be saved, it at the least takes these two given factors to be working together in harmony. Of course this subject is vastly more complex than that and I cannot get into all of the other related things all at once, so you will have to exercise your patience and bear with me as I try to teach a very complex set of truths. Just take away from this verse the fact that “faith” is a requirement in order to be saved and we will learn more later the why, how and where it came from as we go through the series.
If you search your KJV Bible for the word “faith” you will discover that the word is only found two times in the Old Testament and well over 200 times in the New Testament. One time in the O.T. is in Deuteronomy and the other is in the prophet Habakkuk which is later quoted for us in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38 saying “the just shall live by faith”. So we can clearly see a direct imbalance to the distribution of the subject of faith, with it being totally under emphasized or hidden in the Old Covenant while seemingly being revealed to us in the New Covenant. Again I’ll ask you, why is this? Is faith something new to us? This of course is by God’s design and I will hopefully explain why as we go. In order to understand why faith is not mentioned directly in the O.T., we need to read some more Bible verses and learn what God says about the subject of faith in the N.T.:
Gal 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
If you just read the first part of this verse you might begin to think that “faith” is something new in the New Testament. The first part of the first seems to imply that faith originated at some point in time and before this there was no faith. However, that is not what this verse is actually saying if you read the entire statement correctly. Too many people only read a part of a verse and walk away from the Bible with thinking or assuming they know what it said; when in fact they did not see the real meaning that God had given to them.
What we should be able to see clearly in this verse if we look closely in Galatians 3:23 is the fact that faith is not new and preexisted before the New Covenant in a hidden state. Hidden simply means covered or concealed. God tells us in the end of the verse that faith was later uncovered and revealed after Jesus died and was resurrected. Why do you hide anything? That is a very good question to consider. To hide something is often an act of someone trying to protect it or keep it from being stolen, lost or damaged. My mother use to hide her silverware thinking no one would break into her house and find it and of course no one did, including her because she forgot where she hid it and never knew what happened to it. Why was it necessary for God to hide faith from the Old Testament readers? Who is God trying to keep from this hidden information? To answer this question you must understand that too much information can be a very dangerous weapon in the wrong hands and since we are talking about spiritual realities that are much greater than natural things. Who is this spiritual enemy that would benefit from this information? Let’s think naturally for a second. I believe that it is very much like knowing how to build a nuclear bomb today in our world. To those peaceful nations who know how to make one, it is a deterrent to keep others from attacking them, but to a terrorist it is the ultimate weapon of destruction. This is why Iran wants this weapon of mass destruction right now! So what I am trying to do is to show you that faith involves revealed spiritual power and ability and that this is equivalent to knowing how to build a nuclear bomb in our natural world. You still may not understand these statements, but I’m not finished, so hang in there.
Heb 11:3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Here is another widely misunderstood Bible verse about faith and words. Here is a verse of scripture that basically reveals how the world was created. God says that everything that we can see came from two spiritual power factors that God possessed. Did you see what they were? The two factors were God’s faith and God’s words. Too many people read this verse and think that it is talking about our faith and that we have to believe in order to understand, but that is just a lack of understanding of the wording of the statement to causes many to think wrong. The main problem with the Greek language is the lack of punctuation such as a comma. The presence of a comma can change the meaning of a verse dramatically and this verse is an example of this. Take the words “we understand that” and put them at the first of the sentence and reread the statement:
Heb 11:3 We understand that through faith the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
We can basically get the same statement meaning by simply adding the appropriate comma after “By Faith, we understand,” in the original version. Hopefully you can begin to understand that God has faith and God used His faith to create the world that we live in. If God has faith, let me ask you this question “God has existed for how long?” I guess I’m getting ahead of myself somewhat by teaching you that faith was a spiritual force that has always existed with God. But I want us to learn in this lesson that faith was definitely not something that was new and only came to exist in the New Testament. We will verify this further as we continue.
For example, this chapter 11 of Hebrews is commonly referred to as the “faith” hall of fame. This is because the chapter is dominated by the subject of “faith” and it reveals to us the names of individuals throughout the Old Testament who exhibited faith even though they did not understand that this is what they were doing. According to Hebrews 11, the first mention of anyone with faith in the Bible was the firstborn son of Adan and Eve named Abel who was slain by his younger brother Cain. In verse 4 of Hebrews 11 it says “by faith” Abel offered unto God a far better sacrifice than his brother Cain. So it was the existence of Abel’s “faith” that caused his sacrifice to be accepted by God and not so much of what was sacrificed or given. According to the Bible “without faith, it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6). According to this statement whatever we do or say in this world it is imperative for us to do it in faith in order to be considered pleasing to God. That could have been the most important thing that I said in this entire lesson and it reveals to us the great significance that God places upon the spiritual factor of “faith”. There are very few things in the Bible that God says are impossible and this is a prime example of one of the most important lessons about spiritual impossibilities.
You can continue reading in Hebrews 11 and see time after time God mentioning and commending the faith of these Old Testament saints. If you did not understand it, Faith is one of the central themes of the entire chapter. The word faith occurs over 23 times in this chapter proveing God is making a point on the subject. Verse 5, “by faith Enoch…” Verse 7, “by faith Noah…” Verse 8, “by faith Abraham…” Verse 11, “through faith Sarah…” I could go on, but you get the point, I hope and pray? You see the faith of a man or a womean was the key factor for everything positive that happened in the Old Testament and why their names even appear in the Bible at all. We can clearly learn by reading just Hebrews 11 that faith existed in the Old Testament even though it was never revealed directly to anyone. God just wrote about them in ways that taught these Bible concepts without telling us what those concepts were called. That was very tricky if you ask me!
Earlier I spoke of faith as being a powerful spiritual force that helped to create our world. This of course is probably a new concept to you that you do not yet understand. So I will attempt to give you another Bible verse that exhibits this reality to us in the words of God written to the church. In this way, we will hopefully see that we have this power within us right now and that we should learn how to use it.
1Co 13:2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
Here in this chapter of 1 Corinthians God is saying some things about the spiritual reality of faith from a God perspective. I am not going to go through the entire verse and try to teach everything that it says in order to shorten this lesson. I want to focus in on the words in the middle of the verse about faith. God says that we can possess this force of “faith” that is able to move mountains. But, then He says without us having any love we are still nothing. That is an amazing statement of potential power without us even realizing its full impact. You see what does it take to move a real physical mountain? Since I live close to the mountains I know that this task takes some dynamite and some really big equipment. I’m talking about big trucks, bull dozers, scoops and on and on we could go. All of these things are natural examples of physical power. These natural examples are what God is saying faith represents in the spiritual realm. Do you understand this? You can either use your faith to move a physical mountain or a spiritual symbolic mountain and both are valid in this verse since God does not qualify the noun with an adjective limitation. This is called a double reference, where a scripture crosses the natural boundary to apply even to a spiritual domain equally and simultaneously.
We can understand natural mountains, but what is a spiritual mountain? A spiritual mountain can be any spiritual obstacle or obstruction that is in your spiritual way to any spiritual success. In the eleventh chapter of Mark we see Jesus himself speaking to His disciples in the 22nd verse He tells them to “Have faith in God”. Another very legitimate translation of this verse is “Have the faith of God”. Young’s literal translation reads this way and Young was a Greek expert more than I am. If you look at the context you will see that Jesus had just cursed a fig tree and the disciples were pointing this out to Him and God says to them you are capable of doing this also. Jesus who was God tells His followers if they would have the God kind of faith they would be able to speak to the mountain in verse 23 and say to it be removed and not doubt it in their heart but believe what they say would come to pass, Jesus said they would have whatever they said. Jesus was describing how He created the world to them and telling them they could do what He did and remove the obstacles that were hindering them. This is why Paul could write the same in 1 Corinthians 13:2 to us the church. Both of these represent two witnesses to the fact that faith embodies God’s powerful spiritual force. We need to read Mark 11:23 over and over and decide if we are a “whosoever” that God was speaking to.
So faith is a spiritual force, but that is not the only way that it is described to us in the Bible. You see faith is a multifaceted spiritual reality that can be used for offensive or defensive actions. We can read in Ephesians 6 where God is describing the spiritual armor of the church which consists of a number of spiritual entities and one of these is called the “shield of faith” and this is clearly a defensive weapon of force.
Eph 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
The verse starts by saying “above all” meaning there are other parts but this one is one of the greatest that is an essential necessary part to possess. What God is doing in this chapter is describing the spiritual warfare components that are essential to know and understand. First off you need to know you are in a spiritual war and if you do not know this you are already defeated. The Bible says for us to “submit to God and to resist the devil” (James 4:7). What does it mean to resist? That is not a passive verb, if anything it is an aggressive verb of action. To resist is when you are in a war with an opposing occupying force and you choose not to submit to them. You do know that Satan is the occupying force that we are now in resistance to, yes? God gave man the earth and put Adam in charge, but Satan came and took it from him and has been occupying the earth illegally for the past approximate 6000 years. His time of occupation is growing significantly shorter now and it is time to demonstrate his defeat and he is not happy about this at all.
God says to take the shield of faith so that we might quench all of the fiery darts of the enemy. What is a fiery dart of the enemy Satan? Satan is a spiritual being so a fiery dart is a spiritual weapon thrown at the unseen part of you and this is your mind. You are to use faith to counter these offensive weapons of Satan. What we have not done is to talk about everything that faith is, how you get it so that you can know and understand how to use it as a defensive or offensive weapon. Perhaps in a future lesson on this subject we will see how to go about increasing our faith. For example, did you know you cannot find anywhere in the Bible that God says for us to pray for Him to give us faith? That is probably the second most important thing that I said today but you might have blown it off as a non- important or trivial statement. This could be because you just do not understand very much about faith yet. Let me review some of the things that I have taught you today so that you can go back into your Bible and review them:
- Faith is one of the requirements for Salvation.
- Faith was a hidden spiritual concept until revealed by God.
- Faith is the spiritual power to move physical or spiritual obstacles or obstructions.
- Faith is a spiritual defense against the spiritual power of your enemy Satan.
- Faith pre-existed the New Testament but was only formally revealed to us after Jesus died on the cross.
- Faith was active in the Old Testament but never directly identified to be faith.
- God used faith to create the world so God had faith before time existed.
- Therefore faith existed with God eternally.
I just taught you several very key basic elements that are essential to understanding the spiritual subject of faith found in the Bible. This was just a basic introduction to the subject of faith so I hope you can continue to read and study this subject as I am able to continue it with God’s help. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series, you can continue to “Part 2“.
Understanding How To Be Thankful in a Thankless World!
(Ver 1.1) We are living in a day when many are not thankful for anything. Teaching children when they are young to be thankful is a difficult assignment which too many parents ignore. When I was a child being raised in the south, many parents taught their kids to have manners. They would say Yes ma’am, No ma’am, Yes sir, No sir, please and thank you and if they didn’t their parents would correct it swiftly. This seems to be a lost skillset in the world today. Not only do many children grow up without manners, they grow up without any regard to being thankful to the ones that even brought them into the world. I know not everyone had a rosy childhood and a great set of parents and that life is much tougher on the outside than it could be or should be. But, there is what appears to me to be an over emphasis for people on their current situations in life that ignores the fact that these are always a relative set of temporary circumstances. In other words ALL problems are always relative and they do not last forever. If you look arond you closely you can always find someone that is much worst off than you are. So many look at their temporary problems and are consumed by what they don’t have and miss out on being thankful for what they do have. I have learned one thing in life that is of most importance for me and my relationship to God and that is I need to stop worrying about what could happen or what I don’t have and only focus on what God has already done in my life and given to me and give Him thanks for that. This is the Thanksgiving season and this is my message today for you, begin to be thankful for something. Look for something to be thankful for and start with that.
So I usually do not get personal, because this blog is not about me. But, I am going to relate to you something that my family went through over 20 years ago. My wife and I were expecting our second child and it was a great time for us, we thought. Everything progressed in the normal way and when it was time to have the baby, we went to the hospital like we had done before. However, this night our world was going to be shaken and change dramatically.
Our new son was born and the doctors started checking him over and then started calling in specialists and things happened very fast from there. The doctors did tests and x-rays and determined my new son was born with a major heart defect and deformity. The heart surgeon did immediate open heart surgery to save my new son’s life while I called my mother to help me pray to God. My wife was in another hospital recovering and I went to the children’s hospital where the surgery was taking place. After several hours of wondering, what was happening, the doctor came out and told me that he was alive and that we were very lucky. I knew that my wife was going through a very tough time being alone without her new son in her arms in another hospital. But we were doing the best that we knew how to do at the time. We all made it home eventually and we lived the best that we could a couple of more years before he needed another heart operation. So we went to the hospital and went through the pain again and the outcome was good again. You see the hand of God was with me and my family when I did not even know it sometimes.
My son continued to grow and he turned 4 years old. All during this time we went to church and prayed and kept hoping for a miraculous outcome. We would strive to look for little victories whenever we could. A couple of weeks after his fourth birthday my son and I were getting ready to go to church like we always did. My wife had to be at choir early so she went on first ahead of us. My son and I stopped in at McDonald’s and had pancakes for breakfast and were about to head to church when all of a sudden he collapsed in my arms and his eyes rolled back in his head. I knew something was not right immediately and I yelled for someone to call an ambulance. I then waited until I could not wait any longer and put him in my car and drove him to the closest emergency room Hospital about a mile away. They started working on him as fast as they could and I could hear him scream as I filled out paper work for the hospital. They worked for over an hour and I tried to call the church to leave a message for my wife where we were, but she was on stage singing in the choir and the church services was on TV so they could not go and get her until she came off of the stage. My other son was away at a church camp retreat this weekend so God was watching over us in many ways that I cannot tell you. While my wife sang in the choir praising God, my son died at the hospital. We were probably 15 to 20 miles from the church. I cried very hard when the doctors told me the news. I sat outside on the curb of the hospital waiting and finally my wife drove up and I had to tell her that our son was with Jesus now.
I wish things could have been different, I wish things could have been better, but yet I was thankful for the four years that I had with my son. He taught me many things that I would have not known otherwise. There were times in the car when he sat in the back seat in his car seat praising God and raising his hands in praise. Oh, to have a son with the heart of a child that was thankful for what he had and was not missing what he didn’t have, that is what changed my life forever.
I will see my son again, so I know he is not gone forever. I will talk to him in eternity and we will run together and play like he never could on the earth. Now learn the lesson of a child’s heart today and become thankful for everything that you have even if that is only a very little. I believe that God honors a thankful heart and blesses them that give Him thanks. So if you would only concentrate on what you have and be thankful, I believe that God will bless you and cause you to have more eventually.
This is the season of Thanksgiving here in the U.S. I pray that you become highly focused on everything that truly matters in your life and less focused on the things that you do not have. Problems I believe are only temporary and they are always relative. No matter how bad you think you have it, you can always find someone who has less or a worse situation and you can do something to be a blessing to them in whatever way you can. Being a blessing is why I do what I do on this website. If you could see my heart right now you would understand my tears while I wrote this blog. I hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving wherever you are while you give thanks to God for all that He has already accomplished in your lives. God Bless!
Understanding How To Do The Greater Works of Christ! More Hard Sayings Found in the Bible!
(Ver 1.4) Caution Men at Work! This is Part 5 in the advanced study series of Understanding Hard Sayings found in the Bible! You may not realize it, but this web site is dedicated to doing the greater works of Jesus Christ on the earth today. I saw a sign that once said when men work they have to put up a sign, but women work all the time and I thought that was a good statement. I at least had to laugh while I agreed. However, that is not my primary subject today. While Jesus walked our planet in the flesh He made a statement to us that many Christians do not understand nor fully accept. It is just one of the many “Hard Sayings” of the Bible that too many have not received or tried to understand. Today’s lesson is Part 5 in a series of advanced Christian studies about “Understanding the Hard Sayings” foudn in the Bible and my primary subject is about work. But, what is work? How do you define work? How are we intended to work for God today? Here is this hard saying from God spoken through the mouth of our Lord Jesus:
Joh 14:12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
Do you believe in Jesus? If you do, then you qualify to do the rest of this verse. This statement is a conditional statement or command that comes from God and is spoken only to those that believe. If you believe in Jesus pay very close attention to what Jesus says to you and then see what you should be doing for Him. In this verse Jesus is speaking of a four letter word called “Work”. Jesus is speaking about the “works” that He did in this verse on the earth. What were these works that Jesus is referring to? How did Jesus work on the earth when He was here? What examples of work did He do for us? What did He do on a daily basis? Where was the majority of His time spent? In the minds of many Christians there is a wide variety of possibilities for the answers to these questions. There are many who read the Gospels and see how Jesus healed the sick people, cast out devils, open blind eyes and caused cripple men to walk again. These are the works of God in the minds of many. While I do not deny these, I do not believe that the Bible says these were the works of God that Jesus was referring us to in this verse. Wow, I know I just stepped on some religious toes right there. Let me see if I can heal your toes that I just stepped on before we go any further. What is work? To many people work represents a job that needs to be done. A job or work can be something that a person is paid for doing, but not always. A job or work can be something that is fun to do or something that is totally the opposite of fun. There are people who get paid for cleaning bathrooms and picking up garbage and these cannot be fun jobs, in my mind. So how do any of these definitions of human work apply to God’s definition of work? Did God ever get paid for doing work? Was it fun for God to do this work? It is interesting to note that God says He is working, but our problem is we do not know what He was doing and why. How does God work? I want to shift your focus to a verse that you may or may not be familiar with:
Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
Here in this verse God informs us about some of the things that Jesus of Nazareth the man did on the earth. God says that He anointed this man Jesus to “do” good by healing all that were oppressed of the devil. This verse clearly tells us where sickness comes from, but that is not the subject of today’s lesson. So according to God’s definition, healing is doing good and not necessarily work. Doing good can be work, but I do not believe that it is entirely a one for one exchange of meanings. Do you understand the difference? Take the Queen of England, does she work? No! Does she do any good? I guess it depends your definition of doing good? Anybody can work, but few actually do that which is good according to God’s definition of what doing good is. So I do not find a verse in the Bible that says work is healing or healing is work. Maybe I’m being too picky or maybe I’m just seeing what the Bible says. Let’s go back to the first occurrence in the Bible of the word “work” and see what God reveals to us.
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
So God clearly tells us that He worked to create our world. This is the very first time this word is used in the Bible so God must be giving us some insight into His definition of this word by the law of first mention. So how did God create the world? If we can figure out how God works then we can better understand this subject of doing the greater works of Jesus. When you read the first chapter of Genesis and see God’s work, you only notice God doing two primary things. First you notice God looking at a problem and then you see God speaking words to fix the problem. God saw darkness in verse 2 and in verse 3 God said “Let there be light”. This must be work by God’s definition. So speaking words must be how God works. Does this make any sense to you? You should read the first chapter of Genesis and see how many times God said and maybe you will understand this definition better.
Mat 4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
As you can see in this verse the Bible says that Jesus spent a significant amount of His time teaching and preaching the people. Isn’t this speaking words? Wasn’t this God’s definition of work from Genesis 1 and 2? You can see in Matthew 9:35, Matthew 11:1, Matthew 21:23, Matthew 22:16, Matthew 26:55, Mark 4:1, Mark 6:2, Mark 6:6, Mark 6:34, Mark 8:31, Mark 12:14, Mark 14:49, Luke 5:17, Luke 11:1, Luke 13:10, Luke 13:22, Luke 20:21, Luke 21:37, Luke 23:5, and John 3:2 that Jesus is revealed to be a teacher. These 20 verses all tell us that Jesus spent a lot of His time teaching the people. This is clearly speaking words with His mouth so that the people can hear what He said and then hopefully understand and believe. I believe this was the work of God being stated in the Bible that Jesus was speaking of. I’ll give you one more very important definition of work found in the Bible that will help you to see what Jesus is teaching us:
Joh 6:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
Here we have the most important definition of work that I have found in the Bible and it clearly states what Jesus was attempting to get people to do on the earth. So whatever Jesus did on the earth that was good was designed to get people to believe who He was. Therefore, God’s work was the intentional effort to get people to believe in something that they had never known before. This is clearly the definition of work to God and the reason why Jesus spent so much time teaching people the truth with His words. Stop and analyze what is the definition of “believing”? To believe something means you must have heard something and are now at the crossroads of accepting it or rejecting it. If I said “God spoke to me today”, you now have to choose, do I believe this since you were not there to hear it also. If you believe me, then you are accepting my word by faith, since I do not have any proof or evidence of this to present to you. Wow, this has turned out to be a basic faith lesson today. Faith is probably one of the top three most important lessons to learn in the Bible, in my opinion. But, I guess I’ll get back to teaching on doing the greater works that Jesus said we should be doing.
What have we learned today? Work to God is speaking words to get people to believe in Him. So what would the greater works be? I believe that these are just presenting the greater truths that God has given to us to share with others so that they would also believe in Him. Jesus said we would be able to do the greater works, only because He was going to leave the earth and go back to His Father in Heaven. Therefore, something that Jesus has now accomplished has allowed us to do a greater work than He could have done here personally. You see all of the multitudes of the people that Jesus taught, He could not get anyone saved until after He had died on the cross, was resurrected from the dead and returned to heaven. Helping to get people saved today by preaching and teaching the Word of God is clearly a much greater work that Jesus could not perform while He was here personally on the earth. Does that make any sense?
Mat 5:19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
In this verse Jesus is contrasting two different types of people on the earth. Both groups of people are teachers, did you get that? Did you know that you were a teacher before you got saved? You might have been teaching in a bar or a strip club, but you were teaching. It is very clear to me that Jesus said by doing and teaching others the right things that you would be called one of the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. But, by doing and teaching the wrong things you would be the least. So that is your marching orders today from God. Do what Jesus said to do and make an effort to teach others so that they can believe and do right things. Only by teaching others the Word of God will you be able to make a lasting difference in the world. Only the Word of God and the Spirit of God changes people. This is why Jesus could say go and teach.
Mat 28:19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teach all nations, that is why I can say that this website is dedicated to doing the greater works of God on the earth today. I am a teacher called by God, anointed by God, taught by God and directed by God. I hope and pray that you understand the difference between doing good (healing) and doing the works of God (teaching). I am definitely not preaching against doing good to anyone using God’s definition of what doing good is. In fact, I embrace it fully. I also hope you understand how important it is to get God’s definitions for the words that we are studying in the Bible. By looking up God’s definition of what work is to Him, this helps us to understand how it is even possible for us to do greater works than Jesus did. Otherwise, you would feel very intimidated by this Hard Saying of Jesus. Jesus clearly raised the dead, caused blind eyes to open, cleansed lepers and caused cripples to walk; when was the last time you did any of this? Then figure out if you could do any of this for someone what could you do that was greater than that? I cannot think of anything. Maybe in a future lesson we will talk about the “anointing” factor that we read about in Acts 10:38. Why did God have to anoint Jesus who was God to heal the sick? If you have never understood about the anointing factor from God it is another subject that you need to study. I am anointed to teach and that is why it is possible for me to write Bible lessons on the web. This was God’s doing and not my choice. I did not pray and ask to be a teacher, God chose me and anointed me and that is why I can do what I do. It is very much like David didn’t anoint himself to be King of Israel. God chose him and sent the prophet to anoint him to be king.
You will discover by reading the Gospels carefully that Jesus would almost always teach first and then heal. I know not always and that you can find some cases where Jesus operated in the gifts of the Spirit of God and just healed someone, like the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. But, whatever Jesus did, is what you should be doing in the same way. Today’s emphasis was on teaching and who knows what I’ll teach on tomorrow. I enjoy teaching the Word of God and that is why I do what I do. I reach people all over the world and I hear from them and they are a blessing to me. I am blessed to be a blessing and so the work of God is spreading around the globe. I am convinced that doing the greater works of God is first learning what the Bible says, doing it and then going and sharing it with others. Get involved in what God is doing and see that the time is very short to do it in. God Bless!
If you would like to read on in the series you may go to “Part 6“.
The Riddle and the Puzzle in the Bible of the Missing Row on Satan’s Breastplate?
(Ver 1.2) There are many people who do not understand how the Bible was written. God has hidden a countless number of mysteries, riddles and puzzles in the Bible for us to solve with His help. These riddles are always word based puzzles. All of these puzzles are implemented with techniques that use hidden and spread out information that makes them very hard to find. These mysteries are of course much more difficult to solve than they are to find but many of the puzzles are also very hard to recognize by just reading the Bible. Today I am going to show you one of these very complex puzzles that I have been working on from the Bible for several years and so far have not completely solved the entire mystery of the puzzle. I want to share what I know today with those on the Web to challenge you to see it and then to think and help me to see things that maybe I have not thought of. There are certainly people on the web that have also found this puzzle, but clearly they have not understood it completely either. I believe that since we are so very close to the time of the end, that God is intending that we should know what these puzzles mean before He returns for us. The biggest problem that I have with most of the interpretations that I have found on the web concerning this mystery is that they are all someone’s opinion on what it means. No one gave any Bible verses to establish the truth. So that is a major problem with most interpretations, they are “Private Interpretations” and these are not allowed (2 Peter 1:20). This however, does not stop men from coming up with their own personal interpretations of what they think the Bible means. The Spirit of God began to show me this puzzle almost 20 years ago and even though I have studied it over and over, I have not come to a definite meaning to what is being taught. So, I will share with you what I know and maybe God can use someone else to help solve the mystery. In the Old Testament, Moses was given specific instructions of how to make the Temple of God and the garments of the Priests. There are several articles of clothing of the priests with some very specific items that all must have symbolic meanings. The garments of the priest are said to be holy. One of the key pieces of the Priest’s wardrobe was a breastplate. This breastplate was put on over the head and shoulders of the high priest and covered his chest and back areas of his body. This resembles what many soldiers wore while they were in battle to protect themselves from blows to their bodies. The breastplate was an outward covering of the body and specifically the upper torso.
There are two places in Exodus that specifically lists the qualities found in the breastplate and these verses describe the breastplate to us in some detail. One of the places this is found is in Exodus 28 and the other is in found Exodus 39. We will only focus in on the description found in Exodus 28 in this lesson today:
Exo 28:15 And thou shalt make the breastplate of judgment with cunning work; after the work of the ephod thou shalt make it; of gold, of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine twined linen, shalt thou make it.
The priest’s breastplate is called the Breastplate of Judgment. The word judgment means a judge’s verdict or degree, either for or against you. Every mention of titles, names or specific qualities of the breastplate I believe all have symbolic meanings. I believe that God is more interested in teaching us about spiritual things than He is making us look like we worship external manmade idols. The breast plate consists of three colors of threads. One is Blue, the second is purple and the third was scarlet. I believe these colors also have symbolic meanings attached to them. Now God begins to describe the stones that should be included on the external covering of the breastplate:
Exo 28:17 And thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row.
As you can see God picks very specific stones and a very specific arrangement, placement and order to each stone. The stones are arranged as we discover in 4 rows of 3 stones each for a total of 12 stones in all. This is a very key number to remember. I believe that the number 12 is also symbolic of spiritual things. We know from study that Israel had 12 tribes, that there are 12 hours in a day, Jesus picked 12 apostles and the foundation of the New Jerusalem has 12 specific parts that we may look at later. Let’s continue through the rest of the rows of stones given by God:
Exo 28:18 And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.
Exo 28:19 And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst.
Exo 28:20 And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: they shall be set in gold in their inclosings.
So we have a list of 12 unique individual stones with no duplicates arranged in a pattern of rows and columns. It just so happens that rows and columns are a sommone type of computer database concept and terminology. If you are familiar with Spread Sheets like Microsoft Excel, then you also can understand how rows and columns play a factor in what God is showing us by this specific diagramed information. If you understand these concepts it may help you to see where we go later in this lesson. Then in the next verse in Exodus we see another association being made.
Exo 28:21 And the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel, twelve, according to their names, like the engravings of a signet; every one with his name shall they be according to the twelve tribes.
Each stone is engraved with the name of the sons of Jacob. What order to place the names, however is not given to us. We could assume that it is in the order of birth given to us in Genesis 29 and 30, or we could assume it is in some other order like the names of the tribes given to us in Revelation 7:5-8 or even Ezekiel 48:31-34. However, in each case example that I just gave you, God lists the 12 sons of Jacob in a different sequence. So which is the right one and does it even matter? Many have tried to come up with the sons of Israel names associated with each stone, but I am not convinced any of them are right. I have read at least 3 or 4 possible renditions on the web of who they thought the stones were and they were all different and nobody could tell us why they picked one to be associated to the other. It could be that the names being associated with each of the stones is not important, or it could be that it is still just hidden from our view and we have not found it yet. Here are the stones we found on the Priest’s breastplate listed in the specific Row order given to us by God.
|
Row/Column |
1 |
2 |
3 |
|
1 |
Sardius; H124 (3) | Topaz; H6357 (4) | Carbuncle; H1304 (3) |
|
2 |
Emerald; H5306 (4) | Sapphire; H5601 (11) | Diamond; H3095 (3) |
|
3 |
Ligure; H3958 (2) | Agate; H7618 (2) | Amethyst; H306 (2) |
|
4 |
Beryl; H8658 (7) | Onyx; H7718 (11) | Jasper; H3471 (3) |
I have listed the name of the stone from the KJV Bible as well as the Hebrew Strong’s number followed by a parenthesized number of times this specific word is mentioned in the O.T. As you can clearly see 3 stones are only mentioned a total of 2 times in the Bible and only in the description of the Priest’s breastplate in Exodus. This is Row 3 of the list of 12 stones. Next you can see that 4 stones are mentioned in the bible only 3 times, 2 stones are mentioned 4 times, 1 stone is mentioned 7 times and finally 2 stones are mentioned a total of 11 times. That is the makeup of the 12 stones and their frequency of word usage occurrence in the O.T. Hebrew Bible. All this tells me is that 7 stones are only mentioned in the descriptions of the breastplates and then 5 stones have varying references from 1 additional mention to 4 mentions and finally to 8 additional mentions. In reading these references I only saw Jasper mentioned in relation to the throne of God. I then noticed Topaz mentioned as coming from Cush. I did not see any references to any of the tribes of Israel so we still have a major mystery with relating the stones to the individual tribes of Israel. It would appear that God does not mention this in the Bible or it is definitely hidden using a method that God has implemented to conceal the information.
Heb 8:5 Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.
So here we go with the beginning of the enormous mystery puzzle. We know from the above verse in Hebrews that God gives us some valuable information of those things that were given to Moses in the O.T. Law. God specifically tells us that those things that Moses created for God’s temple on the earth were shadows of the heavenly things that already preexisted in heaven. That is very important information. God has a temple in heaven that resembled the temple on the earth created by Moses. This would have to mean that God had a high priest in heaven that also resembled the high priest here on earth. Are you getting it so far? We are now ready to see some more important clues found in Ezekiel 28:13 that seems to describe Lucifer or Satan as the type of or in the role of the high priest in heaven. Satan is described to resemble the role of the high priest on the earth, but with 3 less stones on his covering. Read this verse carefully:
Eze 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
If you go through the list of stones and lookup each of the Strong’s Hebrew words, you discover that each stone listed in this verse is an exact match for a stone found on the Mosaic priest’s breastplate. They are of course listed in a completely different order. Then as you can determine by looking and counting, there are exactly 3 stones less with a total of only 9 stones being listed. So we have to reorder them to see which ones are present and which ones are missing. So not only does Satan have stones in a different order, he is missing a total of 3 stones. By closer comparison you can determine that it is Row 3 of the high priest’s breastplate that is missing from the covering of Satan.
|
Row/Column |
1 |
2 |
3 |
|
1 |
Sardius; H124 (3) | Topaz; H6357 (4) | Carbuncle; H1304 (3) |
|
2 |
Emerald; H5306 (4) | Sapphire; H5601 (11) | Diamond; H3095 (3) |
|
3 |
|||
|
4 |
Beryl; H8658 (7) | Onyx; H7718 (11) | Jasper; H3471 (3) |
All of this is just too amazing to be a simple coincidence. If you understand God you will know that God purposely hides information like this for us to discover. Using database concepts, this information would represent a missing record from a file. 
A record always contains related field information that is grouped, organized and associated to form the information in the row. A row would be like the name and address for a customer. Therefore, in database terms, we would have a table that has 4 rows of people’s names and addresses that we know. Each row would represent one person that we know and the information that we want to relate to that person, like their stree address, city, state and phone number. These are just basic database concepts, but they must certainly apply to the puzzle being presented to us by God. God is definitely trying to reveal something to us, but what it is, is the major question of the day? What can we derive from the fact that exactly Row 3 is missing and not Rows 1, 2, or 4? It would appear to me that since Row 3 is missing that it seems to be an indication that something was taken away from Satan and not just simply being added to the high priest on the earth. However, that is not a complete factual reality, since in any spread sheet or database you can add a row anywhere you like. So that is the mystery of the missing row in a nutshell. What is being added to the earthly priest that Satan did not have? Or what is being taken away from Satan that man still has? Since the Bible does not appear to answer the missing row question specifically from Satan’s breastplate, nor the names of the tribes of Israel can be directly tied to each stone, then this forced me to change my perspective and to look in the Bible for alternative related subjects and topics in order to come up with a better understanding for what God is trying to teach us. Sometimes I have learned that if you can’t understand it from one perspective then you better change your perspective to see it differently and this is what I’ll do for the rest of this lesson. I learned that the Bible says God does not change, so the Bible does not change either, it is only our view of the Bible that should be affected. Did you understand what I just said? It was very important!
You see, I believe the Bible clearly reveals to us that the people in the church are a spiritual pattern of the Old Testament Mosaic priests. These O.T. natural Priests were given to us as natural views into the coming spiritual truths and realities found in the New Testament. Let me briefly show you some scriptures in the N.T. that seem to indicate this to us:
1Pe 2:5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
As you can see this verse both calls people in the church living stones as well as being a people who are called a “holy priesthood”. I do not think this is an accident that God mentions these two things in one verse. It would appear that there is a definitive association to the stones found within the breastplate of the O.T. priest. In this verse you can clearly see that we in the church are supposed to offer to God a spiritual sacrifice and not a physical one. So the people in the church are the new spiritual priests of God. Could we possibly be replacing Satan the original heavenly priest? If the church is also the spiritual priests of God, what kind of spiritual breastplate are we now wearing? If you noticed I did say a spiritual breastplate and not a physical breastplate. The O.T. breastplate is clearly a symbolic representation of something that we cannot see with our natural eyes.
1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
Here is another witness to the fact that the church is called a royal priesthood of God. You see the word “priesthood” comes from a Greek word meaning to “execute the priest’s office”. To do what the priest did physically, but do it now in the spiritual realm for real. We have observed two major verses in the N.T. written to the church of God that tell us we are now God’s spiritual priests, but let’s look at one more for fun:
Rev 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Here is another witness found in the Bible that says the members of the church have been placed into the office of a “priest” unto God. You can clearly see from these three witnesses that the church is directly called priests. So we are at the point now to try to figure out what the breastplate might represent to us as God’s priests.
Eph 6:14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
As you can clearly see, this verse describes Christians as wearing a “breastplate of righteousness”. This statement is made in the clear context with a description of the armor of God and is starkly contrasted with the O.T. “breastplate of Judgment”. So it is not directly a high priest type of breastplate or is it? It still could be considered very similar. As you recall in the description of the high priests breast plate it was labeled the breastplate of judgment a figurative named title just as our breastplate is stated to also be a figurative described title. The one of judgment is obviously very different than the other that is given to us for righteousness. However, the Bible says that we have been justified and redeemed and therefore we are not under the condemnation or judgment of the law. Since we have been freely given the righteousness of Jesus, I believe that we would be wearing a different type of priest’s covering than the one found in the O.T. law.
1Th 5:8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
I am convinced that the Bible gives us many clues in little pieces that we need to put together correctly. Here we again see another reference to us wearing a breastplate, but this time it is mentioned in conjunction with two new terms called faith and love. Do you realize that faith and love are two of the fruits of the spirit mentioned in the New Testament? Do you also realize that there are 9 direct fruits of the spirit mentioned in this verse in Galatians? I believe the reoccurrence of the number 9 is again more than a simple coincidence.
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Gal 5:23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
So are these 9 fruits being mentioned in a list just a mere coincidence? The only way you know there are nine is by us counting them. Of course the only way you know there were only 9 stones on the breastplate of Satan was to count them also. How many stones did Satan have? You know by now that Satan had only 9 stones. We can logically conclude that since the High priest’s breastplate had 12 stones, 3 more than Satan’s breastplate that God is trying to tell us something very important. I personally believe that the 9 fruits of the spirit in Galatians are missing 3 fruits and here is one of the main reasons that I believe this:
Rev 22:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruit, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
So I believe this verse has some more major clues in it that are applicable to our puzzle solution. This verse clearly mentions the number 12 and this is the same number of stones on the O.T. High Priests breastplate. Then there is a connection of the number 12 to fruit which we discovered this connection when looking at the fruits of the spirit and the breastplate of righteousness found in the N.T. It is also interesting to note another connection found in this verse connecting these 12 fruits to the tree of life. If you have ever read some of my other lessons you know that the tree of life is a clear reference to the people in the church. Here is an example of one of these verses:
Pro 11:30 The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.
As you should be able to see this verse says that we have “fruit”, “righteousness” and the “tree of life” all mentioned in one verse and there is no way that this is there by chance or accident. In the N.T. the people in the church are clearly those who have been given God’s righteousness. We clearly saw verses that said the breastplate of righteousness was part of our spiritual wardrobe. Then there is this very simple fact that almost all natural fruit grows on trees. You do not plant a fruit seed like an orange seed and get more oranges; you first get a tree and that tree will produce the oranges. So where does spiritual fruit come from? Spiritual fruit must also come from a spiritual tree. I believe these righteous trees are those who have been given eternal life by God.
Pro 15:4 A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.
We are given another clue to this fruit that we are to produce and this is by our mouth and the words that we speak. This is one of the key reasons that I teach a lot on the importance of your spoken words. There are many verses that I can give you that are related and I will give you a couple of them:
Pro 12:28 In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.
Here in this verse we can see a reference to a pathway, righteousness and life and these are all being connected or linked together again. We saw in Revelation 22:2 that the tree of life was in the middle of what? This verse says that the tree of life was found in the middle of the street. Is a street a pathway? I believe it can be. It is often times called a highway, a parkway, a drive or other words in our English language but a way to go is the clear reference being given to us. So we can see in Proverbs 12:28 that the righteous are intended for life and this would imply the ability to produce the 12 kinds of fruit mentioned in Revelation 22:2 on the tree of life. If you study the Bible in the Old Testament, trees are many times used as symbols for people. So a symbolic a group of “trees of life” in Revelation 22 could also be a righteous group of God’s people.
It is also interesting to note that in Revelation 22:2 that there are 12 fruits that are produced every month. How many months are there? In our calendar there are 12 months in a year. So we have two number twelve’s being related together. If you multiply 12 x 12 you get 144 and this is a number that occurs other places in the bible. If you add 12 + 12 you get 24 and this number also appears in the Bible multiple times. So are these coincidences or simply clues to a greater mystery. I think I’ll end this lesson here today, for I do not want to overwhelm you with too many questions to consider all at once. What I want you to do is recognize that there are little clues found in the Bible that are repeated to display hidden information that has meaning and significance. I believe very firmly that the righteous ones are those who are supposed to be producing 12 kinds of fruits of the spirit. What the other 3 fruits are, represents the missing row on the breastplate of righteousness of Christians. This is another mystery of Biblical proportions. But, the patterns and information being given to us is clearly not by accident or chance. What we must do is study to show ourselves approved and continue to ask God to reveal to us the mysteries of the Bible. God Bless!
Understanding the Collapsing Timeline of the End of the World!
(Ver. 1.2) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible Lessons about the signs of the end times. Many people in our world do not understand that we are at the end of the end of our age. A time called the end of the “last days” on earth. The door to this Age of Man’s dominance upon the earth in conjunction with the works of Satan is closing rapidly. Most of the world proceeds in the darkness and grows more evil for they do not know the signs of the time. It is true what the prophet Hosea said “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. No doubt if people only had the right knowledge, they would also be able to see the times of God’s seasons are concluding quickly. However, I heard a TV preacher the other day make a statement that I agreed with 100%. This pastor of a church here in the U.S. prophesied a coming reveal of God’s Word; his statement said every mystery of God will be revealed in the next 2 years. While I do not know if 2 years is the time frame for Christ’s return or not, I believe that there are countless numbers of mysteries in the Bible to be discovered by God’s people and that God will reveal them by His Spirit to His people before Jesus returns. I mean think about it, why would God hide information in His book if it was not going to be revealed? What do we need with mysteries and hidden information from the Bible in heaven? I had a commenter say that it will sure be nice when we get to heaven and God can teach us all the things that we missed out on down here. Why can’t God teach His people the truth, here and now? Do you think that God is incapable of teaching His people what the truth is in the Bible? All it takes is for God to show us some little keys and suddenly the whole book could unfold right before us like a giant puzzle solved. You see when we get to heaven, there will be no enemies up there, no evil, no crime, and no deception and then what will we need with the truth? From my vantage point on the earth, the church needs to know the truth now so that we can become one body in harmony and accord with each other. That means we have a lot to learn in a very fast time frame. If you are interested in learning these secrets of God with me, then get involved with what God is doing in these last remaining days on the earth.
1Th 5:1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
Why did God not have to write about the times and the seasons to these His people? What the Bible does is reveal something that implies we will be able to see these times and seasons and understand that the coming of the Lord is at hand. You can certainly look at the world around us and see many of these things mentioned in the Bible about the end are happening all around us. There have been earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars and many going here and there saying peace, peace! The signs of the times surround us every day. Technology, computers and the internet have made it possible for the Anti-Christ to take control of the world’s finances like never before. The Arab nations are building nuclear weapons and the nation of Israel is in perilous times. There are terrorists and people killing people and people dying all around us. In our calendar year, the seasons are used to determine the times of planting and reaping. God has been planting seeds for the last 2000 years. The knowledge of God has exploded like never before, but there is also a coming time of harvest, where God says that’s it, it is finished! How do you tell people this and not sound crazy in our world today? You sound like a chicken little saying the sky is falling! You come across as a fool, but at least you can be a fool for Christ.
1Th 5:2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
So we have a verse that contradicts the previous verse. This verse says the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night. You just never know when a thief will show up. But, what we have here is the same event from two perspectives. Those who know Christ will be able to see the coming times and for those who do not know Christ it will happen suddenly without any warning.
1Th 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
We certainly see everyone today in the world calling for this illusive peace. What they do not understand is who is behind these wars, the spiritual forces that manipulate and control people in doing the evil that they do. This verse is again given in contrast to other verses in the Bible that reveal the church is not appointed to wrath. Sudden destruction is not coming to the church, if you think it is then you are very confused in who wins this spiritual war. Sudden destruction will come upon the evil people in the world who do not want to see the coming of Jesus. The church of Jesus will be taken up and out of this destruction before it happens.
1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Here we have the previous verse to verse conflict resolution given to us very clearly. We the church, are not those who are in the darkness. The destruction is only for those in and of the darkness. Those who walk in the darkness are those who have been blinded not to see the truth of God. These are those who have been deceived into believing lies. These verses in 1 Thessalonians 5 are contrasting the end events from two perspectives, one is light and the other is darkness. Do you understand this?
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
We again see that the church of God is those who walk in the light of God. Anyone who has light can see what is happening in the world because of the light that God is shining upon us. This is in stark contrast to those in the darkness who cannot perceive the times or the seasons.
1Th 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
God says let us therefore be awake while we are in the light of day. This is a spiritual statement and not a physical statement. People still sleep at night and work during the day physically. But, these natural realities correspond to spiritual realities that we must understand clearly. To watch and to be sober is another contrasting statement to those who like to party during the night and get drunk. These concepts are not that difficult to grasp if you have eyes that see spiritual things.
1Th 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
For God has not appointed us to wrath. I spoke of this verse earlier because I wanted to show you that God is not angry at the church. Wrath is a coming time of punishment for being evil and rejecting the truth. Wrath will never be given to anyone who has been delivered from it by the blood of Jesus. Jesus became sin that we might become the righteousness of God and this makes us saved from the impending doom of the world. The Bible says that we (the church) have been reconciled back to God. That means to be brought back into right relationship with Him. I do not understand how people ignore verses like these in order to teach a mid-tribulation or post-tribulation rapture of the church. The church will not be here during the time of wrath and that means we will be taken out of here very soon. Jesus almost 2000 years ago said this about the times that we are living in:
Rev 22:20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
In being able to recognize the times and seasons, it requires that you understand the Bible and what it teaches on these subjects. If Jesus could make this statement of coming soon almost 2000 years ago, how close do you think that we are today to the return of Jesus? How could Jesus say this and it be a truthful statement? To human perspectives 2000 years is almost an eternity. But, we of course understand that God lives outside of the dimension of time in an eternal self-sustaining mode of existence. God is called the ancient of days in the Bible, so time to God must be completely different than time to us. To man 2000 years is a very long time since man only lives to be a 100 years old, but to God, it is just a yesterday. If I said to you today, “I’ll see you tomorrow”, is that a long time to you? To most people, tomorrow is not a long time. We are simply talking about at the most 48 hours. So when you see Jesus speaking of 2000 years as a short time you must find God’s definition of what time is in order for you to understand the real truth of the Bible. This is called letting the Bible interpret itself:
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So by God’s definition of time on the earth, one day can represent a time period of 1000 years to Him. What God is doing is changing our definition to His definition so that we can see things from His perspective. This is one of the most important concepts for correct Bible interpretation that you can find. This definition gives us a reference to time that was hidden in the Bible. When you start analyzing the Bible using this information you can begin to see why Jesus could say that He would see us at the end of the day tomorrow and it be nearly 2000 years on our timeline. Therefore 2000 years would not be a long time in God’s eyes. Seeing things the way God sees them is one of the most important keys to understanding the Bible. Let’s break down this information we just read for a future point of reference:
1000 / 24 = 41.6667 years = 1 God Hour. So One hour in God’s timeline would be just over 41 years of our calendar.
41.6667 / 60 = 0.6944 years = 1 God Minute. One minute to God would be approximately .7 of a calendar year to us.
0.6944 * 365 = 253.47 days = 1 God Minute. One God minute is just over 8 months of our calendar.
253.47 / 60 = 4.2245 days = 1 God Second. 101.388 hours = 1 God Second. 6083.25 seconds = 1 God Second.
While I have not found a reason why these numbers are significant, the concepts behind them are what I am trying to convey. To hear when God tells you to wait a minute, that it could mean wait up to 253 days for the answer. Even God’s Wait a Second, could be over 4 days long. It is a radical shift in our perspective of time concepts. It causes us to come up to a higher dimension of spiritual understanding. It forces us to renew our minds with some new spiritual facts and knowledge. What I am attempting to show you is that many times in the Bible God is defining words differently than we do. Do you understand that any verse in the Bible can change dramatically depending on the definitions of the words found in the verse? If we use man’s definition of the word found in the verse, there is a high probability that we just got it wrong.
By the law of first mention, we must go back to Genesis 1:5 to see the first time the word “Day” is used in the Bible. God goes through a series of 7 days of creation, doing something new every day that is unique to the world that we live in. This is a God week by definition and according to the definition of what a day is it means a period of 7000 years. However, we must also change our perspectives to see what else is hidden in this information. I do not believe that it took God 7000 years to create our world; I believe that God is trying to teach us something else about these days of creation. If you have read my other blogs, you already know that these 7 days of creations are prophetic statements of the history of man on the planet. Every day of the creation account has symbolic meaning of something that transpired in the earth during that millennium. The 7th day is a representative pattern of the coming millennial reign of Christ. This is God’s day of rest upon the earth where we have no enemy to fight or defend against. The first 6 days of creation are days of work for man, where we definitely have a great challenge presented to us by God. Our enemy Satan has come with great fury knowing that his time is very short. So while we do not know the exact day or hour for Christ’s return we can clearly see that the harvest season is fast approaching. There is no way to know how long of time that we have exactly on the planet. Our year 2010 is a corresponding year of 5771 in the Jewish calendar. The Jewish people have supposedly calculated from the time of Adam’s creation to today and they think it has been just under 6000 years by a few hundred years. I think that they are close but that it is much closer to that magic number of 6000 years than we think. There is no way that God is going to wait over 200 years to come back to the earth, people would not survive that long. If I had to guess a number I would say that the Jewish year is closer to 5985 to 5991. But, that is just me pulling numbers out of the air that mean nothing. It is only logical to see that Biblical prophecy is falling into place very rapidly around us. I do not think that the coming of the Lord can wait more than a very few years. If God does wait, then we are in trouble. The world’s economies are declining and the wickedness in the world is increasing at rates that are off the charts. I’m not going to explain the 6 day time line of creation like I have tried in other blogs. So please if you do not understand these concepts go and search my website for additional information on this subject. Using this information let’s look at some Bible verses that certainly apply:
Mat 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
When you realize that Jesus did nothing by chance or accident, you begin to see important prophetic verses in the Bible with hidden double meanings within them. In this verse it says Jesus went up to a mountain top and took with him Peter, James and John. The symbolic representations in this verse are very clear. If a day is as a thousand years then after 6000 years (6 God Days) of time on the earth Jesus will come to take His church up to be with Him. This is what I see that this verse implies, you of course can believe whatever you like. While on the mountain top Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah. These are also two symbolic representations of those who were dead (Moses) and those who were caught up alive (Elijah) to be with Christ. This whole story in this chapter of Matthew is giving us a prophetic confirmation of God’s timeline on the earth in hidden terminology. I hope and pray that you can see it and how it fits together with other Bible verses.
Mat 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Here Jesus is telling us some more secrets about His impending return. It says that as it was in the days of Noah it will be again in the coming of the Lord. So how was it in the days of Noah? In Noah’s day, the people mocked Noah for building an ark. They laughed because they knew not the impending coming disaster nor could they discern the times or the seasons because they were in darkness. They lacked “knowledge” of the truth and perished because of this lack of knowledge. Jesus says in this chapter of Matthew that they ate and drank and had parties. They married, built houses and went about their ways ignoring the coming disaster. This is a very important lesson for the coming of the end of the age that we are living within. Noah was considered righteous and is a type of the church family of God. Noah knew exactly when the disaster would start and how it would end. Noah was prepared for the disaster, so Noah was saved from the disaster. Noah escaped the wrath of God, and so it will also be with the church. This is a clear pattern of the true church in the world today. These are those who can read the signs of the times and understand the seasons. The Lord’s coming will not come as a thief in the night just like the rain did not come as a thief in the night to Noah. If you are prepared for Christ’s return then you will know and see His return clearly. In the parable of the 10 virgins, there were 5 who were foolishly not prepared and went away for oil. These are types of the people in the world who do not know God. They will not perceive that the time is too short to try to get more oil. While you are away Jesus will come back and those who are ready will go up. This parable is an attempt by God to tell you to get ready now before you realize the time is too close at hand to get more oil. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, do you think that this could be a symbolic indication of the coming 6000 years of Christ’s return? I certainly do. Let’s look at one more verse about the end of time in relation to a historic type:
Luk 17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
I take these verses very literally. When Jesus says the coming of the son of man will come like it happened in the days of Lot, what does that tells us? The righteous were taken out and the destruction began to rain down immediately upon those cities. This again gives us a picture of the pre-tribulation departure of the church. God does not appoint the righteous to His wrath. This verse says those in the earth will be eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building and their consumed focus on these activities will cause them to miss the coming of Jesus.
Joh 2:1 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
God gives us little clues in the Bible in vastly spread out verses. Here we have a reference to a real event that occurred during the days of Jesus on the earth, but God uses it to inform us of a spiritual event that is coming. These types of verses are allegorical and they are real events that happened on the earth, but they show us a spiritual reality. After two God days (2000 years) there is coming a wedding feast that will occur in heaven on the third day. While the earth is experiencing the vials of Revelation, the church will be in heaven getting ready for a wedding feast. Verses like these are very interesting and potentially controversial because it appears that I am pulling something out of context to teach a spiritual prophecy. However, God uses this technique throughout the Bible in symbols, types and shadows and allegories. I mean think about it, God could have used any number of days in this verse and it could have been accurate, but God chooses to use 2 days and then Jesus went to a weeding. Do you think this is an accident? I certainly do not!
Joh 4:43 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.
Again we see that Jesus could have stayed however many days that he wanted, but it is recorded that Jesus stayed here 2 days and then the departure occurred. Is this another coincidence or is this a prophetic picture of the coming departure of the church? Only you can decide what you believe, it is. I will believe that it is a prophecy.
Joh 6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Approximately four times in this chapter, Jesus uses the term the “Last Day” in conjunction with a time of resurrection and new life. What is the last day of the week? The “Last Day” of the week would be to the Jewish people the Sabbath, also called the day of rest. The God Sabbath is also called the Millennial Reign of Christ. We can very clearly see that Jesus is saying that there is coming a God Last Day where some things will change dramatically for us. There are a bunch of verses like this one in the Bible that make much more sense when viewed in the context of the prophetic creation week. When you apply God’s definition correctly you can understand how they are telling us our time on this earth is closing to an end, when we return to reign with Christ on the 7th day.
Joh 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
Wow, there are so many verses that we could go into that give us this repetitive clue of the coming “Last Day” when the feast will come. This of course will be the covenant marriage feast of the Lamb of God to His bride, the church. You must search your Bibles for these little hidden clues and then you will begin to understand them. God uses some very tricky methods of hiding information in the Bible in plain sight.
Joh 12:1 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
Again we see an amazing coincidence of 6 days and then a feast. The Passover was a representative symbolic meal of covenant between God and Israel. This is a pattern of the coming Marriage Supper when the church eats and drinks with Christ. So God could have put any number of days here in this verse but, chooses 6 as being significantly important for us to see. This verse also speaks of being raised from the dead after these 6 days, so that is again too amazing to be an accident. These are just more prophetic pictures of the coming to the end of our current earth age.
So while the Bible does not give us exact dates and times, it gives us enough information to discern the times and seasons that we are living in. I hope that you are beginning to understand the concepts being taught and can see the references to the soon return of Christ. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2“.
Understanding Spoken Words in the Bible! Elijah’s Words and Prayer for Rain! Part 11
(Ver 1.3) Today is Part 11 of a series of very advanced lessons on Understanding Spoken Words in the Bible. You may have noticed if you read my Bible lessons that I teach a lot on this subject and one reason is that the Bible says a lot about this subject. I figured out that any subject that God emphasizes this much must be an important one for me to learn about and to know. Therefore, I spend a lot of time looking at these verses on this subject and they have shocked me into changing what I say dramatically. If you understand this subject just a little bit you will know this is true for you also. I will warn you that today’s lesson is potentially very advanced and only for mature spiritual Christians. This is because the topics and things said may be hard to swallow for younger immature Christians. So please judge yourself before you continue reading this Bible lesson. If you are not comfortable with controversial topics then please just go read someone else’s blog for today. If you have never studied this series of lessons on Spoken Words, I would strongly suggest that you go back to “Part 1” and start your reading there first.
When you study the Bible, you do not read but 1 chapter in Genesis and you can see that God speaks words in order to create our world that we live in. At least seven times in this chapter of Genesis it says “And God said” and God would say something and then shortly it would come to pass. It is interesting to note and to analyze what God said and then to see who He was speaking it to. Did you ever realize that in Genesis 1 you cannot find where it says that God was ever speaking to anyone in particular? In other words God was not speaking to someone specifically in a conversation like we have them between ourselves. God would speak words directed at no one but a problem that He perceived and then things would change based upon what He said. Therefore, no one had to hear God’s words spoken for them to be effective and to cause something to change. It’s kind of like the old saying if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? According to what the Bible says, the tree heard it even if no one else did. For example, God would look at the darkness that covered the earth and say “Light Be” and then light was. So obviously the darkness heard what God said even though we did not. So we learn from this that your words have the same potential and they do not have to be directed at or heard by anyone in order to effect changes in your personal world. God spoke the answer before the problem and then the answer was made manifest. Read Genesis 1 and see what God says “Let there be light”, “Let there be a firmament”, “Let the waters be divided”, “Let the earth bring forth grass” and on and on. Every one of these cases represents a problem followed by a spoken solution. This is a concept taught in the Bible where God describes as “calling those things that be not as though they were”. Do you understand this concept? If you do not understand this concept you should go and read Roman 4:17 and the surrounding verses to see what God says about this subject of speaking words before you see them happen. The concept of calling for what is not seen is exactly what God did in Genesis 1. God saw there was no light and said there was light and then the light came in. You can see this principle demonstrated in Genesis 1:3, 1:6, 1:9, 1:11, 1:14, 1:20 and 1:24. It is a very powerful lesson from God being given to us. God plainly sets us an example of what we should be following in the world today. Then in Genesis 1:26, God said “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness and let them have dominion…”. So if God said this, did this happen like the other 7 times God said? You can clearly see that everything God said in Genesis 1 came to pass exactly like he declared it, so these words spoken about man would be no different. If man was designed by God to be like God, then we would have to be open to operate like God does. We of course do not always have to believe this, but this is usually just because we have not been taught these concepts from the pulpit.
Today’s lesson is concerning prayer and spoken words; their relationship and their essential unified association to each other. It is usually self-evident to most people that prayer should involve speaking words to God. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray like John taught his disciples, Jesus gave them some example words to speak to God. Many times people take this example prayer that some call the “Lord’s Prayer” and just parrot the words back up to God like this is being effective. However, this was not what Jesus was teaching us to do. You can teach any parrot to say these words and that would not be praying at all. God is not stupid; He has heard these words before, so these words are not intended to replace your words that you normally speak. Also, Jesus taught more than one set of verses on the subject of prayer so we must try to put all of them together and then learn from them all. Here is something else that Jesus said about prayer:
Mat 6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
As you can see Jesus says for us not to be vain in repeating the same words over and over to God thinking that we will be heard. This verse implies that it matters what we say in prayer. If you pray the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly in your prayer life, are you not being vainly repetitive? So that sounds like a problem to me. Do not use a model prayer as the only basis for what you pray. You may certainly at first use this prayer as a model construction for your prayer and then change it to your own words. The Lord’s Prayer starts with praise to God and the acknowledgment to who God is and then the prayer asks for God’s will to be done in the earth. Finally, the prayer gets to us asking for what we need in our lives and the forgiveness of our sins is one thing that we should ask for. But then you should also understand that this prayer was taught to the disciples before Jesus died on the cross. Therefore, this was a model of an Old Testament prayer to God and not necessarily a New Testament prayer to God. For example, Jesus said to pray that the Kingdom of God be established in the earth; and guess what the Kingdom of God is inside of me right here and right now, so this prayer has been answered, so why would I pray that again? I’m smart enough to know that the Kingdom of God has come inside of me already so I do not need to ask for this to happen again. If God has already fulfilled it, then you do not need to pray for what has already occurred. Do you understand this? You might can pray that the kingdom of God be expanded and grow, but technically speaking Jesus never taught us to pray that sinners would get saved. The only verse that I have found about praying for sinners in the Bible is when Jesus tells His disciples to “Pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest”. This is the salvation principle of God sending sowers, a preacher or worker to speak the truth in love to an unsaved person so that they can hear and believe in Jesus and then be saved. So prayer is an awesome subject to study in the Bible and we will get to more of this subject later. But, today I want to speak on specifically about spoken words in relation to prayer. You cannot technically pray without using words, but we also speak words all day long and how do these words affect what we pray?
I cannot find anywhere in the Bible where God honors silence or silent prayer. In fact when I was studying about angels it would appear that the scripture says if the man would have been silent, the angels would not have been sent. You can read this in Daniel very clearly. Daniel prayed to God and fasted for 21 days until the angel of God finally showed up with the answer to his prayer. So Daniel’s silence would have resulted in no angels being sent, the angel Gabriel told Daniel for your words I was sent (Dan 10:12). This is a problem in many religious circles where they hold a moment of silence for some individual that maybe has just died. This might be considered giving someone respect or honor but your silence is doing no good other than that. What if when Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus and stood before it in a moment of silence and then left? Would Lazarus had been raised from the dead? No, I do not believe that he would have. So we can then see what Jesus did to cause Lazarus to be raised, can’t we? Jesus makes the statement to God, “I thank thee that you have heard me”. Jesus implies something that is very important to our lesson today, and that is God is listening to your words. You then see Jesus speaking to the dead man and calling his name “Lazarus come forth”. Was Jesus calling Lazarus alive with his mouth and the words that just came out? So silence would not have brought the answer to Lazarus. To give honor or respect to someone is probably not a bad thing to do, but it will not change the situation. It is like here in the south when we see a funeral procession going by we normally pull over in our cars and stop out of respect for those who are driving by. This is a common practice in the southern parts of the United States and I believe it promotes an attitude of Christian love towards those who have just lost someone from this world, so I believe it is a positive thing to continue doing even though there are no Bible verses that say to do this.
Jas 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
This is one of my key Bible verses today that introduces the rest of the subject of prayer to come. You can clearly see that God is instructing us to pray and not just for ourselves. This verse ends in the statement that the prayers of a righteous man or woman have great power in them. Because Christians do not believe this, they do not do it. Many times it is a self-image problem; they do not feel like they are righteous enough to ask God to do anything. Fortunately for us it is not our righteousness that we are depending on; if it was we would all be in trouble. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that permits us to come boldly before the throne of God without guilt or shame (Heb 4:16). So here is the next verse that follows this one about your prayer:
Jas 5:17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
So here I go today with the basics on this lesson about prayer and words. As you can read in this verse, God says that Elijah was a man just like one of us. What people should understand is that the people that God uses in the Bible were not special or different or unique in their appearance, characteristics, problems, situations, challenges or life’s little nuances from us today. Too many Christians think in the terms that prophets like Elijah possessed something special that we do not have that allowed him to accomplish great things in the Bible that we simply cannot do. However, that is certainly not what this verse is saying, is it? Elijah according to God and James who is writing this account is said to have prayed to God and this caused it not to rain on the earth for a period of 42 months. This is actually a very interesting statement that God makes to us, since if you have ever read the story of Elijah you can’t find where Elijah ever prayed this in a way that we would call prayer. So what is God trying to teach us from this statement? I believe God is saying sometimes we need to expand our definition of what prayer is.
Jas 5:18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
So here is another verse that says Elijah prayed and God caused it to rain again. We have now seen two verses that said Elijah prayed and God answered the prayers because they were effective. It sounds like to me that this would be a good subject to go back into the Old Testament and see what God says to us about how Elijah accomplished these miracles of no rain and then rain again. You can find this story of Elijah starting in chapter 17 of 1 Kings:
1Ki 17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
Here is the beginning of some words that Elijah spoke that almost floored me. This is the exact same Elijah that James wrote about so get that first and foremost into your head. Then realize that this verse is the very first verse in the Bible that mentions the name of Elijah. So therefore, we can conclude that there are no prayers of Elijah to God that are mentioned in the Bible up to this point. So we have a major problem that needs a resolution; either God did not record Elijah’s prayer in the Bible or Elijah did not pray the way that we would consider prayer to be performed. I personally believe the second is true and God gave us the exact information in the Bible that we needed to know to learn about what prayer is and what prayer is not. Remember what Jesus said “Father I thank thee that you heard me”. Do you think that God was listening to the words that Elijah said to Ahab? Let’s reexamine what Elijah says; God tells us that Elijah was speaking to Ahab and Elijah said “The Rain will obey my Words!” I know this was my paraphrase of what he said, but it is very close to exactly what He says to Ahab. I mean did you see it? Elijah had to believe something in order for him to make this kind of statement; the drought had not started yet so these words could be considered to be a prophetic prediction of something that has not occurred. Or as we have seen in Genesis 1, John 11 and Romans 4, it could be that Elijah was calling those things that be not as though they were. We of course know that Elijah was a prophet of God, but remember what James said, the New Testament says Elijah was man just like one of us. In other words what Elijah did, we can do. Wow, I don’t know if you believe that or not, but I do. I know that just blows the minds of religious people to think this way, but I’m just reading the Bible.
In reading this chapter of 1 Kings you can see that God speaks to Elijah and tells him what to do only after he has spoken to Ahab. God tells Elijah to go to a brook where God will sustain him and Elijah goes there and stays until the brook dries up for a lack of rain on the earth. God then tells Elijah to go to a city where a widow woman has been commanded by God to provide for him. The widow is obedient and God blesses her and even when her son dies, the prophet of God raises the child back to life. So God is definitely heavily involved in this chapter of the Bible and this is how this chapter ends:
1Ki 17:24 And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.
The Widow woman says “The Words of the Lord in your mouth are true”. It is very interesting to see what this woman saw and says. Keep in mind that James said this was a man like us, and then reread this chapter with this in mind, looking for what he says. Are the words that come out of your mouth, can they be considered the truth of God’s Word? The words that you speak, will a stranger woman that you just met see that they are the words of God? Your words that you speak are much more important than you can possibly imagine. I believe your words help to identify you.
1Ki 18:1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.
Here is the first time that God tells Elijah to go back to Ahab and tell him that it will rain again. You cannot find where Elijah asked God to do this, can you? This appears to be a God initiated conversation and not Elijah’s prayer for God to send rain, doesn’t it? So how did God tell Elijah this? Was it some loud audible voice from heaven or is this not how God speaks to you? God only spoke to me once in an audible voice so I believe this is not how God normally speaks to His people in the earth. Every other time that God speaks to me it has been as a still small voice in my spirit and I believe this is how God spoke to Elijah in telling him what to do also. Otherwise God is doing something different or something special for Elijah that he doesn’t do for us today and this is not what James told us in the New Testament. It is also special to note and to understand that prayer is not about just you speaking to God. If you are the only one speaking in a prayer conversation with the Almighty then you have a major problem on your hands. You should be quiet enough to let God speak back to you since He is so much smarter than you are. It would be much more valuable to hear what God says at prayer time than for Him to hear what you have to say constantly. Do you understand this concept of listening in prayer? Just pay attention and give God the opportunity to speak, you might be shocked at what He says for you to do.
1Ki 18:41 And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.
In this chapter of 1 Kings, Elijah goes to king Ahab after God told him it was going to rain and makes some more statements that are absolutely faith based words. In this chapter Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a Godly duel of power exhibitions and demonstrations. This was an exhibited display of the confidence that Elijah had in his God’s ability. Why were there 450 prophets of Baal in the camp of Israel? Why did Israel put any of their confidence in these false religions and religious leaders? That is a very good question to consider! In this chapter Elijah calls down the fire of God to consume the sacrifices that were drowned in water first. Keep in mind we have just had a drought of over 3 years long and Elijah is pouring water on his altar. Does this sound like the actions of a man in a drought? Here we see in chapter 17 that Elijah told the king that it will not rain for my words and then in chapter 18 and verse 41 Elijah says that he hears the sound of the abundance of rain. Yet it has not rained a drop in over 3 years. Is this a problem? Or can you see that what Elijah is doing is what God did in Genesis 1? I’m going to ask you this more than once today; are you a man or a woman that is also like Elijah? You should really read James 5 a few hundred times before you answer that question.
1Ki 18:43 And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.
These lessons found in the life of Elijah are very profound. Elijah told Ahab there was a sound of rain when there was no rain. Then Elijah tells his servant to go and look for the rain and the servant comes back and reports he did not find any rain and Elijah tells him to go and look seven more times. What is Elijah doing? Is there anything that you should learn when faced with a drought in your life?
1Ki 18:44 And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.
So the seventh time the servant went to look to the sea, he comes back to Elijah and tells him that he saw a small cloud coming out of the sea. Do you understand how rain is formed? These are the water cycles of the earth’s evaporation from the seas that forms clouds and then the weather patterns that carries this moisture in the atmosphere to then fall back down to the earth as rain? Here we have Elijah knowing how this weather phenomenon works before there were any modern weather forecasters. What was Elijah doing? Do you remember what Elijah said in 1 Kings 17:1? Elijah told the king that the rain would obey his words. Elijah said that it would not rain for these years until he said it would rain. The prophets of Baal and the things that God did to them were some of the reasons that Elijah could make these claims that God could back his words, but this is the lesson that Elijah and God is trying to teach us today. I believe that this lesson applies to us in the modern world. Elijah said he heard rain when there was not rain then said go and look for the rain until they say a cloud form.
1Ki 18:45 And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.
So what is God trying to say to us? Elijah said it would not rain and it did not rain, Elijah then said it would rain and it did rain a bunch. I did not see one time in these two chapters of 1 Kings, where it said Elijah prayed for no rain or rain. Only James calls what Elijah did prayer and that is a very profound revelation. I only saw one time where it could be implied that Elijah may have asked God for rain and this was in verse 42:
1Ki 18:42 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,
You can clearly see in this verse that Elijah assumed a position of humility and this is associated with an attitude of prayerful inclination towards God. However, I’m going to be really picky and tell you that it does not say Elijah prayed and it does not give us any words of prayer that Elijah said to God. So what do we do with this lack of information? We can assume that Elijah prayed and God thought that this prayer was not important enough to include in the Bible or we can assume that Elijah didn’t pray like we think of prayer and then we have to go back to James and figure out how did James know that Elijah did pray since God does not say he did in 1 Kings? Did James assume like others or did God teach James a greater definition of what prayer was? You also have to understand that God told Elijah that it was going to rain in 1 King 18:1 so why pray for what God has already said will happen. Do you understand this concept? I believe that these two chapters of 1 Kings should expand our definition of what prayer is in the eyes of God. Your words are heard by God and then God uses these to fulfill what you have said. I know that does not go over big with everyone, but I believe this is what God is saying.
So how do you apply this story of Elijah to us today? I believe that it crosses over into many things that we do in many ways. A couple of years ago the region of the country where I lived was going through a drought situation that was becoming significantly greater. Over the course of a few months, the lake levels had dropped lower than they had been since I lived here. Water rationing was mandatory and you could not water you grass or outdoor plants, wash your cars or do things to waste water. It was getting crazy here so I finally decided to do something about it. That sounds pretty arrogant doesn’t it? That statement makes me sound like I am God or something. However, I learned from the story of Elijah the principles given to us from James that I could do what Elijah did. So one day during the drought I looked out at the clear blue sky and started talking to the weather patterns, jet streams, pressure zones and the climatological situations to change in order to bring us rain on my house and city. So did it change overnight? Like the story of Elijah I went out and looked at the sky several times before it finally rained but then the drought was over and it rained a bunch. You see I believed the Word of God was true and that what God said Elijah did, I could do. I never prayed a prayer and asked God to send rain; I only looked out at the problem and spoke to it to change to bring me rain. You of course could say that this was just an amazing coincidence that I did what I did at just the right time before it rained or you can look at the Bible and declare with me that God is not a liar. After over 3 years of no rain Elijah said he heard the sound of an abundance of rain and after a few more days it occurred. So either what happened to Elijah was an amazing coincidence also or you are just stupid and don’t want to see what God is saying in the Bible to us. Here is a verse found in the Bible that directly applies to what we just read about in the life of Elijah:
Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Jesus makes a radical statement here that most religious people readily reject. Jesus says if you speak to a mountain and believe what you say will come to pass, it will happen. So is speaking to rain any different than speaking to a mountain? Are they not both inanimate objects without the ears for hearing? However Jesus clearly implies that they can hear in this verse found in Mark. This is a paradox of Biblical proportions. You see if you are a commander in the army and issue an order you just expect it to be obeyed and carried out. This is the same type of reasoning that Jesus is giving to us in this verse in Mark 11:23. Jesus is implying that the mountain is waiting for an order to obey in order to be moved. If no order is given, then no movement is made. If you speak to it and tell it to go and believe what you say will happen, then Jesus clearly said the order will be carried out. You are not concerned with how it is carried out, only the fact that it happens like you said. Mountains can be symbolic representations of problems in your life, even like a real drought. Can you see how this verse applies to what Elijah said in 1 Kings? Everything that Elijah said was what happened in the earth, because he believed it would happen. Elijah obviously believed in his words and they came to pass just as he had spoken. God called this prayer in James 5 and you should understand this drastically changes what we should be saying in our daily lives. Too many Christians pray and ask God for help and then go around speaking the opposite of what they prayed. It would sound like to me based upon what we learned from Elijah that these words cancel each other out. If you pray for God to help pay your bills and then look at your bills and say I can’t pay you, then you have canceled your prayer out. What we have learned in the story of Elijah is God’s definition of prayer is much greater than our definition of prayer. Your words of prayer could be the words that you speak to a king in the earth and tell him that it will not rain for your words. These are powerful concepts that are being transferred to us from God and if you get a hold of them they will change what comes out of your mouth. So I’ll end this lesson with this question again; Are you like an Elijah? God Bless!
Understanding Seeds! Planting Financial Seeds! Part 12
(Ver 2.2) Today is now Part 12 of a very important series of lessons on Understanding Seeds in the Bible. We have covered a lot of very significant information that will not be repeated so I would highly recommend that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1”. I almost purposely left this part of this subject of seeds out of the series because it is so popularly preached on TV that it gives many a negative perception on a positive subject. However, money and finances are clearly found in the Bible so I will touch on it today. I believe if you study the Gospels you will see that Jesus taught on money more than any other subject. I have heard many preachers, especially TV preachers, jump all over this subject and it appears to come across that they do it because they are only after your money. Of course I do not judge them because I do not know their hearts, only God knows a man’s motivation for doing what he does. It could be that God told them to teach this subject with great emphasis and I would sound like a fool if I would criticize what God does. So, I cannot say or will not judge if this is true or not, I just said it just appears to many to be this way because of the emphasis that they are placing on a minor part of a much greater subject about seeds. It would seem to me that to only pick one part of a subject and teach that causes the wrong perceptions to be given and to many people it is true that perception becomes reality and this is not a good image to portray to the world. So far, I have given you eleven different lessons about seeds in the Bible and have not mentioned money or finances even once. I guess since I do these Bible lessons for free and never ask you for money, is the one reason that I can include this lesson on money in the series today.
In searching the Bible for any form of the word “seed” I found approximately 257 verses in the KJV that directly mentioned this word. Out of this total I counted less than 20 verses that speak about money or that can be applied to money directly. Of course this is a subjective number of verses depending upon your desire to try to apply verses from one topic to another. This is certainly a legal method of Bible interpretation; God does it all the time. You can find that God used the same word seed to describe at least 10 different things in the Bible and the laws and principles that govern them are universal truths that cross over into each topic area. But, it is always difficult to teach some subjects like money and not sound like you are asking for money, especially in light of what the Bible says on this subject. That is just the inherit problem with this subject and I will do the best that I can in spite of this appearance. I hope that you can see the difference in what I say since there are no names or ministry names attached to this website and no donate buttons anywhere that allows you to give money to me. If you are a Christian you should be giving your money to where you go to church and are being fed spiritually; we’ll see more about this as we go into this lesson.
So even though seeds of finance are a minor part of this subject in this entire seed topic realm, it is still a valid concept that applies to your money. First, off think about this, farming and agriculture were common methods of income in Bible days. The seed concepts of sowing and reaping applied whether you planted corn or raised sheep. If you farmed then you raised crops or animals that could be sold or traded to others. So the seed concepts found in the Bible about farming must also apply to modern day money and finances directly, also. Farmers used seeds to grow crops and these crops produced more food than the originally planted seeds. So the principles of sowing seeds into good ground, seed increase and multiplication are clearly applicable to our modern money. In the world of finances money would represent the seed. Today we can take money and invest it in the stock market or whatever expecting it to grow over time. This is a seed principle that works when you plant your seeds in good ground. You see good ground in the financial world are the companies that are going to be profitable. If you place your money in a company that is foolish then it can go out of business and you lose your investment and that is the definition of planting your seed into bad ground. In America we have many people who buy lottery tickets. These are people who are hoping to hit it big and win millions of dollars overnight. I have not found that concept in the Bible. In the Bible if you want millions of dollars you must start with what you have and plant it to cause it to grow into millions of dollars. This is the Bible concept of financial seed planting and reaping an increase. These are clear Bible farming concepts that you need to learn and to apply to your life and what you do in the world. If you are expecting to hit it big and get rich over night the odds are that it will not happen. Yes, the lottery does occasionally reward someone with a large payment that gives the appearance of the possibility that it can happen to anyone. However, mathematically speaking the odds of it happening to you is extremely low; in fact it is more likely that you will get hit by lightning and die than to think that you will win the lottery. So let’s examine some scripture that can apply to money and finances in relation to seeds.
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
While this scripture does not directly mention money it can be applied to money very easily. This verse states a Bible law that establishes the concept of planting seeds and reaping harvests as long as the earth exists. This would seem to imply that this principle will exist in the new earth to come also, so it seems to me to be a concept that we need to learn. God tells us that our world was designed to be a seed world of sowing and reaping. If you plant your seeds in good ground you will always harvest an increased crop or return on your initial investment. Your seeds sown are always your initial investment that you risk losing. The same enemies that you find in the natural world of natural seeds also apply symbolically to the financial world. The concept of weeds, insects and the birds of the air that eat your seed; these are all symbolic enemies to financial dealings. Before you can invest money anywhere you should first determine if this is good ground to plant in. Too many times people put money somewhere and then change it to something else before they make anything where it is planted. This would be like planting corn seed in the ground today and then digging it up tomorrow to take it to another field that you heard was better ground. If you think this is stupid to do, you are right, but in the financial world people do it everyday.
Lev 26:16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
What I wanted to do was to show you that every seed sown can have an enemy. Here we have God telling the children of Israel that the seeds they have sown will be eaten by their enemies. This was usually caused by a reckless disregard for obeying the Word of God. Whenever the children of Israel disobeyed God, this would open the door and allow enemies to come in and take what they had worked for. So this is a lesson for Christian to learn from as a bad example of what not to do.
Deu 28:38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.
So you can see another verse where insects can come and eat your seed. Here God says that you will take a lot of seeds into your field and harvest very little of them because they were all eaten by an enemy. In our world today, financial enemies abound all around us. There are false investment schemes that take your money and you can lose everything. A man in the U.S. is serving jail time right now for taking billions of dollars from people and spending it on himself and his family. His lavish lifestyle lasted for several years until it finally caught up with him, but most of the people that put their money in his false funds all lost their money. These are some of the potential enemies to financial transactions and many of them are backed by satanic influences that causes you lose your money.
Deu 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.
So here is another verse that does not mention money directly, yet clearly applies. The word tithe means to give a tenth. The word increase is a numerical financial term of positive results. This verse also says that your field brings forth year by year. So this is a principle of being faithful to do what you know to do in a consistent manner. Being consistent is a seed principle. There are many factors to planting seeds in the natural that apply in the financial world. For, example, one key factor of correct seed planting is timing. Did you know you can plant the right seed in the right ground at the wrong time and totally fail and lose everything? So knowing when to plant is a key to getting positive results. There are of course other seed concepts that also apply to money. You can under seed a field and not reap what you should have. You can over seed a field and also cause your crop to be unprofitable. There are really too many factors to consider about seeds that apply to investing that I cannot go into them all. It is not my goal to teach you how to invest your money; it is only my goal to introduce you to Bible concepts and to note the things that God has created in the world that give us views into spiritual laws. I’ll take you to one more Old Testament verse before I move to the New Testament:
Isa 55:10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
Here is a verse that is speaking of natural things and spiritual things simultaneously. It can also clearly be applied to financial things. The blessings of God are many times manifested in the natural realm in financial blessings. You can see this concept in the Book of Job when God blessed Job in the end with more than he had in the beginning. You can also see the concept repeated in the life of Abraham when God blessed him exceedingly and abundantly so that his herds could not coexist with his nephew Lot’s herds because the land would not sustain them both since they were so blessed. You can see the blessing of God on the life of Jacob when he worked 7 years for Rachael and his father-in-law tricked him into seven more years. Jacob’s father-in-law saw that he was blessed because of Jacob’s presence and tried to manipulate his income and cheat him out of his blessings from God. So we can see this pattern repeatedly found in the Bible that God blesses people financially with an increase in the natural realm. So the verse in Isaiah can be applied to natural seeds, spiritual seeds, and financial seeds and so on. If God gives us seed and bread these are clearly symbolic of financial things that represent income producing and life sustaining factors. Let’s look at some New Testament verses about seeds and money:
2Co 9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Here we again find a verse that crosses subject topic boundaries. This verse applies to many things and it represents a spiritual law of God. The basic law presented to you is this; you will always reap what you sow. If you sow a little bit, you get a little bit back. If you sow a lot you get a lot back. These are just basic seed laws found in the Bible. You can see that this verse does not mention seed directly, however to sow is to plant seed; therefore the seed is indirectly related. Let’s see what else this chapter says about seeds of finance:
2Co 9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
What is a cheerful giver? You can again apply this to many things, including money. Being a cheerful giver involves primarily your attitude. If you have a right positive attitude you will be blessed in what you do. Have you ever read the story of Joseph in Genesis? Here is a man that was handed some very rough set of circumstances in life and he maintained a great attitude through them all. Joseph always expected God to fulfill his words that were spoken to him, so even though his brothers sold him into slavery he continued to believe in the best outcome. Joseph spent a great amount of time in prison, but wherever he was, the blessing of God was upon him and he was raised because of his attitude. This is a very powerful example for Christians today. It tells us that we do not always have it exactly the way that we would like it to be all the time, but we can still expect God to work it all out to cause it to be good for us in the end. So this verse is all about your positive attitude and your faith in God. You can read the other verses in this chapter and hopefully see the connections to money and finances, but I’ll end this chapters’ discussion with this one more verse:
2Co 9:10 Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;)
As you can clearly see the term seed sown is self-evident. The term increase is also self-evident. The “fruits” of your righteousness is of course symbolic of your harvest. So this verse clearly applies in the spiritual realm to our effort to grow in spiritual maturity. However, this verse will also cross over in the context of the natural realm and must be related to our financial blessings from God. It can also mean emotional blessings. It can further apply to our seeds that we plant in the lives of other people that allows God to grow them and produce fruit in their lives. There are just a wide variety of applications for almost every verse on seeds. This is why I teach that money is just a small part of the bigger picture of seeds given to us in the Word of God. So let’s examine another chapter of the N.T. about seeds:
1Co 9:7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?
As you can see from this verse, God is comparing several similar concepts of financial matters. God says nobody finances their own war. God says nobody plants a crop and not also eats from it. Nobody raises sheep and not drink the milk of the flock. These are all symbolic representations of a spiritual set of realities found in the Bible. We the church are in a spiritual warfare with a spiritual enemy named Satan. Then Paul was a sower of the word of God and he says that anyone who sows will eat from that which he has sown. Then sheep are a widely symbolic representation of the people of God in the Bible. So the clear implied meaning is Paul fed the sheep and the sheep fed him back. This is not rocket science so grasp these simple concepts and learn to live by them.
1Co 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
Here we have a Bible concept that is very profound being explained. Many times God writes a Bible verse about natural things that cross over into the spiritual realm and this is a prime example of this. Paul is saying that God wrote about oxen and corn but that these apply to him and to us. In other words God did not write this verse for the benefit of the oxen, it was written for our benefit so that we can learn from it. Oxen when treading corn are said to be partakers of the corn and this is a Bible principle given to us from God. If the oxen are working then they should eat from their labors of work.
1Co 9:11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?
So this is a popular TV preacher verse found in the Bible. However, Paul is not writing this asking for their money he is only explaining a very powerful concept of sowing and reaping. Paul was sowing spiritual seeds into their lives and Paul said it was good for them to give back carnal or natural things back to him. In this verse Paul is claiming to be like the oxen that was working and that he should be a partaker of his own labor. However, what we see here are two principles being exercised simultaneously. To give to Paul would cause Paul to receive a harvest from what he has previously spiritually sown from the Word of God. For them to give financially to Paul is a concept of them planting back natural seeds into good ground; therefore they can also expect a harvest for what they have planted. In other words if they wanted Paul to continue to bless them with spiritual things it was good for them to give to Paul of their natural things like money, food, etc. so that Paul could live on the earth to continue to preach and not have to work to eat.
1Co 9:13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?
As we continue to read in this chapter, Paul and God is giving us a key principle that ministers of the gospel are partakers of those which they minister to. In other words this was a designed system of church government by God. It promotes a minister who is focused on you and not himself. If your minister had to work for a living in the world, you and the rest of the church would be a secondary thought to his primary time taker of working for a living. However, if the church pays for his wellbeing and financial needs then the minister can focus on God and the church and ministering to the sheep of God and not have to worry about where he will eat tomorrow.
1Co 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
God again says what I just tried to say. The minister of God should be paid by the people who he ministers to. This is clearly the concept of sowing and reaping for both participants. The minister should minister in faith that the people will meet his financial needs and the people should give to the minister in faith that the God of their salvation will give them increases from the seeds that they have sown. So here is the flip side of the coin that also goes with this subject of sowing and reaping:
1Co 9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
God in this verse clearly says that anyone who preaches and charges you money for the information is being an abuser of God’s designed plan. Paul very clearly says that he should not charge anyone to preach what God has given to him for free. This is what discourages me about many TV preachers that I listen to. While they say good spiritual things for 20 minutes, they end their show with a request for you to buy the rest of the message on CD or DVD and it always costs much more than it does to produce these and to send them out. A DVD can cost $20 plus postage and handling fees and this is clearly outrages for a piece of plastic that costs maybe 20 cents in bulk. Clearly these ministers of God are looking to your purchases of their messages to fund their TV ministries. So I understand and I am not stupid that TV cost a lot of money, but yet in what they do and the way that they do it, it gives the appearance of being an abuse of power that God says was not acceptable. It also promotes a philosophy that only the rich can afford to know the truth of the Gospel and that is not a fair thing to do. As you can tell this bothers me a great deal and I think it is very wrong. Here is what Jesus said on the subject:
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
Jesus tells us that God did not charge us for the information that we learned to preach, so we should not charge others to hear it also. That is why I do a free blog on a free website and I never ask for money or request you to send me a donation. Money is not a motivational factor and why I do what I do. However, that does not mean you should not do what God says to do either. Wow, this is a very complex subject that involves the participation of everyone doing what they should do, when they should do it and then everything works according to God’s designed plan. So that is why I did not want to include this lesson in my series about seeds, because it can very easily be taken wrong. I probably ended this lesson and sounded like you should give me something for the spiritual seeds that I have given to you; and that is not what I said at all. I said that I do these lessons for free because I love being a blessing to others. So I try to do the right things according to the word of God and you should do the same. If you noticed this blog is called the “Agapegeek” Blog and not my name. That means I am anonymous and you do not know me or my address to send me anything. I do this on purpose also. How you can bless me is to tell a friend about what you have learned and increase the traffic on my web site. That would be one of the greatest ways that you can be a blessing to me. If you learned anything about giving and sowing financially then you should give to your local pastor to help support your church to grow. We have just briefly covered a much broader subject of sowing and reaping financially from the Word of God. This is a complex subject and one that is not easily understood by many. Many people find it very difficult to relate their money to be like a seed that can be planted into ground to grow and increase. However, you can certainly find this concept in the Bible therefore you can personally choose to participate in it or to ignore it. Thanks for reading my Bible Study and God Bless!
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