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Understanding the Book of Revelation Introduction Part 1 – Revelation Traditional Views
Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
Ver 1,0) The book of Revelation appears to be, by far, the most controversial and hotly debated and argued book of the entire Bible especially in these last days in which we are living now in 2025. There is a growing number of Bible teachers and pastors that are attempting to teach this book of the Bible because of the obvious seasons we are living. From the informed spiritual mind there has never been an hour in which humans have lived where things that were written 2000+ years ago could be happening all around us sooner than we think. But there are also too many pastors and teachers that ignore the book of Revelation because of its complexity, symbolism, controversy, and the wide variety of opinions of what things say and mean.
Today’s Bible lesson will be a general introduction to the Book of Revelation’s popular views. We will cover a very high-level overview of the traditional views that have been taught about this book in many of the Christian churches during the church age.
Currently there are at least 5 traditional views and a few other modern views. And all of these views can, and do have multiple variations of each of their teachings. In other words, there is more confusion than there is agreement. Why are there so many conflicting views and positions on scriptural texts that have never changed? It is impossible for all of these opinions to be completely true. Remember in 1 Corinthians 14:33, God declares, “He is not the author of confusion but rather “Peace” in all churches”. Therefore, when we find fighting and divisions within the church about scripture or any other matter, this is always authored by Satan.
Since this website has always been a seeker of finding God’s Truth as God intended us to know, we will be cooperating with God to be led by His Holy Spirit to discover His Truth on the subject of Revelation. And to reject and resist all of the devil’s deceptions that are trying to distract us away from knowing it. And yes, you heard right, there is one standard of Truth that is from God and all the rest of that are based upon human opinions are literal distractions sent from Satan to keep us from knowing the truth.
Thankfully, we are not searching for Truth independently. If we are born again by the Spirit of God, continually filled with His Spirit and submitted to Him being led by His Spirit, and continually learning His Word, we are not alone and easily deceived. Jesus when He ascended after His resurrection, left us the ultimate personal Spirit helper. He is the one Spirit we must have, to be kept from deception. Fortunately, being born-again we invited His Spirit to come in to be joined with our spirit. Now, we just need to mature spiritually to grow to hear, recognize, obey and follow His voice. He is with us, in us and for us. And if God is for us, who can be against us. We are going to trust Him to lead us into All Truth. Thank you, Lord Jesus!
In this series we will trust the Spirit of God to give us the direction to find all the keys needed to unlock the hidden mysteries of the Book. Understanding the details of the book, how they fit together, His purposes for why He wrote this book and why there is a promised blessing for reading it are some of these keys. These keys to right information will begin to lay the foundation of some of the simple important truths for us in the church to know for receiving the deeper truths later in the series.
Please let’s s be very clear. No one but God knows and understands the entire Bible. This includes the book of Revelation. Anyone teaching anything in the Bible like they are God’s expert on that subject is full of PRIDE and that is someone God resists. God gives Grace to the Humble. If we believe we know and understand the entire Bible we are deceived. If we are not willing to hear or listen to a message (from the Word of God) we are being led and influenced by the wrong spirit. So let me be blunt and to the point. I don’t know and understand the entire Bible or even the book of Revelation. But neither do you. I will endeavor to the best of my ability to with His help to teach this series using only the things He reveals to me and not speculate on what it might mean like I hear others try to teach.
Perhaps you have heard pastors and teachers who try to do a verse-by-verse series on the entire Bible or the book of Revelation. This is a warning sign of PRIDE and Overconfidence. Everyone I have ever heard teach this way overextends themselves to sound like they know what they are talking about when in actuality they know so little and are misleading people into potential deception and possible destruction.
I’ll let you in on a secret from my experiences with my Omniscient Lord and Savior Jesus. I have learned, “the more I learn from what He teaches me, the more I realize that I do not know, and still need to learn”. I have discovered that it is impossible to exhaust the complete Knowledge and Goodness of God.
Therefore, please make an attitude adjustment before continuing. If you believe you know everything about Revelation or the Bible you are potentially in the wrong place. I’m not going to fight you, argue with you or try to change you. I don’t have the time to argue and debate a billion plus people. No one does. That would be an example of an antichrist attitude and spirit of someone who is trying to force their agenda and beliefs.
I will only attempt to share the truths that I believe the Lord has shown to me, is showing and will continue to show to me. And I will also attempt to do it in Love as He also does to me. These Revelation teachings may not be in order or ever be verse by verse. However, they will be, I believe, where the Holy Spirit wants us to go to know exactly what we need to know right now to understand the entire book better later as we spiritually mature and are able to receive it and apply it.
I will say today’s introductory lesson on Revelation will probably be different than most of the rest of the lessons to come. Later it may be rare if anything is taught because it was learned from another Bible teacher. However, today will address the wide variety of things taught in the church about the book of Revelation. But please note that there are too many beliefs and variations for us to spend all of our time to examine in detail all of them.
It is not wise to be focused on things the Holy Spirit did not inspire. Satan’s strategy is to overwhelm humans and Christians with so many lies so that some of them take root in our hearts to be believed. This is exactly why there are so many beliefs being taught about Revelation.
Christians must verify with scriptures and the witness of the Holy Spirit whether anything they hear or read is true or not. Most deception is not going to require you to search scripture for yourself. But this website recommends strongly that you verify everything. We would require it if we could. However, because we love you as God does, He does not force us to believe His word and we cannot do that either.
If the Holy Spirit does not bear witness within me that anything is the truth, it will not be presented as truth in this series. It still may be presented, but only for you to know what others think is the truth. This too is never an approach of a deceiver. A deceiver cannot place their beliefs up against God’s Truth because it will always expose the weaknesses of other beliefs. And if and when it is mentioned in this series it will only be present to help others not fall for a deception being taught as truth.
Like I said before, I freely admit honestly that that I am NOT GOD, and I do not know and understand the entire book of Revelation or the Bible, right now. I have never heard another teacher say that because it casts doubts upon anything else they say. But I still believe humility and honesty admits they don’t yet know everything. I have never met or heard or read a human that does know and understand the entire Bible. The only one I know that does is God. But I DO trust Him always to show us what we need to know right now. This is called walking and living by faith. If we knew everything, we would not need Him, or our faith, and that does not please Him (Hebrews 11:6).
Church Teachings on Revelation
There are too many problems in current church teachings on the book of Revelation to mention them all. But hopefully with the Lord’s help we will cover the most problematic ones. To begin the section let’s list the most popular views of Revelation currently being taught by the theologically trained Seminaries and Teachers. Here are the most popular traditional interpretative views on the book of Revelation:
- Preterist View
- Historicist View
- Futurist (Premillennial) View
- Idealist (Spiritual/Amillennial) View
- Postmillennial View (often overlaps with partial Preterism or Idealism
First, notice the technical and theological labels given to each view. These are all non-Biblical Labels designed and given by scholars in Seminaries and Schools of Theology to Categorize, Identify and Reference any particular view or subject found in the Bible. While these are great identifiers for use in conversations and for use in determining a specific or general position or view, it may also be used to shun disparage, restrict, or even attack a view as evil.
Labels are used and abused constantly in politics as deception and as weapons. For example, one party calls a person within another party, a Nazi or Racist whether they are one or not, and this is always an attempt by the name caller to make themselves to appear better than they actually are. Another popular tactic and strategy occur when a politician mislabels an evil act like abortion as a good name like “women’s healthcare” when we all know in actuality that it is a death by dismemberment of a developing living child.
Therefore, Labels have both positive good or negative evil purposes. Also, there is another major problem in many teachings in the Bible with usage of Labels. For example, the word Trinity a triune quality of God used in Churches almost everywhere is not found in the Bible. However, is this a sound doctrinal belief based upon scriptures? Of course it is.
But many people will take the identifying Label “Rapture” describing a scriptural event of the Father sending His Son to receive His bride as a false doctrine just because the word Rapture (a Label) does not occur in the Bible. Therefore, Labels have potential positive and negative implications.
For example, I recently had a pastor inform he was for the most part a “Futurist” concerning the Book of Revelation. This was taken positively because this view appears to be the most accurate scripturally speaking. However, we must not assume because two people identify as the same category of belief, that there cannot remain dramatic conflicts between them in the details. Let’s go through the general beliefs categories:
Preterist View
A Preterist View is based upon a teaching that all or most of Revelation was fulfilled around 70AD, with the Roman Empire’s destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. This view is popular in some reformed churches like some Presbyterian and Anglican.
Did you notice how many labels there were in that last description? Did you realize this is a designed strategy of Satan? Satan’s strategy is to deceive and divide the church so that we fight each other, rather than come against him. These are the very negative reasons why categorical labels exist. Remember Jesus prayed in John 17:11, “Make them one, as we are one”. However, here are a few major problems with this belief.
Most Bible scholars believe the book of Revelation was written 25 years after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem. This would make the book of Revelation a Historical reflection and not a prophetical book. This realty does not align with literal interpretation of the words presented to us in the book. You see the book of Revelation says more than once it is a prophecy. This would make John a Liar and a Deceiver since the destruction of Jerusalem happened 25 years before he wrote the book and he wrote it was a prophecy.
This Preterist view and belief doesn’t harmonize with other Biblical End Time prophecies of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Jesus in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, etc.
Historist View
The Historist Core View believes Revelation is a symbolic overview of Church History from the 1st Century to the Second Coming. In the Protestant Historist View the papacy is often identified as the antichrist/beast.
Key proponents of this view were Reformation-era figures like Luther, Calvin, Knox and later Adventists like White. Some Puritans and is still common in the Seventh Day Adventists to name a few groups. Here are some of the major reasons why this view like Preterist View is significantly disconnected from a God intended understanding.
- This view violates the law of no prophecy is of any private interpretation according 2 Peter 1:20. This law teaches us the Bible interprets itself. The omniscient God is able to reveal the meanings of prophecy for himself, independent of human reasoning and contribution. This God source supply of interpretation determines and ensures God will get all of the glory for the fulfilling the words and not any human.
Futurist (Premillenial) View
This perspective of Revelation espouses chapters 4 through 22 are all future events and have yet to be fulfilled. This belief has generally labeled the chapters from 6 to 18 as the 7 Year Tribulation but it is also labeled by the Old Testament term as Daniel’s 70th Week. It is this final 7year week of Daniel that God divides into two 3.5 year periods with an event called the Abomination of Desolation. During this period of time this belief believes in the literal rise of a Satan empowered Antichrist human figure that will fight and resist God by deceiving people, forcing a mark placed on people using wars, plagues and famines with great wrath because he knows his time is very short. Then after Jesus returns to the earth with the church to defeat all the enemies and lock them below the earth, we will reign with him for 1000 years. After this is Judgment and a new heaven and a new earth.
This belief is largely held and taught by the majority of Evangelical, Pentecostal, Baptist, and non-denominational churches. Most of these believe in a pre-tribulation rapture event, God’s separate dealings with the church in an age of Grace being separate from God’s dealings with natural Israel and the remaining finale 7 years (70th week of Daniel) of Judgment, and a very literal timeline of events. Key modern proponents of this belief are David Jeremiah, Hilton Sutton, Perry Stone, Jimmy Evans, Rick Renner, Greg Laurie, Les Feldick, John McArthur, and literally too many others to name them all.
The major argument against this belief comes primarily from people who are not believers in the existence of God created different Dispensations (periods of time) of God’s dealings with humanity. For example, how God dealt with humans pre-sin versus post-sin, pre-law versus post-law, pre-Christ (Birth) versus post-Christ (resurrection). These people for some reason do not place enough significance upon major works of God and the effects that they brought upon humanity.
Idealist (Spiritual/Amillenial) View
This belief system of opinion treats the book of Revelation as completely symbolic disparaging any literal interpretation of events or any application to prophetic future timings. It takes the millennial reign of Christ in Revelation 20 as happening now with Christ in Heaven ruling through the church on earth.
Major proponents of this belief are Augustine, William Hendrickson, G.K. Beale, Sam Storms, and is common in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestant (Lutheran, Presbyterian) and many reformed amillennialists.
- The greatest opponents to this belief is its ignoring of direct statements of the book being a future prophecy in violation of Revelation 1:3 and 22:7.
- This interpretation is also in violation of 2 Peter 1:20 stating no prophecy can be of any private interpretations. If further takes the symbolic aspects of part of Revelation to an extremism position of error by making the entire book symbolic.
- Are there any verses that confirms the definitions of their symbols?
- Are there any verses that that repeat in the Bible to confirms the interpretation?
Post Millennial View
This view often overlaps in part with Preterism and Idealism. The belief espouses the Gospel will gradually triumph leading to a “golden age” of the Christian Church dominance before Christ’s return. This belief states the millennium is just a long period of peace caused by the church. This belief like the Preterist think the judgment events of Revelation were largely fulfilled in the first century 70 AD or some are just symbolic happenings in the church age.
This belief’s key proponents are Jonathan Edward’s, B.B. Warfield, Loraine Boetner, Doug Wilson, and some other modern thoenomists. It was common in some reformed thomonic and Presbyterian circles but has become less common today. Here are some of the potential problems with this view.
- This view appears to interpret Revelation independent from the common related prophecy in Daniel, Ezekiel, etc. including the Words of Jesus in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21.
- This interpretation appears to ignore all the verses quoted from the Old Testament that establishes direct connections.
- This belief appears to suggest an almost independence from God in human flesh form. This doctrine appears to have the elements that humans in their flesh will triumph over spirits.
Conclusions
As we can clearly see there are many major conflicting views of Revelation with only a few overlapping common beliefs. Christian religious theologians have given most views a name for topic and subject reference and identification. By giving each view a Name, it has made it far easier to teach differences between views. This approach of subject classification allows one particular view to be separated from all other views by use of different names.
Are you seeing why there are names given to Bible subjects? But a name given to any subject also has both positive and negative connotations. For example, when a wife is married, traditionally and publicly speaking she received the name of her husband and this symbolically represented the two becoming one flesh as stated in Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31-32. This is a prime example of positive renaming effect to become the same unified partners.
But there are also the negative aspects of newly given subject names. By giving a new name to your interpretation to a general subject like understanding “Revelation”, you could be dividing yourself away from God’s Truth. We can learn this from the labels and names Preterist, Historist, Futurist, Idealist, etc. Once someone identifies as one of these labels, they have shunned themselves from every other labeled view. What am I saying? I refuse to label, limit and restrict myself to any one label other than to be called a Christ Follower and a Seeker and Teacher of TRUTH.
Does that mean my positional view does not closely align with anyone else that studies and teaches the Bible? Of course not! But they might also be different! My Bible clearly says “Those that are led by the Spirit, they are the son’s of God”. This simply means those that are NOT led by the Spirit are NOT sons and daughters of God. If we are living independently from God’s Spiritual guidance we are following after someone else. Therefore, find out what God calls you, names you as and identifies to be and confess that only.
Renaming things is a very popular strategy of Satan to divide Christian, we could call it the divide and conquer strategy. You see Jesus began the church in Acts 2:46 as one body of unified believers. I personally believe this is how she will end. This belief is based primarily upon the prayer Jesus made to the Father in John 17:21-22. In this prayer Jesus asks for the church to be made One! This is the motivating factor why the Church is so divided and against each other through Satan’s massive efforts to deceive. Just FYI there are few Christians, if any in the church today that are not potentially deceived in some area or subject in the Bible. This is simply based upon ignorance of scripture. No one but God knows and understands every word, scripture, chapter and book.
We could spend years analyzing the teachings of each Revelation View. In this study we would want to learn how each view hits or misses what God intended to say and what He wanted us to know from what was said. We would need to compare and balance with all of scripture and not just those words in Revelation.
Does that sound like a plan that redeems the best use of our time? I don’t believe it does. I do not ever study theological study books, commentaries or any other religious biased and human reasoning interpreted writings, unless I need to. If I get a question from a reader using terms, names and descriptions having religious terminology I am willing to address them at the same level, but only as the Lord desires and leads. My personal study time is almost always 100% only in the Bible. Then I trust the Holy Spirit in me to lead me to all the verses I need to teach the subject under review.
Because this lesson series is intended to address a self-proclaimed Futurist Viewpoint from a minister it will contain certain points of scripture that will counter their new belief. This unnamed minister who had not long ago shifted from teaching a pre-Tribulation Rapture View now moving to a pre-Wrath modern theory Rapture view. This view is nothing but a mid-tribulation viewpoint changed with the shifting and re-labeling of periods within in the book of revelation that have never existed or been taught before. They only now believed this new view due to reading an unnamed book written on the subject that was written first in 1990. This minister said they studied it out and could not find anything in scripture to refute it. However, I read it over and can see so many problems with it, that it amazes me why they can’t?
Next, we will be moving to some new foundational subjects that are absolutely essential in understanding the Book of Revelation. We only focus upon the topics that I believe the Holy Spirit is directing us to go and in the order that I believe He desires them to be taught.
I pray this series will be of interest because I believe you will not be disappointed in studying this subject. Revelation is still the only book that I know of that promises a blessing to everyone that reads and/or hears it taught. This blessing has become so real in my study of the book for the past years and especially more pronounced in the last months since June 2025.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. You are always a blessing to us whether you like, share or comment or not. God Loves you, Jesus Loves you and we Love you! Be blessed, share the Love of God to all that you encounter because Jesus Christ is coming very soon.
What does the Holy Spirit say to you about these beliefs? Which one are you at peace with? And Why? Please share what you think and use scriptures. The remainder of the lessons in this series will be heavily weighted with essential scriptures to help us understand the truth.
Please keep reading and I will do my best to keep the lessons shorter and to the point. For example, todays lesson on the Introduction is less than 5000 words. Very manageable for those that are of limited time constraints.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. You are always a blessing to us whether you like, share or comment or not. God Loves you, Jesus Loves you and we Love you! Be blessed, share the Love of God to all that you encounter because Jesus Christ is coming very soon.
Understanding Spiritual Gifts Part 3 – The Gift of Faith
(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in a study series concerning God’s Spiritual Gifts. This series was initiated to answer a reader’s question on the subject of describing and understanding the 9 “Spiritual Gifts” found and defined to us primarily in 1 Corinthians 12. But in order to understand this subject we discovered in the introduction that we all have the basic need to obtain the knowledge of the fundamentals of the subject first. If you have not already studied this first and second lessons, it is strongly recommended that you please go back to “Part 1” before continuing with today’s lesson. Those concepts will largely not be repeated in this lesson.
Also, in the previous lessons we went over a quick overview of just some of the major Spiritual Gifts that were given to us (humanity or the church) by God. Therefore, if you have not read “Part 2” it is highly recommended, at least go back there before you continue with today’s lesson on the subject of the very specific gift of what God called the “Spiritual Gift of Faith”.
You may notice that we may not teach every subject in the order that the Lord listed them in the Bible. Rather we will endeavor to be led by the Spirit to teach each subject as we believe we are led. Therefore, this is our reason for learning about the “Gift of Faith” today, rather than taking them in the order as listed in 1 Corinthians 12.
Since I assume everyone has now read the first two lessons, my belief is that you should recall that we have already found a list of 15 spiritual gifts given to humanity and the church by the Spirit. Hopefully, you also remember the Greatest Spiritual Gift of God was Jesus Christ, the Spiritual Word of God made flesh (John 1:1-14, John 3:16). And this gift offers the Gift of Salvation to all of humanity. We will find out soon that not many spiritual gifts are offered to unsaved people. Receiving Jesus is a prerequisite to receiving other gifts given by the Holy Spirit.
Next, we reviewed the list of 9 Spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. These gifts were named as the 1) Word of Wisdom, 2) Word of Knowledge, 3) Faith, 4) Healing, 5) Working of Miracles, 6) Prophecy, 7) Discerning of Spirits, 8) Divers Tongues, and 9) Interpretation of Tongues. We also should have learned that all of these 9 gifts given by the Holy Spirit, were intended to be used through His anointed people in their ministry works, to either get the unsaved saved; or to build-up and edify the church body.
We can see this evidence very clearly in Acts 2 when God poured out His Spirit on the 120 men and women in the upper room in Jerusalem. This occurred 50 days after the feast of first-fruits where Jesus was raised from the dead, after being slain as the Passover Lamb for all humanity. However, the gifts of the Spirit weren’t first given to the church anywhere that I have seen, until the time of another major feast of Israel called “Pentecost” when all of the Jewish people were supposed to be in Jerusalem. And there were many people there in Jerusalem on this day traveling from other surrounding nations. Many of these people spoke other languages and they heard those in the upper room that were first filled with the Holy Spirit speak directly in one of God’s 9 gifts called “divers tongues”. Each of these visiting people from these nearby nations heard the upper room people speaking in their native languages while glorifying God. As a result of this manifestation of just one of the great 9 gifts sent from God, He got the attention of over 3000 and because of this amazing sign, these believed God and got saved. Read about it in Acts 2. It was real, and it actually happened this way.
I will stop here and point out that many people that say they are Christians that live now in the current times of last days churches have “ceased” believing that the gifts of God are still in effect and are being used by God now. Some of labeled these types of Christians as “Cessationists”. They simply believe the gifts were poured out to the Apostles in the beginning of the church age because they needed it for the church to get established until the Bible was written and published. After the Bible was made available, these gifts were not needed, according to their beliefs. But this belief does not match the Word of God nor the personal experiences of many. There are still many people today who do believe in them and operate in these gifts as the Lord leads.
Then in 1 Corinthians 12:28 we further discovered where God listed 5 new spiritual gifts that were joined to 3 gifts in common with the previous 9. These were 1) Apostles, 2) Prophets, 3) Teachers, 4) Miracles, 5) Gifts of Healings 6) Helps 7) Governments and 8) Diversities of Tongues. As was stated there are 3 overlapping gifts in this new list of 8 Spiritual Gifts only raising our total spiritual gifts so far, to 15 = (1 + 9 + (8 – 3)). The fact that the two lists contain duplications, simply helps us join the two lists together and unite them to learn there are definitely more than 9 spiritual gifts.
Instead of exploring the Bible for additional spiritual gifts (and there are others) we are going to focus today on the single subject of the Spiritual Ministry “Gift of Faith”.
Understanding Supernatural FAITH as a Spiritual Ministry Gift
that is Different than Other Types of Faith
One very important thing that must be understood about the list of the 9 Spiritual Gifts found in 1 Corinthians 12, is about the subject of the “Gift of Faith”. God through Paul specifically lists “Faith” in this list as the third spiritual gift. But this is the exact same Greek word pistis (G4102) used in other Bible verses like Galatians 5:22 and Ephesians 2:8 that says, “The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy Peace, Long suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith”, and “By Grace are you saved through Faith”. Uh oh? Here we find two different types of faiths than the spiritual Gift of Faith and yet many preachers think they are all the same because of the same word being used.
This would be like us saying we all have the exact same identical “Blood” and ignoring the basic truth that there are several types of Blood. For example, in the human blood types there is 1) A Positive, 2) A Negative, 3) B Positive, 4) B Negative, 5) AB Positive, 6) AB Negative, 7) O Positive and 8) O Negative. Yet all of these are called “Blood”. Just as medical professionals cannot mix up blood types, so also preachers cannot or must not mix up Faith Types.
So there is a major conflict rising again about the subject of “Faith” types that must be rightly divided to resolve the mystery in the church that not all faith is the same. Remember, we can read Faith is the third gift in the list of 9 and it is surrounded by the gifts of 1) the Word of Knowledge and 2) the Word of Wisdom are listed before it, and then 4) the Gift of Healing and 5) the Gift of Miracles followed after it. What does that tell us and what questions should come to our minds? First question is that “How can this gift of “Faith” be the same type of Faith that is necessary to receive salvation as is clearly stated in Ephesians 2:8?
Also, how can the “Gift of Faith” be the same type of faith that is produced from a seed that grows roots and a vine with branches to produce a “fruit” called “Faith”? This too is a major problem and cannot be the same type of “faith” as the other two that were previously mentioned.
Do you see the problem? If God gives us the faith to be saved as a gift, why isn’t everyone saved? Or are they? It should be very obvious that everyone on earth is not saved because we can see too much evil, too many differing beliefs in who they worship as their god, and too many people who don’t even believe or claim that there is a God? Therefore, we know the “Gift” of faith is NOT for salvation to go to heaven when we die.
However, this word “Faith” is the exact same Greek word (G1402 pistis) that is found in over 200 verses. God is definitely connecting all 243 verses containing the Greek word G1402 together like the subject of “Blood”. But does that mean because they are connected, they are all the same type of “Faith” used for the same purpose and applying to the same application? No, it does not!
What we are about to discover is that there are various types of faith and applying the “Gift of Faith” to be the same as all other types of faith like the “Salvation Faith” only causes spiritual conflict and confusion. Any time there is an apparent conflict that occurs in scripture, it does not reveal God made a mistake, it only reveals that we do not understand the subjects being discussed yet. Here is just a short list of the types of “Faith” that come from the Greek word G4102:
- Carnal/Natural Human Faith (2 Thessalonians 3:2). Every human “lives” by Faith but this type of faith is based upon only the 5 senses type of learned faith, and a Christian’s faith is only based upon God’s Words (2 Corinthians 5:7).
- Saving Faith (Ephesians 2:8) The Faith that comes from hearing the Word of God to be saved according to Romans 10:17.
- Fruit of Faith (Galatians 5:22). Spiritual fruit of faithfulness to continue to serve God and remain faithful to His Spirit only as our husband, thus not committing adultery with devils (2 Corinthians 6:15).
- Gift of Faith (1 Corinthians 12:9). This is our subject faith type and it is only given by God for ministering to others, it is not for personal use that I have seen in operation or read in the Bible.
Let’s first begin by stating the obvious that the spiritual “Gift of Faith” is different from the “Saving Faith” needed to be saved as well as the type of spiritual fruit Faith to remain faithful to God. And is certainly not related to the natural human faith we are all physically born with. Why is this?
We can understand this if we see how all 9 Spiritual Gifts in this list are only given to saved Christians for the Holy Spirit’s usage of ministering to others people as we should have learned in 1 Corinthians 12:7. In this verse God reveals that these 9 gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to “profit and benefit” the church body as a whole and these are not used to minister to the individual Christian for self-help. The one that is being used by God to help someone else is because God has sovereignly manifested as a Gift to be given to another person that God desires to bless for future service in His Kingdom.
For example, I believe Peter was used by the Holy Spirit with potentially a combination of gifts. These were, possibly the “Gift of Faith” and/or the gift of the “Working of Miracles”. We can find this account of the ministry of the Holy Spirit through Peter in Acts chapter 3. Here Peter is at the temple gate called Beautiful and he sees a lame man who is begging and he has been in this condition since birth. These types of situations certainly cause the mercy of God to be extended to certain people. Remember God knows the hearts of every person and God sees their potential future and will help them to fulfill the plan He has for their lives out of compassion and mercy. But we must know this will not usually be offered again. This is normally a one-time gift, because God expects all Christians to grow their own faith to receive for any future needs.
Peter told this man to look on us and said to him “silver and gold have I none, but such as I HAVE, I give to you”. Apparently, Peter acknowledges that it is not him alone that is about to heal the man. To “have something” implies that this “something” has been previously given to him and it is logical to think it came from the Holy Spirit because he was just Baptized with the Spirit in the previous Chapter.
Then Peter claimed this man was healed by “Faith” in the name of Jesus in Acts 3:16. In this verse Peter tells the Jewish people that this lame man had been healed by the name of Jesus and “faith” in His name. But it is the last part of this verse that helps us to believe this was the direct operation of God’s gift of Faith.
In the last part of Acts 3:16 Peter says, “Yea, the faith that is by Him (Jesus) has “given” this perfect soundness in the presence of you all”. Do you see how this could be describing “a gift” that is being “given” by Jesus through Peter to a lame man in the presence of a lot of other Jewish people to help them all believe in Jesus? This is how the Holy Spirit operates many times as He desires because He knows the best choices in every situation.
He can give one gift by supernatural choice to bless one lame man, and this causes many others to believe in Jesus through Peter’s gift of Faith or the working of miracles. If you notice in this story a lot of people believed in Jesus after seeing this miracle (Acts 4:4). Almost everyone with the exception of the majority of the Jewish religious temple leaders believed in Jesus and the church grew by thousands because of one gift of a miracle.
By God gifting a lame man to walk who was lame from birth, is an undeniable supernatural miracle and anyone who had come into the temple had seen this man for years and years begging. This means this man’s gift of healing through a disciple of God caused the church to grow significantly because many people could hear the Gospel about Jesus Christ to receive “Saving Faith”.
So, in Acts 2 and in Acts 3 after the Holy Spirit was given on Pentecost, there were signs and wonders being operated through the church and as a result many thousands of people in Jerusalem were saved. There are certainly other examples in the Bible but we only touched upon 2 barely, to get you acquainted with this subject of the gift of “Faith” being completely different than the Fruit of Faith, the Saving Faith and the normal carnal faith unsaved people constantly live by.
Remember God says in Romans 1:17 “The just shall live by Faith”. If we had to wait for God to manifest a gift of Faith to live everyday we would all be in serious trouble. This is just further confirmation that the faith we live by daily is not the same as the “Gift of Faith” that God gives to minister to help others. I hope this gave you a good foundation for doing further study on this subject on your own. Or if you have specific questions, you are free to leave them in a comment.
Conclusion
So, we have seen how the Gift of Faith is not the same as other types of “Faith”. The Gift of Faith is given to God’s servants as He sovereignly chooses. Man operates in this gift by “Faith” because only God knows what will happen and how it will happen. This is a clear cooperative arrangement between covenant partners for the betterment and growth of the church. Never forget that the Bible describes God has “longsuffering”, this means He has supernatural patience waiting in kind and compassionate love for His people to agree with Him and work with Him.
Not everyone operates in the gifts of the spirit especially in a church service. Most likely it will be the “Pastor” or an “Evangelist” that operates in many of the spiritual gifts as the “Lord Wills”. But it does not help the one that is being used in cooperation with God’s will. The servants (you and I) are never above their Master (Jesus Christ). Jesus is the “Head” of the church and He is the one guiding us and we are supposed to be His followers listening for and expecting His voice to guide us.
The Word of God in 1 Corinthians 14:1 says for us to “Follow after Love, and desire Spiritual gifts”, but then God says to us “rather to prophesy”. We can clearly see a mixture of spiritual fruits and gifts of the Spirit. But it should be obvious the Love of God and our spiritual fruit is not in the list of the 9 spiritual gifts. This further confirms the faith in fruits is not the faith in gifts!
Hope and pray this was a blessing to you. Whether you agree or disagree I love you and want “Peace’ to rule our hearts and minds. Let’s all do what we just read in 1 Corinthians 14:1 and “Follow after LOVE”. If you have ever had God use you in the gift of Faith, it would be a pleasure to hear your experience to encourage others.
Thank you for taking the time to read and study this Bible lesson. Please be a Berean Bible student and go and study every subject taught for your own self edification. Prove all things by the scripture whether they be so or not. God bless you and until next time, know Jesus is coming Soon!
Understanding Spiritual Gifts Part 2 – Intro to Spiritual Gifts
(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 2” in a study series concerning God’s Spiritual Gifts. This series was initiated to answer a reader’s question on the subject of describing and understanding the 9 “Spiritual Gifts” found and defined to us primarily in 1 Corinthians 12. But in order to understand this subject we discovered in the introduction we all have the basic need to obtain the fundamentals of the subject first. If you have not already studied this lesson, it is strongly recommended that you please go to “Part 1” first before continuing with today’s lesson. Those concepts will largely not be repeated in this lesson. Thank you.
In the first introduction lesson on Gifts natural or spiritual, we discovered God’s ultimate gift given to all of humanity was Jesus Christ. The key verse was John 3:16 which everyone should know by now. However, today we will begin to understand what kind of other spiritual gifts that God has given to humans and why? Normally many Christians only focus upon studying 1 Corinthians 12 to learn about 9 spiritual gifts that God gave to His church body. These 9 gifts are listed in the order of their mention as follows:
- The Word of Wisdom (1 Cor 12:8)
- The Word of Knowledge (1 Cor 12:8)
- Faith (1 Cor 12:9)
- The Gift of Healing (1 Cor 12:9)
- The Working of Miracles (1 Cor 12:10)
- Prophecy (1 Cor 12:10)
- The Discerning of Spirits (1 Cor 12:10)
- Divers Kinds of Tongues (1 Cor 12:10)
- Interpretation of Tongues (1 Cor 12:10)
This is an incredibly misunderstood and abused list of spiritual gifts. Many times, Bible teachers take only certain verses out of context to prove their erroneous doctrines and this list is used by many for several different hidden motivated reasons to direct us away from us desiring to receive or participate in these gifts. This my friend is deception of our enemy working through people appearing as clergy, preachers, pastors or teachers. And most of these people do not even know they are deceived or are preaching the doctrines of devils (1 Tim 4:1). This is exactly why each believer in Christ is responsible to know the Bible for themselves. We are ALL instructed to be “Berean” types of readers and hearers of the Bible and verify everything we read or have heard with our own personal Bible studies (Acts 17:11).
However, just know that most of these reasons of these teachers leading sheep astray, are either ignorant on Bible topics because they have brought into their denominational doctrines or seminary based human reasonings, and do not knowingly understand what they were taught that was being demonically inspired to bring confusion into the body of Christ. Remember, the Works of Almighty God are always intended bring Truth and to Unify the Body (1 Cor 12:7). God’s purpose is always to edify and Build-up the church body (1 Cor 14:3-4, 1 Ths 5:11).
God be willing, we will plan to go into each of these 9 gifts in more detail in the future, but for now we should focus on some of the key points made by the Holy Spirit found in the contextual verses. These points must not be overlooked, misunderstood or even ignored. These are listed as follows:
- God does not want us to be ignorant of any Spiritual things like His Gifts (1 Cor 12:1).
- People not knowing about Spiritual things are easily led astray by devils into worshipping natural things like idols (1 Cor 12:2).
- There are many Spiritual Gifts, but they all come from the same True and Living God (1 Cor 12:5).
- There are many different timings and effects (purposes) of the operation of these Spiritual Gifts but God is operating them all as He pleases since He knows who needs help even when we don’t (1 Cor 12:6).
- But when the Spirit of God chooses to manifest these Spiritual Gifts to someone, they are given to profit (benefit) the one who it is directed to, as well as everyone that is present in the church (1 Cor 12:7).
- Not everyone has these gifts operating through them. In fact, it would be very rare for just one person to be used by God in the operation of all 9 Spiritual Gifts, by God’s design and purpose (1 Cor 12:30). Even Jesus Christ appears to not operate in all 9 gifts of the Spirit. We will plan to examine this later as God wills.
- These 9 gifts are manifested only as the Spirit of God wills (1 Cor 12:11). This simply means no human can stand up and turn on these gifts and operate in them as they will, independent of His leading.
- God instructs the church body to “covet” earnestly the best spiritual gifts (1 Cor 12:31). This show us that it is up to the individual believer if they want to participate or not in every spiritual gift. We can logically deduce this by seeing it is up to the believer in the gifts, to desire to want to be used in them. It also strongly teaches that not all gifts are of same purpose or value as the other spiritual gifts. There are definitely some gifts that are better than others, but the gift needed by God to minister to someone at any given moment is still the best for that situation.
It is also very interesting to see how God connects Spiritual Gifts to the church being the body of Christ in diverse roles and purposes, having the same Spirit, but all having great need of each of the other body parts. Think about this analogy in the description of a human’s body. For example, some of the most least visible organs and parts of the body are typically some of the most essential. These are taken for granted by many people up until they fail or get attacked and causes their entire life to change.
Ever think of the pancreas, lungs, stomach or colon? These are all unseen body parts yet essential for corporate life of the body. Ever think about these body parts? Probably not, unless they fail to operate. This is what God is teaching in the middle part of the chapter.
Therefore we are learning how one highly visible and gifted person in the body of Christ must not look at themselves as being better or more important than some other unseen part of the Body of Christ. No part of the body is less important to God’s operation in the earth. This causes us to make sure we remain humble in every role of the body of Christ and utilizing each and every gift.
Finally, at the end of chapter 12 God lists some new spiritual gifts and intentionally joins them to the chapters’ previous 9 gifts. That simply means there are a potentially lot more spiritual gifts given to humans in the church than those first listed 9 spiritual gifts. We should have learned this concept in the opening introduction where Jesus was described to be the ultimate spiritual Gift. Let’s list these gifts found at the end of the chapter in 1 Corinthians 12:28:
- Apostles
- Prophets
- Teachers
- Miracles
- Gifts of Healings
- Helps
- Government
- Diversities of Tongues
Notice the overlapping new gifts with the previous gifts of the Spirit. The new 5 gifts appear as 1) Apostles, 2) Prophets, 3) Teachers, 6) Helps, and 7) Government. These were combined with the previous gifts 4) Miracles, 5) Gifts of Healings and 8) Diversities of Tongues. This is your first clue that God is telling us that there are potentially many more gifts that have yet to be included in the total number of the complete list. So far, we have 14 total spiritual gifts found. No let us join this list with the obvious verses containing Apostles, Prophets and Teachers. We can find this in Ephesians 4:11;
- Apostles
- Prophets
- Evangelists
- Pastors
- Teachers
This list is often called the 5-fold ministry gifts. But notice the overlap again between the previous gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 and here in Ephesians 4. What we can see immediately in Ephesians 4:11 is the statement saying, “He Gave”. This simply means God is confirming to us that these are spiritually gifted people and these gifts came from Him. We can call these “anointings” which just so happens to be the Greek word “Christos” which is normally translated as “Christ” but literally means “anointed one”.
The subject of the anointing of God, might be something new to many Christians. However, this describes the Spirit of God enabling the Gifts of God. An anointing from God is simply a portion of the Spirit of God that rests upon an individual to enable them to do things by faith, supernaturally that they normally would “not” be able to accomplish in their own individual abilities. I firmly believe that every Christian is anointed to do something for God.
I am a good example of someone having an anointing. Without the Spirit of God, I am not a normal type of person that likes to teach, especially before a large crowd. Yet God’s ability through His anointing supersedes my personal abilities, and this causes Him to get the Glory for everything I do to bless His people. I do not take the credit for anything that is taught by me. I am not that smart to be able to understand the Bible in-depth like is published here.
Therefore, know and learn from this lesson that God has gifted everyone and each Christian must find out what they were called to do and how He gifted them to fulfill it. Then seek Him and unite with Him in unity to cooperate in Faith to work with God to cause it to come to pass. Just because someone is anointed does not mean it will automatically happen. We all must take a step of faith and move in the direction that He is leading us to go, step by step!
Jesus God’s Gift and Gifted Anointed Servant
Here is another shocker for many Christians. The Bible clearly teaches us that Jesus Christ was anointed by God for His 3 and half year ministry time here on the earth. Jesus proves this in Luke 4:18 when He was reading from the book of Isaiah. He began to read the words in the scroll which said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me…” (Isaiah 61:1, Luke 4:18) and this is followed by a key list of items that Jesus was anointed by His Father God to accomplish on earth. Also, in Acts 10:38 God further confirms this truth by saying “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and Power, who went about doing good, healing all those oppressed by the devil”. Wow, what amazing information of Truth.
It might also be important for you to see when God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit. We can find this in Matthew 3:13-16. In this passage, Jesus comes to John the Baptist to be baptized of him in water. After John baptizes him in the water and while Jesus is coming up out of the water, the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus and abides. This was the anointing of the man Jesus of Nazareth. This is when Jesus begins His supernatural ministry on the earth performing countless miracles. But we should ask ourselves, why was it necessary for the Son of God who was the Almighty God in the flesh to be baptized and anointed?
Why didn’t Jesus the omnipotent God just heal everyone and do everything the same way He did when He created the world? Here is the short answer why God chose to anoint the man Jesus rather than to operate in His deity power. Philippians chapter 2 confirms God laid aside His Supernatural Omnipotent powers to be made like men. He did this to legally counter the devil’s works on the earth. Satan had exalted himself by his pride and God chose to humble himself and die on a cross to save us concurrently destroying the evil works of the devil.
Another part of this answer, is that Jesus chose to become a natural human laying aside His deity power in order to set an example for how humans are supposed to live and operate in this life. Do you remember what Jesus told the disciples in Acts 1:8? He told them to wait in Jerusalem so that they would receive “Power” when the Holy Spirit came upon them. This simply means the disciples were being anointed with the same Spirit power that Jesus had and this is still available for us today! This brings us to another Key Spiritual Gift from God.
Gal 3:14 That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Notice this verse does not directly mention a gift, but if you recall from lesson one a gift is always offered by the giver and it must be subserquently received (taken) by the recipient. This verse shows us that the Holy Spirit was a promised “Gift” that must be received by humans. Therefore, we are finding another reference to a Spiritual Gift from God. God’s Holy Spirit is the same Spirit that indwells and joins with our human spirit at the new birth which Jesus called being “Born-Again” in John 3.
But now we are seeing new work of God’s gift of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ (Anointed One) to anoint each of the members in His church body. This is what Jesus told the disciples to receive on the day of Pentecost in the upper room in Acts 2. This experience occurs after the new spiritual birthing process and God’s purpose is to empower us to become witnesses to other humans that have not been born-again.
Conclusion
We have just barely begun to cover an introduction to Spiritual Gifts that come from God. These are all more awesome that you can imagine. Each Spiritual Gift has a specific purpose and usage to give God glory and to edify His church body. Hopefully, you are enjoying this series. If you have time, please like, comment and ask any question that you may have about Spiritual Gifts.
God Bless you exceedingly and abundantly above all you can ask or think. Because most of us don’t have much of a clue what God has prepared for them that “Love” Him. I can’t wait to find out! Always remember Jesus Christ is coming sooner than most people think. It could be today! Are you ready to meet Him in the air?
If you would like to continue study in the series, please go to “Part 3“.
Understanding Spiritual Gifts Part 1 – Introduction to Gifts
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 1” in a study series concerning God’s Spiritual Gifts. This series was initiated to answer a reader’s question on the subject of describing and understanding the 9 “Spiritual Gifts” found and defined to us primarily in 1 Corinthians 12. But in order to understand this subject, there are potentially many people who need to begin with understanding the basic supporting subject verses that help build the foundation for the deeper advanced topics of “spiritual gifts”. What we learn from Jesus in John 3:12 is that He said very plainly, “if I tell you of natural (earthly) things and you do not believe, how then can I tell you of the spiritual?”
This is just elementary fundamentals of all education. Everyone needs to learn the basic numbers and mathematical operations like addition and subtraction before we attempt algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus and etc. Jesus taught us a fundamental concept that natural things reveal far greater unseen spiritual things. There are parallels between them both, and learning the basics of the natural leads us to better understand the spiritual. This is what today’s introduction will attempt to cover in a quick overview format.
God’s Spiritual Gifts maybe an easily misunderstood and complex Bible Subject to study for some. But, like any Bible subject, it can be oversimplified or exaggerated and many subject elements can be ignored because spiritual realities are not clearly understood by flesh dominated people. However, we will desire to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading and first step through the foundational Bible verses to help us establish the groundwork of truth about this subject. If you are ready, let us begin.
Understanding Gift Giving
This section will be designed for only a very few, but even advanced students may find benefits in refreshing their memory on the basics. Basic gifting can be observed from four “points-of-view”. First, there is the view from the gift giver perspective. Second, there is the opposite side of the receiver of the gift perspective. Third, there is the view from an external earthly observer perspective. Finally, but not the least there is the divine view of the entire gift process. We will soon discover that these perspectives are true for a natural gift as well as a spiritual gift that is given. Let’s see a Bible example of each.
- Matthew 6:1-3 – Jesus teaches us that when we are giving alms to the Lord, we are not to be doing it to be seen by observers on the earth. Therefore, some spiritual gifts are meant to be secret without observers. In this example, we have God the receiver, a human the giver and by intentional design of God no other observers. This type of gift of God is normally something physical/natural.
- Hebrews 13:15 – This verse of scripture describes a spiritual gift of praise that a human offers up to God. Logically, this would be done in private prayer time. But it could occur corporately in a church gathering also. Either way, the intention is not to have human observers focused upon you the giver, to praise you. Everyone should be focused only upon the receiver, God. Because our Heavenly Father is a giver, humans were designed by God to be imitators of Him (Eph 5:1).
We just saw a couple of quick Bible examples of gifts from humans given to God, one that is natural like an offering of natural finances given to God and the other was an offering of spiritual “praise” to God. Therefore, gifts given to God can be either natural or spiritual. We will find out later that God’s gifts that He gives to humans can also be natural or spiritual.
But for now, let us see another example of a man giving a gift to God but this time it is certainly being done through another natural man. In Genesis 14 we find where Abram had just won a huge victory recovering everything that was stolen by an enemy. This enemy captured Abram’s nephew Lot and all of the valuable plunder of Sodom. Abram was returning home after victory with a huge blessing and he met the king of Sodom, Melchizedek. Abram and Melchizedek had a covenant meal with bread and wine like Jesus did at the last supper with His disciples. Then Abram paid to Melchizedek a tithe (Tenth) of all of the spoils. This is the first mention of the actual amount called a tithe. But it happened over 430 years before the Law is given to Moses. That should be interesting to some.
However, we find another typology of Jesus in this story because Melchizedek was a type of Jesus. Melchizedek acts as a mediator priest of God like Jesus does in the New Covenant. We can read about these multiple places, Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 5:6, and Hebrews 6:20.
Now let us shift our focus to normal human-to-human gift giving of natural object examples found in the Bible. One of the first accounts of natural gift giving is also found in Genesis and it takes place when Abraham sends his senior servant to get a wife for his son Isaac. Isaac had just been offered as a sacrifice to God when a substitute ram was found to be caught in a nearby thicket. This substitutionary sacrifice was a type and shadow of the coming sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God in the New Covenant. You can read about this display of God’s grace within typology in Genesis 22.
But in Genesis 24 is where we find the journey of Abraham’s servant to bring back a wife for Isaac from amongst Abraham’s relatives. We will notice in this story that it is all done in faith. There is a distinct parallel to Isaac being the figure of Jesus Christ and the future bride Rebekah being a type of the church. The servant appears to be a type of the Holy Spirit and God’s works through the Spirit to give the church gifts.
What we will notice in Genesis 24:10 is that the senior servant of Abraham loads 10 camels to take with him on his journey to fetch the bride of Isaac. It might be interesting to assume one camel was where the servant rode on his journey and the other 9 carried all of the gifts for the bride and her family. Thus, some may easily see that there could be a parallel here to the 9 gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 mentioned as gifts given to the church bride of Christ by the Holy Spirit.
In the chapter of Genesis 24, we find that the first gifts given were physical and natural and were to the future bride Rebekkah. The servant gave her 2 golden bracelets and a golden earring in verse 22. We will notice that the gifts on the camels that were brought from Abraham were intended to demonstrate his wealth and his generosity which are admirable character traits of Christians today.
However, it is noteworthy to know that it was the custom of those Bible days that gifts were intended to satisfy the virgin bride’s dowry. A dowry is just another word for a gift that is being offered. The bride still had a choice to accept the marriage proposal and go back with the servant to her bridegroom Isaac or she could also say no and stay with her family. Nevertheless, there was still a transfer of wealth being given to help motivate the bride’s positive decision. After all she has never met Isaac personally and she will be accepting to marry him in total blind-faith based upon the words of a servant. We may get more depth into this typology later in the series.
What we have seen is example of natural gifts that are given to a bride and her family by a third-party mediator who is the gift giver on the behalf of the father Abraham for his son Isaac. You may be aware already that many marriages were arranged by the fathers. The spiritual parallels that are given here to God the Father sending the Holy Spirit to humanity to offer gifts for a Son’s marriage covenant proposal to the church bride is very profound. This is because we are also saved by God’s Grace through our faith (Ephesians 2:8) and it is the Holy Spirit that gives us many gifts.
Understanding Gifts in the Bible
It might also be helpful to some, to define what a gift normally is according to the Bible. Hopefully, everyone has received a natural gift from someone at some time in their life. This is certainly a very common thing to do for most normal people. But there are some that are so self-centered that they have only thought of themselves. If you have never given to someone or received a physical gift from anyone in your life, please be brave enough to share this in the comments. No one has to give their names in the unless they want to. However, this information may help us and others to pray if prayer seems appropriate for a situation.
On the other side of this it might be nice if you are able to share an experience about a natural gift that was given to you once that made you feel very special and loved. If you care to share this experience in the comments, please do so. Please share how this gift changed your life for the better. These kinds of experiences can demonstrate great God qualities of His gifts and how they should make us feel every day.
For the basics, a natural gift is usually a physical object. But it can also be a special time spent with someone or even kind words of encouragement. A gift is usually a nice and desirable object or action. For an extremely busy father or mother, maybe the most valuable gift you can give to your child is your personal time. In these cases, money is usually not what a child desires.
However, for others, any object that will potentially make someone excited, joyous and happy is a great gift. This is because the giver has placed time and thought into picking and obtaining the gift to fit their recipient. Any good gift should be an object tailored specifically for a single individual’s needs or wants. Or a gift could be just a general item like flowers or chocolate that almost anyone would enjoy but these general gifts usually show there could have been less thought that was given.
Any good gift should always be given unconditionally. No gift should be offered as a bribe or to achieve some ulterior motive or desire of the giver. A true gift is not a business transaction. There is no financial return from the recipient(s). If a giver of money or other types of gifts receives a physical favor for pleasure, this is not someone giving a gift, it is more like prostitution where a person sells their body in exchange for being given financial benefits. This is a business transaction and not real Bible gift giving experience.
Like we saw in the last section about Abraham the father sending a servant with gifts to find a bride for his son Isaac, all of this was motivated by “LOVE” and was not business. Business would go anywhere to obtain a desire, but the servant was specifically only sent to one place for near relatives of Abraham. Nothing was given to buy love for his son. These gifts were all demonstrations of a father’s love in his heart for his son and his well-being to find a wife for him to love and for this bride to have the right husband so that she can show her love back. God’s gifts are always based upon “LOVE” (John 3:16) and our gifts should be the same.
Also, notice that any real and good Bible gift to a friend or even to God should never cost the giver nothing. Bible gifts must not be worthless nor should they be a previous gift that was given to the giver without charge. A real Christians is not a thrifty re-gifter of items that were given to them that they just don’t like, just don’t need or want. If you notice in the Bible God does not give away junk, trash or worthless items and neither should anyone else if they desire to be like God (Ephesians 5:1).
Some may want to disagree with me on this topic and say that last paragraph was just wrong or too strong. Therefore, let us go through some Bible verses and examples. The first verse, that informs us of God’s character to give His best is John 3:16. This verse says, “For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son”. As you should know that was the ultimate gift of the sacrifice of the life of God the Son. This was the most valuable gift God has ever given to and for humanity.
Next, notice what James 1:17 says to us about God’s gifts, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from above”. This clearly invokes only quality gifts of minimum value of “Good” and maximized value of “Perfect” come from God. This means God is not going to give anyone, “OK gifts”, just “fair”, or even “needs repair” gifts. Any “Gift” has to be at least judged to be “Good” having no bad qualities or flaws. Let’s examine some other Bible verses on the subject of gifts.
Let’s analyze the offerings of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. Here we have an example of two givers of differing valued gifts being given to God. Abel gave the first and the best of his lambs. But it appears that Cain only gave to God what seems to be the leftovers. God rebukes Cain for his offering but accepts Abel’s. It appears God also gives value to receiving the best that a human has to give. This giving your best is display of the greatest God kind of “Love”. These are just a few examples, but we will do one more.
In 2 Samuel 24:24 King David, is offering sacrifices to God. Another king wants to give David the gits that he offers to God. But David refuses these gifts and tells the other king, “I will not give to the LORD that which costs me nothing”. Do you see the concepts being taught? These are very important gift giving and receiving concepts. The giver should always give what is best and the receiver should always expect and value the best gift that was given.
From this topic we should always begin by understanding that there are always at least two participants in the giving of a “gift”. These are usually first, one or more people that acts as the “giver” and then second, there are at least one, or more persons that must receive or take hold of the gift.
Introduction to Spiritual Gifts
We already read about James 1:17 where the Bible declares God to be the giver of every good and perfect spiritual gift from heaven. This verse firmly establishes God as the Good Gift Giver. Satan the archenemy of God is not a “giver” of good. According to John 10:10 Satan the thief is the one that steals from us the potential gifts that were given to us from God. Therefore, we have just identified two spiritual opposites. One is an evil taker and the other a very awesome Spirit that loves us tremendously. Evil gives death and Good gives life only.
Are giving and receiving spiritual gifts different from giving and receiving natural gifts? Who is the giver of spiritual gifts, what are they, when were/are they given, how do they come and why are they given and how are they received? Finally, it might be good to ask, are spiritual gifts automatic, guaranteed, or can they be lost or not received?
2Pe 1:3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
What we are learning is that God is the loving, all-powerful, all-knowing, and the ever-present Spirit who has already given to us “every good and perfect” spiritual gift (James 1:17) and everything that pertains to “life”. Therefore, we are confirming that God is a Spirit and the giver of only good spiritual and natural gifts. In fact we can further verify this by reading the first two chapters of Genesis.
In Genesis 1 God creates everything in our present world system including man and woman at the end of the 6th day and everything God saw was “Very Good”. This just further confirms that God only gives high quality gifts. In fact everything God created before man was placed on earth for man to already partake. There was already air, water, food, health, strength and everything they needed for life. Do you think this is not true for us now in the New Covenant?
God Our Ultimate Gift Giver Example
We have already seen James 1:17 where God is declared the spiritual giver of every good and perfect gift. These good gifts only come from Him that is in heaven. Sure, He uses people many times. But we wouldn’t have anything good if it was not for God’s sovereign working hands all up in our business.
We have almost all heard someone say how they earned their way and worked for everything that they have. These people give God no contribution to their success. But this is a narrow-minded attitude based upon deception of the enemy. Where did the air you breath come from? Where did the ground you stand upon come from? Where did the mind you think with come from? We could go on and on listing all of the things that God has given to you, to help you get where you are today? Your next heart beat is only because God created it to work this way.
What we must begin to realize is that without God’s contribution to us all and providing us everything we have need of no one would be here. It is time to change our attitude of “I did it my way” to “thank you Lord for being so gracious and kind to me”. “Thank you, Lord for all the things that you have given to me”. “Thank you, Lord for all of things you have done that I don’t know or understand how you did them”. “Open the eyes of my heart to know and to see everything you have done and given to me”. “I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen”. Now we can begin to list just a few important spiritual gifts that were given to us. We will begin with the most significant for our eternal existence location.
Joh 3:16 For God (the Gift Giver) so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son (the Gift), that whosoever believeth (recipients) in him (the Gift) should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Here is our first foundational Bible verse of Truth for this lesson series. It comes from the book of John and it is Jesus the Son of God (the Gift) speaking to us about himself (the Gift) and His spiritual Father God (the Gift Giver). This verse also identifies the recipient of the “Gift” which is “us” who believe.
The verse begins with an amazing declaration and the basic motivational reason for giving anyone a gift, and it is called “LOVE”. God is described to be “LOVE” as is plainly stated in 1 John 4:7-8. John 3:16 is very clear to state that God gave His only begotten Son Jesus as a gift to the lost dead world to offer them the ability to receive eternal life. This is by far the greatest gift that God has ever offered to any human and like every other spiritual gift given to us by God (while each is a great blessing), none will do us any good unless the primary gift of Jesus is received first.
Let us continue our lesson with the simplest basics. What is a gift? One basic definition of a “gift” is something that is given freely and voluntarily without any expected monetary exchange or payment to be received in return. In other words, there is no expectation, requirement or qualification placed upon the recipient to deserve the gift being offered by the “Giver”. This is certainly a great description of John 3:16, since there is nothing, we can do to earn, purchase or buy this extraordinary free offered gift.
One of the basic concepts of giving others a God like “gift” is for us to give someone something that is highly useful, valuable, beneficial and desirable by those that are meant to receive it. For example, giving a teenager a broken smart phone that does not work would be quickly disappointing, resentful, offensive and even hated. This type of gift would be most likely quickly rejected. But handing them a new smart phone in the box with all the provider services paid for, would change their life significantly and their attitude should be one of great joy, thankfulness and excitement. Therefore, giving worthless gifts are not ideal for God or for anyone else either.
Jesus certainly qualifies as the most valuable gift that could have ever been given to us. Why is this? This is simply because Jesus was God personally manifested in the flesh. He willingly humbled Himself to be a part of His limited creation to become a human. However, it was this sacrifice that opened the only way for us out of a certain eternity in hell. Without this plan of God, there would be no hope for any of us.
But by receiving this gift, we will discover the path we were traveling upon was leading us to perish in eternal destruction because the receiving of this gift of Jesus Christ provides us with “eternal life” which is defined by Jesus as the gift of “knowing God and His Son Jesus personally” in John 17:3. Believe it or not this is the most important gift available. Most humans do not realize they can know God personally and speak to Him like a friend and a good Father. It is this ignorance that allows Satan to deceive them into believing God is their mean and evil judge.
To summarize, a gift is valuable and desirable and must be appreciated by the receiver as the same. The gift must be offered freely. The gift must also be taken or received by the recipient to complete the transfer. These are all steps of both natural gifts and spiritual gifts as we should soon discover. Let us go over the subject of the Greatest Gift Giver next. We should already know that this is God based upon our John 3:16 foundational verse.
God (the Gift Giver) is a Spirit
To many flesh and blood humans it can be very difficult to imagine the concept of unseen spiritual beings. Because of the pains and pleasures created by God in our physical bodies, many humans are widely dominated and led by what they physically feel, see, hear, smell, or taste. Until a person meets and receives the gift of Jesus by inviting His Holy Spirit to reveal Himself to them and come into their heart to be their Lord and Savior they will never really begin to know or understand the True Spirit of God.
From the natural womb, most humans are completely unaware of spiritual matters and beings. There are even many self-called Christians that do not fully believe in spiritual beings like God, angels, demons and Satan. However, denial of their existence does not affect their reality in the least. In fact, Satan and his evil spirits are out to convince many humans they do not exist. The truth is that God is a Spirit. Further we are going to find our God is the “Father” of other created spirits (Hebrews 12:9).
Also, we must come to the realization that all humans are spirit beings with a never-ending spiritual existence. Each human has been created as a living man or a woman by God’s sovereign design in physical mortal bodies, with each possessing their own individual soul (mind, will and emotions) according to 1 Thessalonians 5:23. The devil, demons and angels are also primarily spirit beings. But angels have spiritual bodies which house their created spirit and soul also containing a mind, a will and emotions just like humans. The only differences between human bodies and angel bodies are that humans are weaker mortals awaiting a resurrection and angelic bodies are much stronger and were created perfect (Eze 28:15) and immortal (Mat 22:30, Mark 12:25).
John 4:24 – God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
This is a very essential statement that came from the mouth of Jesus Christ who was God in the flesh. Remember Jesus just said God is a Spirit. But further know that Jesus is the manifested form of God in human flesh form. God did this to live among us as one of us (John 1:1-14). He further accomplished this, in order to reveal the unseen Father of Spirits (Hebrews 12:9) and to show us the True unseen God personally (Colossians 1:15). But most important He came to die for us to save us from destruction that we observed previously in John 3:16. This verse in John 4:24 confirms God to be a Spirit as well as it indicates humans are also spirit beings if we can worship God in “spirit and in truth”.
It is very good to trust all of the words written in the New Testament in Red Ink (Words Spoken from the Mouth of Jesus) as the highest levels truths found in the Bible. No other statements made by another inspired writer will cancel any word that was spoken by the personal God manifested as the Son of God, Jesus. This belief is based upon sound scriptures that were spoken by Jesus Himself:
- Notice how frequently Jesus’ spoken words trump the Old Covenant writings of many of the inspired prophet’s words. Jesus would say new things which never contradicted the Old Covenant writings, but would rather bring new and greater spiritual meanings of applications to mostly naturally thought concepts. For example, in John 6:32 Jesus speaks of Moses giving them bread from heaven and claims this was not the true bread, then He refers to Himself to be the “true bread”. Then in Matthew 5:27-28 Jesus quotes one commandment saying “You have heard thou shall not commit adultery” and then trumps this commandment with “But I say, whosoever looks at a woman and lusts in his heart, has committed adultery already”.
- Jesus clearly identifies Himself as the manifested “Father” in John 14:9, “He that has seen me, has seen the Father”. This is a Bible essential concept to know and understand who Jesus was and where His words came from.
- Jesus said in John 8:32 and John 12:49, that he only spoke what His Father taught Him to say. Compare this statement to the prophet Isaiah who wrote of Jesus and what he said about his personal words. Isaiah spoke to God saying, “I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Every human on the earth spoke some words that were not inspired by God to say, with the exception of Jesus. Therefore, His Words are the highest examples of truth.
What we are learning is a simple concept that is too often ignored. Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment of the Old Covenant within God’s first Old Creation (Genesis 1:1) as well as the established chief foundation cornerstone of God’s New Covenant in His final New Creation (2 Cor 5:17). This work is God’s guarantee of permanent and legal separation from sin and Satan (Rev 12:7-8, Rev 20:10).
Without Jesus Christ there was no hope for humanity to be saved from a certain second death and separation from God (Rev 2:11, Rev 21:8). Yet we have preachers and teachers today that discount many of the words in the Gospels as not applying to the church as if what was spoken can be ignored. For example, I have heard preachers teach the Christian choice of unforgiveness is a non-factor for their human salvation. Yet in Mark 11:25 we find Jesus saying, “When you stand praying, forgive others if you have anything against them, that your Father which is in heaven may forgive you of your sins”.
We are exposing and dealing with a difficult and controversial subject that needs careful consideration and evaluations as well as correct scriptural balance. Do these words of God mean what they say and say what they mean? If we do not forgive a human of evil done against us, are we going to heaven anyway as a forgiven sinner? Not according to this verse in Mark 11:25 and others like it. Jesus appears to be placing an extraordinary condition upon us for completing our salvation.
Do you recall what Jesus said in Luke 6:46? In this verse Jesus said very plainly “Why call ye me Lord, Lord and do not do the things that I say?”. And then Jesus follows this with an explanation of a parable about those the do the Words of Jesus and those that do not. The one that does the words will withstand in the storms of life, but those that do not will be destroyed. This sounds a lot like a heaven or hell instruction. In fact, in Mark 7:23 Jesus makes it even more plain and told those that called him Lord and did not do what he said, “to depart from me I never knew you”. How much stronger can anyone be? Are any of these words to be ignored even after being saved by calling Jesus Lord and believing in His resurrection from the dead (Rom 10:9-10)? I don’t believe that would be wise to tempt God by ignoring.
This is by no means related to works as obeying the Law of Moses. These are words of Jesus’ Christ our Lord and Savior and He said them to unsaved people before implementing the New Covenant after His resurrection, by I believe these words are still Supreme so that we must forgive other to continue to be forgiven to receive or completed salvation. It cannot be any clearer of a statement. I probably offended a lot of people with that statement that believe in Extreme Grace and Eternal Security no matter what we do or how we live.
We could list a lot of other verses that help confirm salvation is a process that must be “Held-Fast” and is not a one-time gift that can never be taken for granted, underappreciated or even thrown away by the human recipient’s choice. You must realize that every natural gift explains spiritual gifts. If someone gave you a luxurious piece of jewelry, do you have the opportunity to reject it after receiving it? Sure, you do! The spiritual gift of Salvation is no different. A saved Christian believer can change their minds by believing Satan’s deception and turn back into unbelief, departing from their relationship with Jesus (Hebrews 3:12).
You may think we have swayed from our subject of “Spiritual Gifts” from God? But we have not! Remember we learned previously about God’s main “Gift” offered was Jesus in John 3:16. Take a look at another verse to help us better understand God’s offered gifts:
Ephesians 2:8 – For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
This is another potential controversial verse for many preachers. There is multiple noun subjects combined together and many do not know how to interpret these words accurately. First what is the main subject of the verse? Guess what the main subject being discussed in this verse and the context is human “Salvation”. Everything else is explaining the sovereign method of salvation that was chosen by God to accomplish our salvation.
How was salvation accomplished? It was of course by Jesus Christ the main subject of the entire Bible. Remember our foundational series verse of John 3:16, what did God say? Jesus said in this verse, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life”. Wow. Ephesians 2:8 and John 3:16 fit together like a hand in a well fitted glove. They are both about a “GIFT”. What was the gift? The “GIFT” was salvation “IN” Jesus Christ.
Aren’t we learning about the subject of “Spiritual Gifts” given to us from God and by God? How then was this Gift of Salvation made available? The Bible teaches us that it was given by God’s sovereign choice of His Son’s death on a cross and this was one of the greatest displays of God’s Grace and Power that I know of according to Ephesians 1:19. Ephesians 1:19 is also connected to our other verses Ephesians 2:8 and John 3:16. Therefore, the Gift of salvation is one of God’s greatest sovereign works and it is given by God to humans “ONLY” as a “GIFT”. Humans CAN NOT EARN IT, WORK FOR IT, or EVER DESERVE IT!!! But WE STILL MUST and ARE REQUIRED BY GOD to 1) VALUE it, 2) DESIRE it and 3) RECEIVE it!!!
In other words, there are “NO GIFTS from GOD” that are ever forced upon any created spiritual being. What then was the “sovereign part and role of mankind” that was needed to receive this awesome “SPIRITUAL GIFT of SALVATION”? The answer to this question is clearly stated in all three of our verses. We must “BELIEVE” (John 3:16, Ephesians 1:19) which is the same as us choosing to have “FAITH” in Ephesians 2:8. “FAITH” is always a human “spiritual” choice that is made by us to believe. But we are required specifically to only believe by hearing God’s Words being spoken (Romans 10:17). This is directly opposed to hearing and believing Satan’s words that are designed to keep us blinding from knowing the truth.
Therefore, “faith” and “believing” in God’s Words being combined with “speaking” them in agreement is the human spiritual hand of choice that reaches out to God’s hand presenting us the “GIFT of SALVATION” being offered freely to everyone. This is exactly how we take hold of every other Spiritual Gift that we will encounter in this series. This is God’s sovereign design, not mine, not yours, nor anyone else’s.
Conclusion
We have seen in our foundational verse found in John 3:16 that God’s types of spiritual gifts are probably much different than our gift giving ideas. Hopefully you can quote this verse by memory. “For God so loved the world, HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, that whoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life”. In this verse we found “LOVE” is the dominating directly named “Gift” motivation. But there is also other motivation factors involved that were not directly stated in this Gift of Jesus Christ’s death.
For example, “Compassion”. The sacrifice of Jesus (the Son of God) was offered because no other human could save themselves. Everyone was tainted with the corruption of “Sin” from their father “the first Adam”. This is why God came to the earth as another “Adam” having a pure sinless blood from above. It was this blood being sacrificed that was able to “Save Us” by paying the penalty of our sins by becoming our sins (1 Peter 2:23).
It was this great exchange of Righteousness becoming Sin that offered to us the ability to exchange our Sin for His Righteousness as His “FREE GIFT”. As you can see this was not a normal human idea for the great “Ultimate Gift”. This is because most humans don’t know there is an existence after physical death and where they are going to go after this occurs upon the earth. However, God knew the outcome of Adam’s terrible choice to covenant with Satan and turn over the earth to his rulership (Matthew 4:8-9, Mathhew 25:41). This is exactly why God planned for this Gift long before the sin of the first Adam.
Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Therefore, let’s end this introduction about spiritual gifts with one major Old Testament example of God’s ultimate sacrifice gift system for our salvation to obtain a bride for his son. In this story found in Genesis 22-24, we will discover some major parallels by God’s inspiration to what was accomplished in giving His Son Jesus Christ.
Beginning in Genesis 22 is what some call, “the Trial of Abraham” or “the Isaac Offering”. In this chapter God commands Abraham to do a very hard thing after he waited over 20 years for the promised son named Isaac (who came from his wife Sarah). We will find very quickly in this chapter where God commands Abraham to offer Isaac up as a sacrifice to Him (Genesis 22:2).
Hebrews 11:18-19 shows us the conflict that Abraham was dealing with. God had sworn to Abraham that his promised “seed” (through the son named Isaac) would come a nation of people that could not be numbered like the stars in the night sky (Genesis 15:5). Since God had just told Abraham to kill this son, Abraham had to resolve in his mind how this promise of God was still going to happen. And Hebrews 11:19 informs us that Abraham determined this by believing God would need to raise Isaac back from the dead. I believe because Abraham obeyed God, this gave God the legal right to offer up His only begotten Son Jesus and Hebrews 11:19 further confirms that Isaac was a “figure” or “pattern” of Jesus to come.
This is true because of the parallels that are found in this chapter and what happened to Jesus in the Gospels. Let’s just go over a high-level review of this chapter. When we study this chapter, we will discover that Abraham is instructed to take his son on a multi-day journey to a mountain to be sacrificed.
Abraham and Isaac along with two servants traveled for 3 days to see the place they were sent by God to go. Here they finally saw it from a distance, that was still afar way off. This implies it would take another day to arrive at the appointed mountaintop (Genesis 22:4). Now Abraham and Isaac leave the servants behind and Isaac carries the wood for the sacrifice. On the way Isaac being observant asks his father, “here is the wood and the fire, where is the lamb for the burnt offering”? Wow, there are already so many parallels happening.
For example, we have the father named Abraham (who is a type of God the Father) taking his son named Isaac (a type of Jesus Christ) to a hilltop to be sacrificed. Most Bible scholars tend to agree this was the same hill that Jesus died upon almost 2000 years later. You see Abraham and Isaac took 4 days to reach the time of sacrifice. So did God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
We know this because, according to God in 2 Peter 3:8, “One day with the Lord is as 1000 years and 1000 years is one day”. When did Jesus appear on the earth to die? It was exactly 4000 years or 4 days after Adam sinned. This is the first major clue given to us of the parallels.
The next factual comparison occurs by both Isaac carrying wood and Jesus carrying wood to the top of this mountain. One was Isaac carrying it for a burnt offering of himself and the other was also a sacrificial burnt offering of Jesus carrying a cross for the penalty payment of the sin of the entire world.
Next both men Isaac and Jesus were to be pierced with sharp iron objects. Abraham had a knife to kill his son Isaac and the Roman soldiers had nail spikes to pierce the Son of God Jesus to hang him on the wooden cross. But wait there is so much more to learn in this typology.
Abraham’s answer to his son Isaac’s question about where is the lamb, said, “Son God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering”. Wow! What a profession of faith. Remember what God told the servants when leaving them behind. Abraham told them “I and the boy will go yonder and worship and will return”. Both of these are incredible statements of faith that everything was going to be fine for his son Isaac and he would return even if God would need to raise him from the dead (Heb 11:19).
When Abraham was raising the knife to kill his son, an angel sent from God stopped him. It was quickly discovered that there was a ram that was caught in a thicket that was nearby Abraham. This ram would become their sacrifice instead of Isaac. Do you see the symbolic work of God that parallels Jesus as the Son of God was going to be the sin replacement sacrifice payment for all humanity?
You see a natural ram is a “father” of a natural “lamb”. This identifies the parallel symbols of God the Father (Ram) becoming a human son (Jesus the Lamb) to die on a cross as our substitute Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7). As we can clearly see in Genesis 22, God did provide a substitutionary sacrifice to save the life of Isaac. Isaac in this example still represents Jesus but it also included all of humanity that would become saved by believing in God’s gift described in John 3:16. And the Ram represent God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. That took the place of humanity by becoming a human to provide a way of salvation through a spotless lamb sacrifice (1 Peter 1:19).
Now notice in Genesis 22 after verse 9 there is no other mention of Isaac by name until we get to Genesis 24:4. Why is this significant? This is because it gives us another symbolic parallel to the New Covenant man that was raised from the dead. Of course we are talking about Jesus.
If you read Genesis 22:13 after Abraham sees the Ram, and was offered up to God instead of Isaac. Abraham slays the ram and then names that place “Jehovah Jireh” meaning “The Lord Provides”. This is where God speaks out loud again and begins to speak of Abraham’s “Seed” instead of Isaac the natural seed. We know this is about Jesus because in verse 18 God says “In thy “Seed” shall all the nations be blessed”. Believe it our not we see in Galatians 3:8 where God reveals that this was the Gospel being preached to Abraham and in Galatians 3:16 is a master key that unlocks the hidden parallels of Genesis 22 thru 24 being lessons pointing us to Jesus.
Gal 3:16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.
In Genesis 3:16 Paul writes and clarifies Genesis 22:17-18 for us saying, “God saith not, ‘seed’ as many, but “seed’ as singular which is Jesus Christ”. Wow, this is essential to understanding the parallels given in these stories of Isaac and Jesus. God is speaking of a natural “seed” named Isaac by name up until the Ram is sacrificed and then primarily the focus shifts to the spiritual “Seed” Jesus and the natural seed has disappeared from mention.
This writing style teaches us multiple things. First, there is a substitutionary sacrifice taking place by a human that is God the natural son a physical seed of Abraham. Second the next “Seed” that is emphasized in Genesis 22:17-18 is the “resurrected” Son of God, who also becomes the “firstborn” Son of God from the “dead” (Col 1:18). It is this resurrected from the dead physical and spiritual man that is now eternally alive as a combined God/Man.
This union occurred through the joining of God’s spiritual Seed (the Word) of God (Jesus) and He was united with the physical egg of Mary who was a natural seed of Abraham (Heb 2:16). And this man after paying our sin penalty became a completely new spiritual “Seed” that is the beginning of a brand-new spiritual God family (Hebrews 3:6) and a new creation (2 Cor 5:17), which were all a plan of God.
Finally, comes the part of the lesson we were waiting for. You see we do see the concept of a natural gift substitutionary sacrifice Ram that is given by God to take the place of the physical “seed” Isaac. This is a very clear reference to a gift that points us to Jesus, God’s ultimate gift, who is both a physical and spiritual substitutionary sacrifice Lamb to remove the penalty of two deaths that were passed upon all humans by the sin of the first Adam.
Because the first man Adam sinned a natural physical death came upon every human. But simultaneously a second spiritual death also automatically fell on every human. Since it is impossible for “spirits” to die, God redefines death to mean eternal separation from Him. This is clearly taught to us in Revelation 21:8 where God lists multiple sinner types that will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone for eternity and these people will never get the opportunity to know the True and Living God that Loved them.
No, it is not the sin of humans that sends people to hell! Rather it is the rejection of the free gift of believing in Jesus Christ to be saved that will send many to hell. This is a very sad reality, but still true. Therefore, spiritual gifts of God can be rejected but this is not because they were not given and offered.
We have just further confirmed the concept parallels between natural and spiritual gifts being identical. The things created and done in the natural were written so that we could learn about what was being done in the spiritual realm.
What should we have learned today? Good Spiritual Gifts:
- Are Offered by God and all come from Him only,
- Are Always Beneficial for all Humans,
- Are Designed for Every Human
- Are Intended to be received by ALL People that Value and Desire the Gift
- Are Never forced upon anyone
- Are therefore, optional to everyone
- Are Possibly Lost, Stolen or can be Rejected even after Receiving the Gift
We hope and pray this lesson was a blessing to you. And it helped to change your thinking to align with the basic Bible concepts of Gifts, whether natural or spiritual. If you have any concerns, questions or comments please feel free to leave them on this site. Thank you and may God continue to richly bless you with the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the Knowledge of Him (Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior). Never forget Jesus is Lord, and He is coming very soon, are you ready?
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 2“.
Faith Exam Part 2 – No Faith, Lacking Faith or Real Working Faith
(Ver 1.0) This is Part 2 in the Bible study series concerning God’s New Covenant commandment to examine ourselves, whether we be in the Faith, prove your own selves (2 Corinthians 13:5). If you have not read the Introduction to this subject, it is strongly recommended that you begin your study with “Part 1” first. From reading our series foundational scripture verse, we learned that “we must examine ourselves, to see if we be in the faith”. This command proves concretely that there are potentially many Christians that believe they are in faith, when they are apparently not in the real type of working Faith, Jesus is looking for when He returns. Otherwise, why else would we need to do a self “Faith” exam? Never forget that this verse was written to saved “Christians” and not to the lost unbelieving world that obviously does not yet even have a faith level to become saved from going to hell. What we have been learning is that God’s true “Faith” ranges from zero (none) to great faith and in varying measures, levels and degrees everywhere in between. But also, we find that there is a feigned or fake type of faith that we see in the Bible.
A fake faith is often a person who says and believe that they have faith yet they know nothing about this subject of faith to determine if their belief is true. Just because someone says they have faith does not mean it is a true faith that works and receives from God. Perhaps you have asked, “Sister so-and-so had faith but they died, why?”. I don’t know the answers to that question for everyone, but I do know that it was never God that failed and this only leaves the cause of failure upon some aspect found in the natural realm.
Do you remember being in school and learning a subject like math, grammar, science, history, etc.? We would all listen to the teacher’s lecture and then read and study the course textbook. We might all think that we really heard, knew and understood fully what was taught to us about the subject. But when it came down to it, it was the teacher’s exam that proved whether we learned the subject or not. If we have never taken a class on the subject of true Bible “Faith”, why would anyone of us assume we have a real faith? No subject is learned without study (2 Tim 2:15).
If we were given a “Faith” test today, what grade level based upon the standard of our God would be passing? Do you believe you are passing? It might be surprising to know that God’s level of passing is 100% perfect. Uh oh? That sounds like we are all failing, and from the human view point we can never be good enough. But God made a greater way for us than trusting n our own efforts to save us. God’s 100% requirement was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And if we get into Him by faith, we are able to take advantage of His works.
However, there is more to it than this human Grace viewpoint of us having real working Faith. You see, what we need to know is that we may have super great faith in one area of our life, but almost zero faith in another essential life area. This is why taking God’s faith exam is not just a one-time Satan test that if we pass the test, he will never test or try our faith again in any other area of life.
Do you remember Satan’s temptation trail of Jesus found in Matthew 4? Didn’t Satan test Jesus three times in 3 different areas of human life. The first temptation was on the physical human needs for things like essential food. The second temptation involved a test for God’s protection by being asked to jump from the top of the temple and trust the angels to save him. The third temptation was clearly a spiritual test to get Jesus to worship him and in exchange Satan would give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world.
In ever “faith” test Jesus overcame the devil by quoting scriptures. The answer to every human test in life is the same for us. Therefore, if you do not know scripture and are able to quote it when tested in every area of life it is ordinarily too late to begin to build your faith in that area to win. Jesus never told the devil, wait a minute while I look up that verse. No, He simply quoted it from His heart and that is a true saving faith example.
So, we are learning the devil is persistent. In fact, in the temptation of Jesus, the Bible says Satan left Jesus only to return at a more opportune time. Satan was coming back to test Jesus again. This is the example that Christ set for us to follow in the area of true saving faith for every part of our life.
Today there might be some doubts about our salvation, tomorrow the temptation could come by some sickness, the next day there could be some major financial crisis, and then maybe a test that comes upon our family. There will be many tests and having real faith for each one is not just recommended but we will find it is essential.
What we will soon discover is that living by faith (Hab 2:4), walking by faith (2 Cor 5:7), fighting the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12) and overcoming the world by faith (1 Jn 5:4) is a daily requirement. This should help us to understand why a “self-Faith” exam is probably a “best-practice” to try to do every day. It really won’t take as much time as you may think once you know what to ask yourself.
Faith Self-Exam – Real Versus Fake?
Today we are going to further investigate one essential aspect of the subject of Faith. In performing any self-exam to determine if we have God’s defined “True Faith”, we should begin with the basic question “Am I in real Faith” or a “fake pretend Faith” for my situation facing me now? We can begin this exam by asking ourselves some basic faith-based questions? These are our questions.
- “Have I asked God what to do in this situation?”
- “Did I ask the all-knowing God to teach and show me how to overcome in this situation?”
- “Did I ask God for scriptures to help me in my problem?”
- “Have I heard His answer?” Yes, continue, No, wait!
- “Have I learned, memorized and meditated upon these scriptures so that I can stand firm in confidence upon them?”.
- “Now do I have peace in my heart?”
- “Or am I in fear about anything?”
- “Or am I worried or anxious about anything?”
Can we name at least two or three key verses and scripture references where God promised or revealed what we are believing and asking Him for? Did we claim these verses as His will for us (me)? If we can’t name the verses and quote them from our heart, we are probably not in faith. If we have a hard time thinking of the verses or saying the verses automatically, we are probably not in faith (Rom 10:8). Real Bible Faith is always built upon a firm foundation of the knowledge of God’s written or spoken Word (Rom 10:17) that pertains to Him meeting our relational, physical, mental, emotional or financial challenge of need which we are faced with currently in this world.
For example, if we are feeling very weak, tired and unable to do what is needed to be emotionally, physically or mentally accomplished today, we can stand upon Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”. If we need physical healing, we can claim 1 Peter 2:24, “By whose stripes I was healed”. If we feel like we are losing our mind or our memory we can claim 1 John 2:20 which says “But we have an unction (anointing) from the Holy One and we know all things”. Or if we have been tormented by a great fear, God promises us “I have not given you a spirit of fear”, but rather I gave you “power, love and a sound mind” in 2 Timothy 1:7. These are just sample verses. It is best to be led by the Spirit of God to find the verses that apply to our personal situations.
What we are learning is that there are thousands of scriptural promises found in the Bible and God has claimed that “Every Promise is Yes and Amen” to Christians (2 Cor 1:20). But this implies we need to take fast hold to our promise not letting them slip and go from our hearts, in order to cause them to come to pass.
In other words, God’s promises are not always, easily, or automatically obtained just falling on us without a spiritual fight. These are only taken by “Faith” and “Faith” is only possible when we know exactly what God has said on the subject that we are facing. Remember we have spiritual enemies that are against us and these giants are trying to stop us from possessing the promise land.
Besides the many Christians that believe they are in faith but can’t name one Bible verse by heart, there are other problems that can cause faith failures. If you recall in Part 1, we learned about a kind of faith called “feigned” or “fake”. It was mentioned in 2 Timothy 1:5 when Paul was writing about “unfeigned” faith which represents God’s “Real Faith”. The Real Faith is the opposite of “fake” or “pretend” faith.
This verse clearly taught us about the existences of these two kinds of faith. Paul must have run into the “fake” faith before if he was praising some others for their “real faith”. Hopefully, you recall this but if not, please review “Part 1” because it usually takes the average person at least 7 or 8 times of hearing something to build it into their heart.
This subject today maybe a potentially controversial topic and it has probably caused heated debates between several differing Christian groups and denominations. However, we will attempt to only remain in a fair and balanced view of the scriptures and ignore human traditions. It would be very wise if everyone would take their own Bible to read along with the verses and use these to confirm or reject this topic based upon what the Holy Spirit speaks from His Word while reading.
No Faith or Lacking Faith
as Contrasted with Real Faith
As we can read from the lesson title, our main subject is about three measures of faith we will call “No Faith”, “lacking Faith” or “Real Faith”. These conclusions are based upon the words spoken by Jesus in Luke 8:25 when He asked His disciples, “Where is your faith?” This same event in a raging storm is written in Matthew 8:26 where Jesus is recorded to say, “Why are you so fearful, you of little faith”. Either expression indicates a faith level that was lacking the desired effectiveness amount that Jesus anticipated for His close following disciples to possess already.
These two statements of Jesus represent God’s expectation for all humans is not to live in fear or doubt and to choose to remain in faith despite the observable circumstances. Remember these statements were made before the disciples were born again and yet Jesus still expected them to believe what He said and act like what He said was true, which it was. This substantially teaches us that being born-again is not necessary to possess faith. In fact, it is having real faith that causes us to be born-again.
What this further teaches is that all humans have the potential to have real faith for salvation even before they are saved. This is actually confirmed in Romans 10:9-10. These verses claim “If we believe God has raised Jesus from the dead, and we confess Him as Lord, we will be saved”. So “Faith” is a requirement to become saved and this implies it is a further requirement to remain saved, especially since the New Testament commands us “To Walk and Live by Faith” (2 Cor 5:7, Rom 1:17).
Another key to understanding “real faith” is that believing for your salvation to become “born-again” was the most incredibly important step in your believing God journey. As we know now, our spiritual new birth required our contributing and participating “real faith” (Eph 2:8) to receive God’s Grace gift of salvation. This salvation consisted of His working great power to save those that believed (Jn 3:16) when He raised Christ from the dead (Eph 1:19-20). We can also conclude from this information that real faith or even faked faith can still exist in anyone regardless of being saved or yet unsaved.
With this in mind we can recall the Old Covenant nation of natural Israel. These people were written as examples for the church to learn from according to 1 Corinthians 10:11. Then we find two contrasting examples of people with faith and those without in this same nation. For example, Hebrews 11 provides us a long list of names that were illustrations of “Real Faith’ samples for us to follow. But in Hebrews 4:2 there were people in the wilderness that heard the Word of God but did not mix any real faith with God’s words to release His power. All of these people never received the promises of God. Wow! Which group are we in? This is our part to decide in the faith exam for today’s lesson.
A Modern-Day Extreme Grace Messages to Avoid
These statements cause some extreme Grace teachers to raise their eyebrows in shock. Some of these types of people will quickly turn this lesson off as a false teaching, without even reading everything that is revealed from the Bible. This extreme Grace belief is being taught by several grace teachers that believe when a human is born again, they were given God’s gift of faith to believe and therefore have obtained all of the fruits of the Spirit as a gift from God.
According to these teachers, they believe the fruits of the spirit included the completed “full” and “mature” fruits of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (Gal 5:21-22). But is this true? If it is then it appears that God can be accused of “favoritism” by giving those that will be saved the “beliefs” needed to be saved. This strongly implies that all of the people that are already in hell, were not given this faith to be saved. This is a belief that is parallel with extreme “election”.
Hopefully, you can see this cannot be a true belief, since it contradicts with 2 Peter 3:9 which says, “God is not willing any should perish” and John 3:16 that teaches us “whosoever believes will be saved”. This belief reverses human involvement in their salvation and any participation of “a human’s freewill choice to believe”. This belief also completely ignores the statement made by Jesus claiming when He is lifted up on the cross, He will draw “all men” to be saved according to John 12:32.
Notice the KJV translators placed the word “faith” in their list of spiritual fruits and too many teachers believe that this spiritual fruit is the same as our “faith” or our choice to believe during salvation (Eph 3:8). According to all of the scriptures that we should know on this subject of faith, does this make sense? Or are there contradictory verses that disagree and claim they are different types or categories of “faith”?
Remember what Jesus said to us in John 3:12. In this verse Jesus said, if I tell you of earthly things and you do not believe, how then can I tell you of spiritual things?” Jesus has just connected the truth that naturally created things are parallels into understanding spiritual things. God confirms this belief in Romans 1:21 when He declares the “unseen spiritual things concerning the Spirit of God are clearly seen in the things that were created, even His eternal power and Godhead”. That was a simple paraphrase, but the essence of the message is solid. We are learning and confirming “naturally created things” are windows into understanding unseen greater spiritual realities. In other words, understanding the created natural fruit processes are essential to understanding any and all spiritual fruit developments.
There is so much, so quickly ignored about the simple facts of what natural fruit is, how natural “fruit” grows and matures, where natural fruit comes from and finally how this information applies to discussing spiritual fruits. According to the Law of Moses in Genesis, all created natural fruit comes from fruit bearing trees that bring forth their fruit in season. Moses further describes these fruit trees saying, “they yield fruit whose seed is within itself”. This is a basic law of “seed time and harvest” (Gen 8:22) where everything God created reproduces after its own kind.
But notice how fruit is described to occur. God spoke in Genesis 1:11, “Let the earth bring forth trees yielding “fruit”. Do you see the natural process of seed planting, tree growth and finally fruit production?” The fruit was not automatically fully on the tree. In fact, there was no created tree, only a planted “seed” of God’s Word spoken to the soil. The growing and sprouting tree had to increase from God’s seed to maturity in order to produce eatable fruit. If you understand this process fruit normally begins as a flowering type of bud, and then little by little it grows into maturity over the course of time before it can be eaten. This is why God created fruit trees long before He created the man to eat from them. Remember what we are learning is that spiritual fruit growth is almost identical to physical fruit production. Jesus taught us this concept in John 3:12 saying understanding earthly things helps us to understand unseen spiritual things like fruit.
Therefore, these extreme Grace teachers, teach since the “fruit” of “faith” is part of the new creation requirement for salvation and of being born again, they conclude too quickly that we must also already have all of the “faith” that we will ever need. This thinking is usually based upon beliefs in certain scriptures like these:
2 Peter 1:3 – According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Galatians 5:22 – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Romans 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.
These are just a few scriptures that are being misapplied to the subject of faith to attempt to make them say things that they do not actually say. We will be covering a lot of other scriptures besides those that we have mentioned about “fake faith”, along with the verses of “no faith” and “little faith” verses that we have already seen and are being ignored like Jesus and Paul did not know what they were talking about.
And these belief conclusions do not balance with countless other scriptures that must be ignored or explained away. However, many teach from scriptures like these, that when we are born-again of the Word and the Spirit of God, we have become new creations and we are now “wholly complete” in our human spirits. We can all see this clearly from 2 Corinthians 5:17 where God says, “all the old things have passed away, and everything has become new” but don’t forget this only applies to those “in Christ”.
Praise the Lord we can all agree so far. But this is where things are beginning to be taken to an extreme position of potential great error. Some of these ministers teach that “faith” is a fruit of the Spirit of God and therefore, we have all the faith in our spirit that will ever need since we are now one “spirit” with God according to 1 Corinthians 6:17. We hopefully can agree upon the verse being referenced is true, but are some jumping to conclusions without the supporting evidence?
Also notice that some might be able to use the verse in 2 Peter 1:3 to help confirm this belief because God has written to us that He has already given to us “all things that pertain to life and godliness”. This appears on the surface when taken out of context to confirm the belief that we already have all the faith ever needed for everything in life we encounter. But is this belief really true?
Then some may take Romans 12:3 that also appears in the KJV Bible translation to say God has given to “every man” THE measure of faith. Some may begin to be more convinced that this automatic faith possession is actually true, and that all Christians already have all “the” faith they need?
Notice teachers who teach this belief many times use our “faith” used to believe for receiving our salvation, mental or physical healing, natural or spiritual aid to be the same type of “faith” as used in Galatians 5:22-23 as if “salvation faith” in Christ was the same as one of the 9 fruits of the Spirit. That is absolutely not true! Why?
It is because the “fruits of the spirit” are all human choices we make daily. For example, having the fruit of “Love” while it is found in our spirit internally because God’s Love has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit as revealed in Romans 5:5, is not the same as us choosing to demonstrate it externally as seen “fruit” that is shown to the lost world? How many Christians demonstrate the wrong reactions when confronted by evil people that is far from “Love”.
This is called the conflict between the “flesh” and the “spirit”. God speaks of this conflict extensively in Romans 8. Every Christian is dealing with these opposing choices each and everyday and we all can easily slip to choose incorrectly. Therefore, having a fruit of Joy is not inward, it is being joyous outwardly even when the world is throwing evil at us. So, it is the same as saying we have “Peace” inwardly then when chaos comes to try to destroy us, we suddenly in turmoil unable to have the ability to remain calm. We must learn to develop outward fruits like showing and being “peaceful” and this is a spiritual growth process.
The same is true for our primary subject of “examining our faith”. Saying we have “Faith” is not the same as being “faithful” to God, His Word and each other. No, saving “faith” is an internal experience from God’s Word (Seed) being planted in our spirit. Real Faith only comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). This is not the same as showing God that we will be externally faithful to Him in your external actions, choices, words, and lifestyles. Therefore, the fruit of Faithfulness is not internal “Faith” no matter what anyone tries to teach you. We must have true and living “Faith” to receive anything from God which has been given to us by His Grace. How then do we get this faith? Is it automatic like some teach? Have you “heard” every verse taught and found in the Bible? If the answer is no, you do not have all the faith that you could have.
Please let us quickly learn how to study the Bible. The Greek word translated as “Faith” occurs in around 244 verses of the New Testament. Did these Bible teachers that teach some of these verses mean that we already have all the necessary faith, look to see what else is written about the subject of Faith? All the verses must be balanced together correctly. We will hopefully get into this later in more detail.
But let us consider just one verse that contradicts for this part of the lesson. If these isolated verses on “Faith” were really truly interpreted for their application faith exists completely after the new birth, then why would God command us to examine ourself to see if we be in the faith? Remember this is the key verse in 2 Corinthians 13:4 for this series. Can we all agree this verse alone is a clear contradiction to their teaching?
To be told specifically to do our own self-examination of our faith to make the determination, “if I have the Faith that is necessary”, would cause God to look stupid in the light that people now say God has already given us “All Faith”? But also, do not forget that “IF” God has already given to all Christians “the Measure of Faith” that He requires, why would Jesus say in Luke 18:8, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith?” Jesus is God in the flesh and He can’t and won’t contradict Himself! Otherwise, God becomes a “liar” like Satan.
It appears that there are too many Bible teachers embracing “selective scripture theologies built in isolation of other scriptures on the subject”. This is a very dangerous way to study and teach the Bible. By taking specific verses ignoring contextual content and related verses anyone can try to make the Bible say anything they like.
It is very easy to think one verse says something it does not say and then go and twist other verses to conform with the wrong belief. This occurs when we teach only the verses that fits our belief narratives while ignoring the many other Bible verses that potentially have direct content that proves their beliefs not to be actual balanced truth. When these teachers become locked into their beliefs and are unwilling to see other Bible verses on the subject of “faith” they become practically impossible to reach or teach. Perhaps you have heard some refer to them as “Concrete Believers”, meaning their beliefs are thoroughly mixed up and firmly set.
People who follow these kinds of Bible teachers must not be good “Berean Bible” students as God called the “more noble” people found in Acts 17:11. In this verse Paul was speaking of two types of people. One type in Thessalonica who were not very receptive to the teachings of Paul, and others like those in Berea that were considerably more opened minded to hear the new Words being taught. But then they did their own study in the Law to confirm if they were true. Today, please let us all make the decision to become a true “Berean” open minded type of follower of Christ.
Faith in the Parable of the Sower
One of the most important parables ever taught from the mouth of Jesus is called the “Parable of the Sower” by many. But the main focus of the parable seems to be the “Seed” which is the Word of God. Since we are focused upon the subject of “Real Faith” and we should now know that this only comes from “Hearing the Word of God” (Rom 10:17), we should easily understand this parable is designed to teach us about “real faith” that only appears in 1 out of 4 types of human heart. Therefore, we know the other 3 soil types of the human heart were no faith or lacking faith that did not allow God’s Word to take root and produce “fruit” in their spirit. In other words, only 1 type of soil called good ground produced positive ending fruit and then sometimes only 30-fold, another time only 60-fold, and yet another 100-fold. Do you see the connection to varying degrees of human faith to receive?
In this parable Jesus said plainly, if you do not know this parable how will you know any other parable. Jesus places such important emphasis on this teaching that He claims us understanding the “Parable of the Sower” correctly is the key that unlocks all other parables and even other subjects of the Bible:
Mark 4:13 – And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?
Mark 4:14 – The sower soweth the word.
We need to know that Jesus was the original “Sower” in this parable. The “seed” that was being “sown” by Jesus is the “Word of God”. This makes God’s Words spiritual seeds that produce “New Life” when correctly received. This is because the “soils” in this parable are human hearts. But notice that this “Sower” (Jesus) in this parable never forced God’s “Seeds” (Words) into any human heart. In fact, Jesus the “Seed Sower” never even plows, cleans or prepares one heart soil type. He is simply sharing the Words of God to everyone equally and fairly.
This clearly implies it is the human’s responsibility to prepare, guard and protect their own heart’s soil. For example, the soil type 1 called the “Way Side” heart, has been trodden down so hard that the seed cannot enter it. This causes the “Seed” to be easily stolen by “birds of the air” a clear type of satanic spirits (Ephesians 2:2).
What we are learning in this beginning parable is that humans have been given personal responsibility to guard God’s Garden (the human heart). God commanded the first Adam to “Dress” and “Keep” the Garden (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew word translated as “Dress” means to “work”, “till”, “prepare” the soil. The Hebrew word translated as “Keep” means to “Hedge”, “Guard”, and “Protect” the Garden soil. This was God’s unremovable human responsibility concerning our heart, mind and soul.
What does this Garden soil preparation and guarding from enemies have to do with our “Faith Exam”? Much more than many know right now. We will apply this concept to our self-examination of our faith, because “true” God like faith is of the heart.
Romans 10:8 – But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
As we can read “Paul” preached the “Word” (Seed) of faith concept that Jesus was teaching us in the Parable of the Sower. Paul was quoting Deuteronomy 30:14 insuring what was being taught now in the New Covenant had firms roots already established from the Old Covenant to build upon.
However, notice that there is a connection being reaffirmed between the hearts of humans and their mouths. God is building upon how a human heart is “Born-Again” through the entrance of God’s incorruptible “Seed” spoken by the mouth of humans. Paul speaks again of this process in 1 Corinthians 3:6 saying, “I have planted and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase”.
What we are being introduced to, is an important fact of Truth. According to Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by Hearing, and Hearing by the Word of God”. Hearing God’s Word either by someone else’s mouth or your own mouth is how we obtain faith. But did you notice the Bible is a huge book? Have you ever heard the entire Bible taught at one time? The answer is probably, no! This means there is still new amounts and levels of “faith” that can be obtained by hearing a new subject which has never been heard before. Do you see this? There is practically a never-ending supply of new “Faith” producing “Seeds” available to plant and water in our heart.
Real Faith is Measurable
There are many that may be confused by the term “Faith is Measurable”. What we must understand is that everything in the natural garden is measurable. This is the area of the soil, the amounts of seed planted, the amounts of crops expected based upon the seed planted per section, etc. This simply means spiritual things are all measurable also. Some may not believe this but this is what the created things of God teach us applying them to understand their spiritual counterparts. We can easily see that this is what the Bible says over and over using various measurement descriptions. Let us list a few of them on the subject of “Faith” to help us see it:
- Hebrews 11:6 – But without faith it is impossible to please God. Without is a clear measure indicator of zero faith. It is like never having heard the Gospel of Jesus ever.
- John 20:27 – “Be not faithless but believing”. Here Jesus is rebuking Thomas for having heard about the resurrection, but choosing not to believe it. This is clear rebellion and defiance since Thomas had heard Jesus said He would be raised up after three days. This is completely different than not being told the good news yet the net result was still “a zero faith” level.
- Matthew 8:26 – “Why are you so fearful, ye of little faith”. Here Jesus rebukes the disciples for thinking they were about to drown in a storm. Jesus had already told them, “Let us go to the other side” and Jesus went to sleep. Therefore, we see how the spiritual force of “fear” nullifies or reduces one’s faith level to become weak.
- Matthew 14:3 – “Oh thou of little faith, why did you doubt?” Here Peter gets out of a boat to walk on water and is almost to Jesus when he looked at the wind and the waves and began to sink. This clearly teaches us that when we begin to doubt what God said, our uncertainties reduce or remove our confident faith. This type of information strongly suggests that a human “faith” level could vary greatly from day to day based upon new circumstances or changing thoughts and focuses that are attempting to cause new “fear”. It could even involve new words heard that are counter to what the Jesus or His Word has spoken to us. We find this is believing the evil report rather than the “good” report of the Lord.
- Matthew 9:22 – Jesus speaking to a woman who had touched the hem of His garment and received her healing said, “Daughter, be of good comfort; your faith has made you whole”. This is an important story. This woman snuck up and received her healing without asking Jesus’ permission. She simply touched His garment and was healed. Jesus turns and asks “Who touched me” proving it was her level of working “faith” that produced the miracle to receive His power. You can read more details in Mark 5 about this same account. This woman appears to be in the middle ground of “Faith” measurements. She definitely did not have little faith. She could have been stoned in her condition yet was fearless to touch Jesus.
- Matthew 8:10 – “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel”. We jumped to the “Great Faith” level of measurement. Here a gentile under authority told Jesus He did not have to come to his house, but speak the word only and his servant would be healed.
There are many other examples like these in the Bible but this is a good introduction to our faith is measurable subject. Please notice again the last verse Matthew 8:10. Again we see a clear reference that Jesus is looking for certain levels of faith. This is another confirmation that when Jesus returns to the earth, He is still looking for qualifying levels and measurements of “Faith”.
Perhaps this measurement concept will make more sense to many in the light of our previous subject of the Sower, the Word Seeds and the hearts being God’s Garden designed to produce “fruit” unto salvation (Romans 6:22, Romans 7:4). Have you ever planted a physical garden using “seeds”? If you haven’t, you should. The concepts of farming, planting, watering, protecting, guarding, and eventually harvesting are essential to the spiritual concepts of “Faith” and “Salvation”.
When preparing a natural garden, it involves plowing work which involves a blade that cuts through the soil. This work includes removing all the rocks and stones. Plowing further removes all of the weeds and other growths that will try to take away life from any new seeds that are about to be planted. Plowing removes any hardened packed soil softening the ground to allow new seed to enter easily into the soil. From this information we can further see there are measurable levels of work that can be observed in the gardening process.
Let us see how these physical tasks can apply to preparing a spiritual heart for receiving God’s Word? We will only list a few today:
- We must develop a plan on how we are going to handle the devil’s thoughts that are going to try to distract us away from hearing the Word. This may be the first time or even after the fact to cause us to forget what we have heard spoken by a “Seed Planter” (teacher) sowing the Seed/Word of God. Satan will give everyone first person thoughts like, “I don’t believe this trash”. Or “I should would like to be home watching sports rather than sitting in church”. Or, “I am so hungry, I can’t wait to get to that restaurant”. Or after believing the word, “I didn’t really get saved”, “I must be crazy to believe this stuff”, etc. Anything that comes into our mind that tries to get us to turn back or away from the Word comes from evil spirits in the world. By preparing an attitude to focus and not to get distracted will cause the word a better chance at remaining strong to grow. Make a plan to value the Word of God and make it our daily priority!
- Remember to listen again and again to review the Word of God that we have heard and do this frequently. This represents the process of watering the seeds that were planted into our hearts. This is an essential part of sowing and reaping a fruitful outcome. The continual watering of the “Seed” will cause the roots to grow deep and strong and will be very difficult to be removed by Satan’s deception tricks.
- What are the things in life that are rooted into our lives that are consuming our focus away from pursuing the Words of God? These could be good or bad habits, addictions, desires like (seeking fortune, fame, drugs, food, alcohol, exercise); all of these are types of consuming desires that could represent some of the “evil weeds” that will work to choke out all the positive growth of God’s New Life Seed.
- What are some of the stubborn hard-hearted parts of our attitudes, values, or priorities that could be there to distract us from applying our time and attention to focus on the Word of God?
- Are we prepared to lose all of our worldly friends and family relatives who are not interested in the Words of God? The world will be coming after their friends to begin to try to influence all of our free-time we have decided to spend in God’s Word. When we refuse to act and be like them, then suddenly these old friends turn into enemies. These former friends and former friendly relatives will bring pressure upon a new Christian many to sway a them back into slavery and bondage of darkness.
- How are we going to handle the pressures from these friends and relatives when they persecute us and call us stupid for loving the Word of God? We must remain in “Love” to hopefully help them see how God has changed us. Being nice to the unsaved world and refusing to do what they do, speaks loud enough. If they walk away from us, then we continue to pray for them.
Conclusion – Do I Have Real Growing and Working Faith?
In conclusion let us ask the key question of God’s Faith Exam. Am I in real faith? To determine this we may need to review God’s created process of natural “Seed” planting, growing and harvesting steps to help us determine if we have begun the spiritual process of obtaining real faith needed to develop fruitful results. We have already seen how the amount of “fruit” produced is variable from zero to 30-fold, 60-fold to 100-fold. This means literally the words that were planted and watered could have varied tremendously from zero to 100% of the Words available to sow. Not to mention the time we spent to prepare the ground, keep and guard it from being destroyed or eaten up by our enemy.
The soil of course is our spiritual “heart. This is the garden of God and it must be prepared. Preparation involves cleaning, clearing including hard places to be made soft, and then weeded areas to be removed. Weeds are the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of fortune, fame and all the other distraction designed by the enemy to choke out and keep our faith from bring forth fruit.
This does not mean that we are saved by our works, but our attitudes, focuses, participation and choices greatly affect the success or the failure of God’s Word to work and bring us the increase. All of this is analogous of an open minded, broken, soft, humble human heart void of all pride in our spirit. We must be tender and even openly desiring to hear the Word of God at every opportunity. A humble open person is eagerly craving and willing to receive the Word of God “Seed” as if it was the most very valuable item available. If someone is bored with reading the Word of God, they are hard-hearted and have no seed entering to produce faith that will produce saving fruits, because there is no Word planted in their heart.
Even after soil preparation and receiving the incredible Seed in the heart ground, it may look or feel like nothing is working or changing for a long time. This is when a lot of people are easily deceived by Satan into believing his lie that God’s words don’t work. But this is just a major part of the process that is working only in the unseen supernatural spiritual “Faith” realm. Natural seeds must develop roots long before you see any fruits. So, it is also in the spiritual dimension.
Thank you for reading, liking and sharing these Bible lessons with others. The Word of God will work if we do not let it go out of our heart. In John 15:7 Jesus says we must abide in Him and His Words abide in us…”. This simply means the word is alive in our heart and remains watered. If there is ever a spiritual drought of not receiving the Word of God, for whatever reasons, the lack of watering will cause the roots, plants and fruits to whither dry up and die. That is not a positive outcome of any beginning faith amount.
God Bless you and keep you and never forget, Jesus is returning very soon!
Celebrating Resurrection Day 2025 – God’s Supernatural Plan and Involvement in Resurrection
(Ver 1.0) This is an amazing day of celebration. This day is when we normally enjoy a time of reflection when our Lord and Savior was resurrected from the “dead”. Please notice the term “dead” because this is very important. Was this Jesus coming back to physical life only? That is what many teach and preach but is that all that occurred on this day? What does this Bible that we should love really say about what happened on this day and why are so many fighting against what the Bible says?
Act 12:4 And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.
Today is traditionally called Easter by too many people. This term “Easter” is an extremely wrong translation of the Greek word in Acts 12:4. This word was chosen by King James translators and it only occurs only in this one verse of Acts. The original Greek word occurs 29 times in the New Testament and it was correctly translated as “Passover” 28 times. Only in this verse does it suddenly appear the word “Easter”. What we are discovering is the term “Easter” is a foreign influence coming probably from Satan as its inspired source.
Therefore, the celebration and remembrance of Passover should be our primary focuse today. It is because of the sacrificial Lamb of God’s death, burial and resurrection from the dead that has saved us from experiencing this fate without believing In Jesus Christ. It was all God becoming a human man with flesh and blood that facilitated and enabled Him to die for “us” paying the penalty of all our human sins. What an amazing work that He accomplished “fully” so that everyone that believes on Him will not experience an eternity in “hell”. He was our “Passover” substitutionary Lamb of God. Praise the Lord!
What was Completely Different About the Resurrection of Jesus?
This is a new mystery for many Christians because it has not been popularly taught in many churches. There was a very major difference that occurred when Jesus was raised from the dead than from all the others listed in the Bible that were previously raised from physical death before Jesus and after Jesus was resurrected. Have you ever thought of this mystery? How many people were listed as being raised from physical death in the Bible? Do you have any clue? There are so many that we do not really know the exact number. Let’s list the major ones that are listed in the Bible:
Old Testament Examples of Dead Raised
- The Widow’s Son at Zarephath – 1 Kings 17:17-24
– Description: The son of a widow in Zarephath fell ill and died, with no breath left in him. The prophet Elijah prayed to God, and the child’s soul returned, reviving him.
– Reference: 1 Kings 17:22 – “And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.”
- The Shunammite Woman’s Son – 2 Kings 4:18-37
– Description: The son of a Shunammite woman died suddenly. The prophet Elisha prayed and performed a physical act of lying on the child, and the boy was restored to life.
– Reference: 2 Kings 4:35 – “Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.”
- The Man Thrown into Elisha’s Tomb – 2 Kings 13:20-21
– Description: After Elisha’s death, a dead man’s body was thrown into Elisha’s tomb. Upon touching Elisha’s bones, the man revived and stood up.
– Reference: 2 Kings 13:21 – “And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.”
New Testament Examples of People Raised from the Dead
- Jairus’ Daughter – Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56
– Description: The 12-year-old daughter of Jairus, a synagogue ruler, died. Jesus took her hand and commanded her to arise, and she was restored to life.
– Reference: Mark 5:41-42 – “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked.”
- The Widow’s Son at Nain – Luke 7:11-17
– Description: Jesus encountered a funeral procession for a widow’s only son. He touched the bier, commanded the young man to arise, and he sat up and began to speak.
– Reference: Luke 7:14-15 – “And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.”
- Lazarus – John 11:1-44
– Description: Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, died and was in the tomb for four days. Jesus called him out of the tomb, and Lazarus came forth alive.
– Reference: John 11:43-44 – “And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth.”
- Jesus Christ – Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-18
– Description: Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. On the third day, He rose from the dead through divine power, fulfilling His own prophecy.
– Reference: Matthew 28:6 – “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”
- Many Saints at Jesus’ Crucifixion – Matthew 27:50-53
– Description: At the moment of Jesus’ death, the graves of many saints were opened, and they arose after His resurrection, appearing to many in Jerusalem.
– Reference: Matthew 27:52-53 – “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.”
- Tabitha (Dorcas) – Acts 9:36-43
– Description: Tabitha, a disciple known for her good works, died. Peter prayed, commanded her to arise, and she opened her eyes and sat up.
– Reference: Acts 9:40 – “But Peter put them all forth, and kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up.”
- Eutychus – Acts 20:7-12
– Description: Eutychus fell from a third-story window during Paul’s preaching and was taken up dead. Paul embraced him, and he was restored to life.
– Reference: Acts 20:9-10 – “And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: … and was taken up dead. And Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him.”
Total Count
– Old Testament: 3 individuals (Widow’s Son at Zarephath, Shunammite’s Son, Man in Elisha’s Tomb).
– New Testament: 7 specific individuals (Jairus’ Daughter, Widow’s Son at Nain, Lazarus, Jesus Christ, Tabitha, Eutychus) plus an unspecified number of saints (referred to as “many” in Matthew 27:52-53).
– Total Individuals: At least 10 named or specific individuals, with additional unspecified saints in Matthew 27:52-53.
Answering the Mystery Question
This was an almost comprehensive list of the physically dead that were brought back by God’s power into the “Land of the Living”. As you noticed this list included “Jesus Christ”. However, the question is still unanswered. What made the resurrection of Jesus completely different from every other human being that God gave back life to? The simple answer is that everyone raised from the “dead” by the power of God, ALL of these physically raised people DIED AGAIN! Only Jesus was raised from the dead, and lives forever and He will never die again. This is the beginning of the answer. But let’s confirm the TRUTH!
Rev 1:18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
From the mouth of Jesus, He claims to have been “dead” but now after resurrection has as physical flesh and bone body that will “NEVER” experience “death” or separation from God His Father again forever! Wow! What else does the Bible say that is different from all other humans that were raised from the dead? Take a look at this verse:
Rev 1:5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,
Wow! Please read this verse very carefully. We can see from the reference of the “blood” that this is concerning the death of our Lord and Savior on a cross where He physically suffered in our place to pay the ultimate death penalty for us all because we all have sinned.
But please focus on the phrase “THE FIRST BEGOTTEN OF THE DEAD”! This has been one of the most IGNORED statements in the Bible. The Greek word translated as “begotten” is the Greek word “prototokos” (G4416). This word is most popularly translated as “firstborn”. It is used in Mathew 1 and Luke 2 to describe Jesus being the “firstborn” son of Mary in the Bethlehem stable. But this birth is not the same as the “firstborn” birth that Jesus is stated to experience in the verse of Revelation 1:5. The first birth of Mary is purely natural and physical a child coming into the world through normal physical life birth born of a natural woman, and the other first birth is completely a Spirit of God rebirth from the “Dead” as plainly stated. Let us confirm this again with scripture:
Col 1:18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
Do you see what God is saying? Here the translators made the choice to use the word “firstborn” from the dead. But we know this verse is still speaking of Jesus in this verse by claiming He is the “Head” of the church body. God further claims that this “birth” gave Jesus the “preeminence” over “ALL” others that were labeled “dead”. This word “preeminence” is very confusing to many since Jesus was God incarnate in human flesh. Didn’t God the Creator already have all “preeminence” over all of His created creation? That is another mystery for another lesson. But why is Jesus being called the “Firstborn” from the dead? Is is impossible for this description to be referring to a natural birth like He is called with Marry in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, this birth can only be a spiritual rebirth or what Jesus called in John 3:3 being “born again”.
Joh 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
Hopefully, you know when Jesus spoke these words to a human man, He was also a Human Man as well as being the Son of God simultaneously. I believe with all of my heart, Jesus had to be including Himself in this statement. We can begin to see the reason why by what we just read in Colossians 1:18, this second spiritual birth causes Him to have all “Authority” both in heaven and on the earth as Jesus claimed in Matthew 28:18 saying “All power is given to me both in heaven an on the earth”. Wow, the works of God are truly amazing and complex for many.
Conclusion
What we are observing on this “Passover Lamb” Resurrection Day Celebration is that Him being raised from the dead was completely different than anyone else in human history that was every raised from the dead. We can see how God described Jesus to have died physically once on a cross and we are now beginning to see how that He was also being described to have been born twice, once a natural birth of Mary in Bethlehem and the second birth occurred when He was raised from the dead after His death on a cross. These two births could not have occurred in any other order or sequence of recorded Bible events.
Now Jesus is the only man in heaven with a physical body that never dies. The Bible says this resurrection was God’s “firstfruits”.
Co 15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
The term “them that slept” is referring to natural and physical death viewing the the natural body as being motionless while buried in the ground and decaying. This is not a soul sleep as some teach. Spirits never sleep only naturally bodies sleep. Did you know Jesus was raised from the dead on the “Feast of Firstfruits”? Every other Christian whether physically dead or alive is awaiting our own resurrection that will be occurring much sooner than many people think or believe.
Very soon we will all have bodies that never die. This will be a glorious day for all Christians. For those that have not believed in Jesus and made Him their Lord and Savior, this will not be a good time. It is not too late to make Jesus your Lord and believe the Truth about His death, burial and resurrection. It all happened just as recorded in God’s Holy Word. Please search for Him and you will find Him. If you are ready to receive Him there is a link at the bottom of this lesson to receive Him.
Jesus is coming back for us very soon. Please celebrate his death, burial and resurrection with the greatest antic pated joy for His soon return. God bless you all and thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. God loves you and we love you and He is coming very soon!
Bible Basics – Understanding the Origin of the English Name of Jesus
(Ver 1.0) This lesson is a part of the Bible Basics series. There have been multiple questions asked about some of the basic concepts of Christianity surrounding the origin of the name of Jesus. Today’s questions involve the origin of the English Name of Jesus found in over 90% of the English Translations of the Bible. Therefore, this lesson will not be focused on the theological details of His identity, life, ministry or even for His purpose of visitation on the earth in the flesh. But rather today’s lesson will focus upon the historical reasons why the vast majority of Christians reading and writing English language, have chosen to call the Holy Son of God, by the name “Jesus”. To do this we are going to have to go through a brief history lesson on language translations and some of the basic rules and reasons for the choices made in the treatment of names and how these differ from other word translations.
Here are the two main readers’ questions that will be attempted to be addressed and answered today:
- How and where did the English name Jesus originate and when was it chosen to be the decided given name of the Son of God?
- The other question that arises is why does the name Jesus begin with the letter “J” when this alphabet letter never existed until around the times of the invention of the printing press?
The second question might be curious to many. But this is now a modern reason taught to some people why they should not trust the English Bible or believe in the name of Jesus. After reading this lesson fully, it should become obvious that this new ruse is just another trick of Satan to try to discredit the English language, the English Bible, God’s truth and the need for a Savior named Jesus.
Introduction to Languages and Translations
Today, in our present world, it is estimated that there are approximately 195 sovereign nations as of 03/2025. Within these nations are contained the world’s population of approximately 8.2 billion people. This world population speaks over 7000 different languages. However, most of these languages are spoken by less than 10% of the world’s population. This means around 80-90% of the world’s population speak the other 10-20% of the most widely used languages. First, we will list the top 5 world languages in use today:
- English – Known and Used by 1.5 billion people.
- Mandrin Chinese – Known and Used by 1.1 billion people.
- Hindi – Known and used by 610 million people.
- Spanish – Known and used by 485 million people.
- French – Known and used by 310 million people.
Now let us pay attention to our subject of the origin of the English name of Jesus. Originally the Holy Bible was primarily written and recorded in 2 primary languages, which are Hebrew and Greek and neither of these languages are heavily used in the world today. The Hebrew language may be known by approximately 10 million people and the Greek language by as many as 13 million people. Therefore, neither of these come close to the 5 most popular known and spoken world languages. This makes the original language study of the Bible very difficult for almost every human especially without smart phones, tablets or computers.
Now for a review of Bible translations. In the English language there are over 200 versions of the Bible. Of these 200+ English versions about 190 have chosen the name of our Lord and Savior to be “Jesus” called the “Christ”. He is also called “Jesus of Nazareth” on occasion as well as other symbolic terms like the “Lamb of God”. These 190 English versions of the Bible are the vast majority of the historical and modern texts, and it is easily determined that these consistently use the name “Jesus” for the “Son of God” for us to read and speak in the English language.
Now for a consideration of other choices within those not of the 190 that use the name Jesus. The name “Yeshua” appears in some Messianic English translations of the Bible, like the “TLV”, “CJB” and “NJV”. The name “Yahshua” or “Yahushua” are found in Sacred Name versions of the Bible. These name variations attempt to preserve the name of Messiah to better connect with the Hebrew roots of the Word of God. However, anything that is good and truthful can be taken to an extreme and thus it becomes legalistic laws of bondage and even unbalanced error and deception. Once any truth of one name is exaggerated to exclude all other language name, it has failed to reflect the love of God found in John 3:16. To claim that there is only one name and it must be the Hebrew name, no longer reflects the merciful nature of God’s character, who desires and appreciates a personal relationship in every language, even with the English language people. God’s love and desire to save every human is absolutely true for all languages of the world. God died to save the speakers of all 7000+ languages of the world. God is by far more interested in seeking our love for Him, rather than He is to force every human to pronounce His name correctly or incorrectly. Love was and still is God’s motivation for saving us.
Does this make sense? To an eternal God, a 100-year-old human is still like an infant compared to His infinite knowledge and understanding. If my natural son at 1 to 2 years old only called me “Da” instead “Father”, I would love it and respond to him immediately. So, for a Christian to suddenly become legalistic and claim everyone must be perfect in how we pronounce His Hebrew name in order to be saved, this is a trick to exclude a lot of people in the world who don’t speak Hebrew. God still looks at the heart of humans much more than their perfection in linguistics and dialects.
Let’s quickly consider why “perfectionism” is a potential sin. When someone demands their version of the name of God, this could be because of “pride” and how they believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, claiming others are in error and are all going to hell. However, “pride” goes before destruction and the one making the demand to say the name of God one way and not any other way clearly demonstrates their own ignorance of God. It is absolutely impossible for human to pronounce the name of God correctly because, no one is God but God! He is the only one that knows exactly how His name should be said and pronounced in every language of the world. The rest of us are too ignorant to make ourselves equal to God and make these decisions.
Let’s stop and analyze the English word “God”. Is this word in the original Hebrew or Greek texts of the Bible? No, it is not! Therefore, the name “God” is an English translation from the original Hebrew word “Elohiym” and the Greek word “Theos”. Since the English name “God” does not appear in the original text, why should anyone insist that the name “Jesus” doesn’t exist and we can’t call Him by this name either? This makes no logical sense to many of us.
This is also very true for the names “Jehovah” and “Yahweh”. This Hebrew word is often translated as “LORD”. Is either of these Hebrew names “LORD”? Of course not! These are just two pronunciations of the Hebrew word spelled “Yod” + “Hey” + “Vav” + “Hey”. However, there are camps of people in the world who have taken up Holy wars against each other through fighting about which name is correct and which is wrong! How childish is this? Where is your love, patience, kindness, and compassion? If we are fighting to be correct when we have no clear mandate from God to enforce this unknown name’s pronunciation, there are probably many in this fight that are in a state of sinful pride and it is time for us all to grow up spiritually and put away our childish behavior (1 Cor 13:11).
Therefore, of the approximately 200+ English known translations, only a small handful—perhaps 5 to 10—consistently use alternative names like “Yeshua” or “Yahshua” in place of “Jesus.” These are niche translations, often aimed at specific audiences (e.g., Messianic Jews or Hebrew Roots adherents), and these represent less than 5% of the total available English translations. The overwhelming majority of scholars stick with the name of “Jesus” due to its established usage in English-speaking Christian tradition, dating back to the Latin Vulgate and early English Bibles like the Tyndale (1526) and Geneva (1560).
Introduction to the Origin of the English Name of Jesus
We need to address how English Bible translations decided to handle the name of our Messiah, which has traditionally been rendered as “Jesus” in the English New Testament. To accomplish this, we need to know that the Bible’s original languages were Hebrew for the Old Testament (with some Aramaic) and Greek for the New Testament. These two main languages provide the basis for all translations into any other legitimate language translation. No sincere translation of the Bible can or should come from any other source than these original texts.
For example, if someone attempts to take an English Bible translation and further translate it into another language like French, the resulting French translation will only magnify the English translation errors and shortcomings from the original Hebrew and Greek inspired languages. All translations would be moving through a doubled process of meaning transition. This no doubt would increase the level of confusion.
This multi-step translation game would be like having 20 people sitting around in a circle with each knowing two different languages. But none of the participants knowing the exact same two languages as their predecessor. All common languages would be sitting next to each other with each taking from the previous person who had a language in common. The person to the left of the next, would be sharing the story to the person on their right having one common language. Say the first person would know only Hebrew and Latin and would initiate the telling of a Hebrew story while translating the story on the fly from Hebrew to Latin for the person to their right hand who only spoke Latin and English.
Then that Latin speaking person would translate the original Hebrew story converted to Latin into English for a person who only knew English and French. They in turn would retranslate the original Hebrew story from their native language English into French for the next person to their right whose native language was French and secondary language was Spanish. Now the French speaker would retranslate the original Hebrew story that was already been translated from Latin, into English, and then into French and now into Spanish for the next person in the circle. Can you begin to see the level of confusion that is being introduced from each translation. By the time the story returns back to the original speaker, no doubt it would be unrecognizable.
According to the Bible, God informs us that the original texts written in Hebrew and Greek were the inspired (God breathed) words of God (2 Timothy 3:16). Everything beyond these words may or may not be an anointed rendition of what God originally spoke. Therefore, there is a highly likely chance that some translator mistakes or bias were introduced to the next translation.
Therefore, every translation potentially introduces layers of subtle error. It would be like a Pilot that took off in their plane from New York to cross the Atlantic to reach Paris. If this pilot was only off by 1 degree by the time he crossed the Atlantic this plane would be nowhere close to Paris. This is why while reading the English Translation or other language translation it is extremely wise to study the original Hebrew and Greek Texts to confirm what is written in your language matches as close to possible to what is written in the original languages. It is recommended if you are a serious Bible student that you find “literal” as possible translations to study from. Some that are considered the best are the KJV Bible, the NASB Bible, and the Young’s Literal Version.
However, this is the first major challenge for anyone that does not read, write and speak both Hebrew and Greek. These people are at the mercy of knowledgeable translators that knew and understood two languages enough to believe they were able to say what God said and meant as precisely as they could. While simultaneously not placing any of their personal biases into their work to distort what God wrote originally.
Let’s begin to analyze the original name of Jesus. The Messiah’s name we call Jesus in English was written in th original Hebrew as typically “Yeshua” (ישוע), a shortened form of “Yehoshua” (יהושע), meaning “Yahweh saves” or “salvation”. In the Greek New Testament, this Messianic name has been transliterated as “Iēsous” (Ἰησοῦς), which is then transliterated into English as “Jesus.” The Hebrew concept of Messiah was changed to the English title “Christ”, however this comes from the Greek language “Christos” (Χριστός). None of these resemble the original Hebrew word “Mashiach” (משיח), meaning “anointed one” transliterated as “Messiah”.
However, we can find both three different languages in the New Testament for the original Hebrew word Messiah. For example, notice this verse.
Jhn_1:41 He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.
Notice the writer of Matthew presents both the Hebrew word for Messiah and the Greek word for Messiah in the same sentence stating he is making the translation for the reader. This proves the New Testaments written in Greek was written by men that knew both languages and could translate them quickly as they were writing. It also teaches you something very important about how a Hebrew word and the equivalent Greek word can result in two completely different English words. The Greek word was translated into English as “Christ” and the Hebrew word was translated into Greek and then into English as “Messias”.
As you can clearly see there is a growing problem of translation of the Bible’s names, titles, terms, etc. from one language to any other language that is needed to share the Gospel. For example, when an original Hebrew name is moving into a new language it is normally transliterated into this language by the translators who are attempting to preserve the spirit of the original name using new individual letter sounds which are joined together to form a new word of similar pronunciation. Name transitions from one language to another was never done using an attempt to preserve the meaning and definition of each name word. Every Hebrew name is a word that has meaning.
Some Hebrew names are even compounds of two or more other Hebrew words forming a new name and new word meaning. For example, the name “Israel” literally means “He will Rule as God”. The “EL” being the shortened name of God and the other word meaning “He will rule”. However, this is only true for the Hebrew name yiśrâ’êl. The English transliterated name “Israel” has no word definition because it is only a translator’s attempt to approximate the sound of the Hebrew name in English. Let us give you another quick example of the name of “God”:
Mat 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
While Jesus was hanging on the cross, He cries out to His Heavenly Father to say in English My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me? But it is written clearly that He spoke this in Hebrew and the closely pronounced words were “Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani?”.
The term “Eli” is the Hebrew word H430 the shortened name of God we just looked at. The added “i” upon the end of “El” is the Hebrew letter “Yod” and which means “my” as a Hebrew suffix. All of these Hebrew words were brought into the Greek language alphabet letters and then finally written in Greek and both of these have been translated into English. Do you see the complexity of how three languages are interacting and how the third language English further adds a new layer of potential complexity to the translator’s efforts?
Therefore, it is essential to know all names were transformed from one language to another using “transliteration” attempting to preserve the name’s sound characteristics and never “translation” attempting to preserve the name’s definition or meanings. Please see how there are several Hebrew names that were taken from the Old Testament, then again into the Greek New Testament and finally into the English KJV translation:
| Hebrew | Greek | English | Reference |
| Yesha’Yah (Isaiah KJV O.T.) | Hesaias Esaias | Esaias | Mat 8:17 |
| Yonah (Jonah KJV O.T.) | Ionas | Jonas | Mat 12:40 |
| Yerimeyah (Jeremiah KJV O.T.) | Hieremias | Jeremias | Mat 16:14 |
| Yehudah (Judah KJV O.T.) | Ioudas | Judas | Mat 1:2 |
Hopefully, this chart demonstrates how only a few name examples are dramatically changed going through translations. Remember this is just a short list of names that are listed in three languages differently. But it also demonstrates how one Hebrew name appears differently in English after moving through just one language translation, versus the English New Testament enduring two language translations. This is simply because the Hebrew names were translated first into Greek from Hebrew, and then finally from Greek into English.
Another major challenge that occurs in transliteration is that the original ancient Hebrew texts contained no vowels. The other major challenge with the Hebrew language is that it is based upon an alphabet that was comprised of only 22 letter characters. These 22-letter based Hebrew alphabet names were then needed to be moved into all other human languages by changing them into much different alphabets with different numbers of alphabet letters and sometimes very different sounds for each letter.
Do you see the challenge to come up with a perfect name to name transition? English has 26 letters today and Hebrew was only 22. The Russian language has 33 letters. For example, the Russian Orthodoxy uses Иисус (Iisus) consistently in religious texts for the name of Jesus. What we are learning is that the name of Jesus can vary greatly within any of the almost 7000 human languages upon the earth. Does this mean any of them are the wrong name and God will not hear them? Absolutely not! God is not willing that any perish, and He is much more loving and compassionate than people are.
Just for emphasis, let’s continue to review this transliteration challenge. With so many vastly differing numbers of letters in each alphabet and each of these letters containing differing sounds than the language being translated, it should be easy to see there are no perfect translations from language to language. For example, the Hebrew alphabet has certain letters that have no equivalent sounding letters in other languages. Hebrew has some “guttural” sounds that are ignored in most English translated transitions. This makes these original sounds to being converted into “a close as possible” matching transition for new language name spellings. Please note, that the ancient original Hebrew language alphabet has been modernized and now has added vowel markers that have been added to existing new styled letters, yet there are still no actual vowel letters that have been added.
Brief Language History Abraham 2000 BC to Jesus Birth 4 BC to Death 30 AD
We can make the logical assumption that Abraham spoke an older variation of the Hebrew language. Abraham begat a son named Isaac and Isaac begat a son named Jacob who was later renamed to Israel by an angel. Then Jacob begat the 12 sons from 4 women who initiated the 12 tribes of the natural nation of Israel. But for now, we will primarily focus upon Israel’s son named Joseph. Joseph was sold by his jealous brothers into slavery, and they carried him to be a slave in Egypt.
To make a long story short, Joseph had the favor of God upon him and Joseph was blessed to become the 2nd in command in the nation of Egypt. A famine came upon the region for 7 years. Joseph’s other brothers got hungry and came to Egypt to buy food and Joseph recognized them. Joseph’s father and brothers and their families move to Egypt merging their culture with that of Egypt.
But after time many died off and the new pharaoh did not know Joseph and how he saved them from a certain death by starvation. All the descendants of Jacob which were only approximately 70 in the beginning journey to Egypt had multiplied to millions in 400 years and the people cried out to God for salvation from Egyptian bondage.
Therefore, God raised up a deliverer named Moses to set the people of Israel free. This man Moses also became a part of the house of Pharaoh and had great authority and had even learned their culture and language. What we are witnessing is how one nation can be conquered by being taken into another nation and how suddenly two or more languages can co-exist simultaneously within one nation. This means names certainly had to be clearly identifiable in both languages to the same person to be accurately understood by the hearer for them to know who was being spoken of. Moses with God’s help and guidance eventually got the children of Israel free from Pharaoh but then they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before entering into the promised land.
In the next 1500 years from Moses to Jesus, the natural nation of Israel was carried away by other nations into more captivity. Two of the largest nations that had a major influence upon the nation of Israel were the conquering Babylonian kingdom, and the Medo-Persian Kingdoms. Both brought their culture and language into co-existence with the Hebrew people of Israel and their Hebrew language. Please understand that the languages did not merge, but rather the people just spoke two or more languages. The Hebrew language was mostly separated for religious observance and the other nation’s language was utilized for government and commerce activity. Now let us move closer to the time of Jesus.
It was approximately 323 BC when the ruler Alexandar the Great from Greece finished his world conquests. As a result of these conquests the Greek culture influence came upon every conquered nation with many of them being almost fully assimilated into the Greek language, cultural and religious ways. However, the leaders of Israel always maintained their original text laws, psalms and prophets in Hebrew. However, the Greek language became a major world dominated language much like English is today. If you wanted to do business, you better learn to speak Greek.
However, the Greek influence to the Hebrew speaking people did have an effect. Around 250-200 BC, the original Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek as the “Septuagint”. This appears to be the first translation of the original Hebrew inspired texts. This certainly displays the influence of the Greek language upon the entire world. It is very possible that even some Jewish Synagogues read from this Greek translation. However, the Hebrew was still the major documented language for strictest practicing Jews, like the Pharisees. We know this because after Jesus was resurrected, He spoke to the Pharisee Saul on the road to Damascus in Hebrew and Saul understood and spoke back to him. We also know Saul became the Apostle Paul and he wrote 2/3 of the New Testament in Greek. Therefore, Paul knew at least 2 languages fluently.
Now let us get to the life of Jesus. At his birth, there were many local languages found in the Mediterranean regions of southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa around the time of Jesus’ life on the earth. Most will already know that the English language did not exist at the time of Jesus’ Walk on earth. However, as mentioned before prior to Jesus the Mediterranean region was swiftly conquered by the Greek army led by Alexander the Great. From this vast conquest, the Greek language became the dominant culture and language for both conversation and business, much like English is today in the modern world.
But then came a new kingdom that was different than them all. This system of government originated from Rome, Italy. And with the rise of the Roman named Augustus, he spread the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean regions. Rome became the dominant government system in the world beginning at approximately 27 BC. Which was approximately 23 years before the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.
The Roman Government and Military spoke predominantly “Latin” to conduct their business. Therefore, in the Mediterranean region there were usually at least three languages spoken simultaneously. These were known and spoken by many groups of people. For example, around the Jewish region of Jerusalem the natural language was of course Hebrew or Aramaic which are very similar.
But financial business and even some religious activity around Jerusalem was conducted in the Greek language which we know came from the previous occupation of the armies of Alexandar the Great. But while Jesus was alive during the Roman Empire occupation of Jerusalem, it was useful to also learn, know and speak “Latin”. This means at minimum it was not unusual for people in Jerusalem to know and speak at least 3 languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
This is why both Luke and John write in the New Testament Gospels that the sign placed above the head of Jesus while hanging on the cross, said, “JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS”. And it was ordered by the Roman ruler Pilate to be written in the Hebrew, Greek and Latin languages. Can you imagine how the name of Jesus was written in 3 different languages on one sign? This proves the original name of Jesus was being translated into multiple languages about 2000 years ago. These three alphabets are so dissimilar, yet the same name of Jesus was written in all three languages on one sign, according to John 19:19-20.
Yes, we are beginning to learn how languages affect the communication of massive numbers of people in the world. Since the universal language of business was performed in Greek during the days of Jesus, the name Jesus had to be written in it. Even the language of the New Testament was chosen to be written in the Greek language. This was done because the Jewish people of Israel largely rejected the Gospel and Jesus as their Messiah and much of the remaining world spoke Greek, it makes sense to reach as many people as possible with the Gospel and other scriptural writings done in Greek.
When the Apostle Paul and many of the other disciples went out into all the world to preach the Gospel, most of the world still spoke Greek. Therefore, the New Testament was written in Greek, being designed to reach the most gentile people in the world. These are amazing things to think about. This means each writer of the New Testament needed to speak Hebrew and Greek simultaneously. Although there was a Greek translation produced called the Septuagint. This version was read in many Jewish synagogues. However, around the region of Judea the Hebrew text was predominately found.
There is a very interesting parallel happening today to the time when Jesus was beginning the early church. Just as Alexander the Great conquered much of the world to bring a common language to the business of world trade, so also this same pattern occurs in the rise of the British empire. One common saying about the British empire, was that the sun never sets on them. This was because they took the English language to every inhabited continent. Just as Alexandar the Great, conquered much of the world, the British also spread their culture, influence and common language throughout the world approximately 400 years ago. At the height of the British influence, they controlled almost ¼ of the world’s land. Therefore, God seems to have taken advantage of another common language used primarily for world trade and business, to again use it to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for an end-time great harvest of souls. If you are not aware, the USA exports the most Christian media and materials to the rest of the world.
Now for the final subject of this part of the lesson. The English language and the alphabet are derived primarily from Rome’s old Latin language. However, we know that there are also other word influences from other languages. This means some of the primary roots of the English were encoded on the “sign” that was hung above the head of Jesus on the cross. This indicates God had already designed the future word for Jesus’ name to be included at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion.
The Hebrew Name of Jesus Transitions into English
We have briefly touched upon this in the previous section of the lesson. Therefore, we already know the original name of “Jesus” is from the Hebrew Old Testament and can be seen in our English Bible as the name “Joshua”. If we tried to pronounce it from the original Hebrew it would come close to sounding like “yehôshûa‛”. As you can clearly see that has no “J” sound. A closer sound might be the used as the letter “Y” as it is listed.
In the modern English Bible translations these two names “Jesus” in the New Testament and “Joshua” in the Old Testament are identical in the original Hebrew. But the names have been sounded differently because of the technique called “Transliteration” that we have already been introduced. Transliteration ignores the name’s original Hebrew meanings. It rather focuses upon the sounds of the letters within the name and the combined arranged sounds of the letters joined together. Here is another important language fact. The original ancient Hebrew language had no vowels. Today English has the vowels “AEIOU” and sometimes “Y”. But the omission of vowels causes significant challenges to gaining true pronunciation
The other significant challenge occurs because the Hebrew language only has 22 alphabet letters, and the English alphabet has 26 letters. Therefore, perfect transliteration of sounds is nearly impossible. However, it is amazing to see that many English alphabet letters have similar designs to the ancient Hebrew letters. For example, the designs of the English letters “A”, “J”, “L”, “M”, “O”, “T”, “Y” are very close to ancient Hebrew pictograph letters.
The Greek alphabet transliteration of names from Hebrew has had very similar challenges as the Hebrew to English transliteration. We previously learned that the Hebrew name of Jesus was transliterated into Greek as “Iēsous” (Ἰησοῦς). As you will notice the original Hebrew “Y” (Yod) was changed to the Greek letter “I” (Iota). This was the choice of translators who knew both languages.
Now notice that the English name Jesus in the original Hebrew was transliterated as “Joshua” in the Old Testament from the original Hebrew text. However, the name Joshua never appears in the New Testament anywhere in the KJV Bible. This is true even though he is mentioned at least twice in the New Testament as “Jesus” instead of “Joshua”. Why is this? This is because all of the names of Joshua in the Old Testament were transliterated into Greek “Iēsous” (Ἰησοῦς) and from this name it was further transliterated into the English named “Jesus”. This further proves that the name Jesus and Joshua were identical names. If both names were transliterated from the original Hebrew they would have been named “Joshua’. This makes it a little difficult to determine who the Bible is speaking of in every verse. This is why many times the name “Jesus of Nazareth” is mentioned as the name of our Savior in the New Testament.
As you can see our transliteration process of moving between two languages confirms our problem of translating from Hebrew to Latin, to English to Spanish that we were using as an example earlier in the lesson. The more translations a language is taken through, the more corrupted it becomes from the original writings. Names would completely change. However, the positive with the name Jesus being different in the New Testament than Joshua in the Old Testament causes verses to be more rapidly identifiable to whom it is referring to. For example, let us look at some verse examples where there appears potential confustion:
Zec 3:1 And he shewed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.
This is an Old Testament Hebrew verse about someone named Joshua. This name was transliterated from Hebrew, and it appears from this name it could be the Joshua from the book of Joshua who led the children of Israel into the promised land. However, it is impossible for this name to be associated into the contextual description. This verse can only be referring to the New Covenant High Priest named Jesus in the New Testament. It is the only fitting explanation that aligns scripturally. Then;
Act 7:45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;
This verse can only be speaking of Joshua who led the children of Israel into the promised land, yet it was translated as Jesus because of the establish rules of transliteration. Yes, these are documented mistakes even in the KJV Bible of shortcomings produced by using transliteration. Yet even these errors do not phase God. English speaking Christians could call Jesus any of these names, Joshua, Jesus, Iēsous, Yehoshua, etc. and God is smart enough to know you are talking to Him. Thank God for His Love and Mercy.
Understanding the History of Adding the Letter “J” to English
The letter “J” was not part of the original English alphabet, which was derived from the 21-letter original Latin alphabet. The letter J was added to both the English and the Latin alphabets later along with U and W. The letter “J” introduction came relatively late in the history of the English language, and its development was a gradual process.
When Was “J” Added?
The letter “J” began to emerge as a distinct character in the English alphabet around the Middle Ages, with its use becoming more standardized in the 16th and 17th centuries. Here’s a brief timeline:
- Roman Times (Pre-5th Century): The Latin alphabet, from which English evolved, originally had no “J.” The letter “I” served dual purposes, representing both the vowel sound /i/ (as in “bit”) and the consonant sound /j/ (as in “yes”). For example, in Roman inscriptions, “Julius” was written as “IVLIVS.”
- Middle Ages (5th–15th Centuries): As Latin evolved into various Romance languages (like French, Italian, and Spanish), scribes began to distinguish between the vowel “I” and the consonant “J” sound. They sometimes elongated the tail of the “I” into a hooked shape when it appeared at the beginning of a word or represented the /j/ sound, especially in medieval manuscripts. This was more of a stylistic variation than a formal letter at first.
- Renaissance and Printing Press (15th–16th Centuries): The distinction became more pronounced with the advent of the printing press in the mid-15th century. By the 1500s, typographers and scholars, particularly in France and Italy, began treating “J” as a separate letter from “I.” For instance, the Italian grammarian Gian Giorgio Trissino is credited with formally distinguishing “I” and “J” in 1524, though this was for Italian rather than English.
- English Adoption (17th Century): In English, the use of “J” became widespread only in the 1600s. Early English texts, including some editions of the King James Bible (1611), still used “I” in place of “J” (e.g., “Iesus” for “Jesus”). By the mid-17th century, however, “J” was fully established as a distinct letter in the English alphabet, thanks to the influence of printing standards and the need for clarity in spelling.
Why Was “J” Added?
The addition of “J” to the English alphabet was driven by both phonetic clarity and linguistic transition:
- Phonetic Distinction: The sound /j/ (a voiced palatal approximant, as in “yes” or “judge”) needed a unique symbol to differentiate it from the vowel /i/. In Old English and Middle English, the “I” was overburdened with multiple roles, which caused confusion in reading and writing, especially as pronunciation shifted.
- Influence of Other Languages: English borrowed heavily from Norman French after the Norman Conquest (1066), and French already used “J” (derived from Latin “I”) for the /ʒ/ sound (as in “measure”) or /dʒ/ (as in “judge”). As English adopted words like “joy,” “justice,” and “judge” from French, the letter “J” became a natural fit for these sounds.
- Standardization in Writing and Printing: The rise of the printing press in Europe demanded consistency in typography. Printers adopted “J” to align with continental conventions and to make texts more legible and standardized across languages.
Fun Fact
Even after “J” was introduced, it was often the last letter added to alphabet lists. Early English alphabets ran from A to Z without “J,” “U,” or “W” being fully distinct (as “U” and “V” were also conflated in Latin). By the 17th century, the modern 26-letter English alphabet, including “J,” was solidified.
Conclusion
Yes, “J” was added to the English alphabet around the 16th–17th centuries, transitioning it from the original letter “I” which had at least two distinct sounds to meet the needs of word pronunciation. The English letter “J” borrowed from development of other languages, and the push for standardized writing. It’s a relatively young letter in the grand scheme of alphabetic history! But this does not make it an invalid letter. Nor does its usage disqualify any name derived from its usage. If you are at peace in your heart to call Jesus by this name, as I, use it and call Him Jesus. I have found repeatedly He hears, answers and responds every time I use His name in prayer to the Father.
As a further confirmation of the name of Jesus recognition within the spiritual realm, I have found casting out devils and binding spirits when using the name of Jesus has as much power as when the name of Jesus was used by Peter in Acts 3 with the lame man at the temple gate. Spirits are not stupid either. They recognize the “Power of the name of Jesus”. Check out these verses:
Php 2:9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
Php 2:10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
Php 2:11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Do you see why Satan wants to place doubts in your mind to whether the name of Jesus is legit or not? We are in a spiritual battle with spiritual enemies that try to deceive all humans into believing a lie. Because I speak English and I call Him Jesus, these spirits want me to doubt and question, am I right, and is this name really working? I guarantee it is working for me, because I can read my Bible and choose to believe it is His name for English speakers. Guess what you should know! God and Satan both know English. But it is not just knowing that His name is Jesus in English that causes its power to work. There is another factor called “Faith” which means we must believe and not doubt. Check this verse out:
Act 3:16 And his name through faith in his name hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.
We are not sure whether Peter used the Hebrew, Greek or Latin name of Jesus when healing this lame man. But it really does not matter. All we know is the Bible is written in Greek so we can logically conclude that he used the Greek name, but he could be speaking Hebrew standing in front of a Jewish synagogue. What we can learn from this is that either way the name of Jesus worked because he had faith in the name that he chose to speak.
If you do not yet understand or have doubts, it is time to pray and seek God. Your future does depend upon your choices. If you believe Jesus is not God manifested in flesh to die for your sins, and you only know the English language, who then can you trust in to be saved? This is the same Bible that saved me and literally millions of other humans on the earth, including my mother, my father, and many other relatives. This is the same name taught in over 1.6 million English-speaking churches on the planet.
Remember there are at least 2.5 to 2.6 billion Christian believers in the world today. The majority of these people use the English language because of British and United States English speaking missionaries. It is ridiculous to believe we are all wrong with our choice of teaching in the name of Jesus, believing in the name of Jesus, praying to the Father in the name of Jesus, and casting out devils using the name of Jesus. Critics have come too late for me. I am already convinced 1000% and nothing anyone else can say will ever change my “Faith” in His Name.
Act 2:21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
These are two verses that promise us, if we call on the name of the Lord, we will be saved. Who is your “Lord”? If you are only an English speaker and you do not believe it is Jesus you might be in trouble. How do I know Jesus is LORD? There are many verses that reveal this but here is one of the best:
Rom 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
This verse leaves no doubt that Jesus is Lord and we must confess Jesus to be our personal Lord in order to receive “salvation” and “be saved”.
Now if you are not a native English speaker and know English as a minor second language, then get a Bible in your native language. Find out His name in that language and call on Him and He will save you, if you believe in your heart and do not doubt. Like was said earlier, God is omniscient meaning “All Knowing”. He can speak every known and unknown human language.
Thank you for taking the time to read and share the Word of God with the world. The time is becoming shorter with every passing day to the time Jesus will return to the earth. If we are not ready to meet Him when He comes to take us up, then it will be too late to get ready. Now is the time of salvation, this is your opportunity to receive Him by faith into your heart. Jesus loves you so very much. Please do not delay and ask Him to be your Lord and Savior.
Faith Exam Part 1 – Introduction
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 1 in a new Bible series about “Examining Our Faith”. However, this series is also a continuation of a former foundational study called “Understanding Bible Faith”. If you have not read this series, it might be good to begin there first. Faith is still one of the most important subjects found in the entire Bible. Many will say brother, that was a very bold statement about it being one of the most important Bible subjects, and others may say it was very overstated. Yet the more we learn about this subject, the greater the importance of having real living faith becomes. What is real Living Faith? Did you know that a Christian could have “dead” faith (James 2:20)?
Our subject matter today is exploring and expanding two aspects of the subject of “Faith”. First, what are the essential elements of real working and living faith? This would include asking about the adjoining necessary spiritual qualities of real “Faith”. Or asking what are the spiritual inter-dependencies of “Faith” that are required to overcome the evil spiritual force opposition that are attempting to stop our faith from working. Second, we will be asking the question and addressing the real “Faith” exam answers, “Do I have these qualities and the Kind of working and living Faith that is Pleasing to God”?
What is an Exam? An exam is what any student (disciple) takes in training to ensure their level of knowledge on any subject is sufficient for the task. Since our subject is “Faith”, the exam test today in this series will be a self-examination of our knowledge about real faith. What we think that we know about this subject is not really our issue. It is only the things that we do not know that are being used against us, allowing us to be defeated by our enemy. Do you know how we overcome this enemy?
1John 5:4 – For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
How do we overcome this world? It is only through real working and living “Faith”. This type of “Faith” is the foundation for every spiritual victory over each battle we are faced with. We already saw in James 2:20 that faith can be dead. Therefore, dead faith implies passive, non-living and non-working faith. If we go read 1 Timothy 1:5 and 2 Timothy 1:5 we can find Paul writing of a “Unfeigned” Faith. This Greek word translated as “Unfeigned” simply means not a “Pretend” Faith. This clearly implies that there are faith pretenders. Therefore, we are finding too many types of “Faith” being mentioned that are not the True kind of Faith that pleases God. These types are clearly non-working types.
Luke 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?
Do you remember this verse that Jesus said to us in Luke 18:8; “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth”. This statement should cause every Christian serious concern. We should all begin to ask; do I have the real living and working Bible God kind of faith that Jesus is looking for? Does my faith meet the Bible specific kind of faith necessary to please God? Is my faith working? Is my faith living?
Real living Faith appears to be more important to God than most know or realize. After all, remember that God says very clearly in Hebrews 11:6, “without Faith it is impossible to please God”. That makes having correct “Faith” sound incredibly essential. Yet so many people are completely clueless that there could be a correct faith, lacking faith or even a faith of complete error which is dead?
You see there is a great unknown to many Christians. Everyone in the world is living by “faith” to someone or something. However, many people are worshipping a devil, demons, or false religions. Many are worshipping the god of “atheism” believing there is no true God to give an account to. The number of possible false and misleading beliefs cannot be listed in any lesson.
It is essential to know upfront that it is only those that have heard the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and have believed in it as the Truth calling Jesus their Lord and Savior who have any hope of seeing Him and not going to hell. That statement will potentially offend a lot of people that have been deceived, but hopefully it will also awaken many others to the Truth. There is only One True and Living God and He made the heavens and the earth and everything on it, including all of us.
It is only the Words of God written in the Bible that can be the basis of True and Living Faith. In other words, if we do not have a foundation built upon known scriptures, we cannot have full faith for each specific situation or circumstance we are facing in life, including salvation, being made whole, God meeting our needs, our relationships, and receiving all of God’s provided fundamentals of life.
Let us pray and ask God to bless each reader as we read and study His awesome Word. “Our Lord God, we come to Your Throne of Grace, in the name of your dear Son Jesus Christ, to pray for your divine guidance in the writing of these lessons, and for all that will be led by You to read them. Let there be a connection in the Spirit and we request that you bear witness with Your Holy Spirit teaching us what is truthful. Open our spiritual eyes within our hearts to be receptive. We give the Holy Spirit full permission to do whatever is necessary to cause us to know Him and His voice to lead us into “all truth” according to John 16:13. But also help each one of us to be a more noble disciple of Christ according to Acts 17:11, to prove with our own daily Bible study time, what is being taught here is verifiable by what is written in Your Word. Thank you in advance for hearing, answering and speaking in our heart whatever we need to hear from you today before You return very soon. We ask these things in Jesus’ name expecting to receive, Amen”. Let’s begin.
Faith Exam – Series Introduction
In today’s world, it should be very easy to see that we are growing increasingly nearer to the time of Christ’s return to catch away the church. Of course, this would mean we knew what the Bible said about the end times. If we knew Bible eschatology, we would understand these descriptions are happening all around us and directly in front of our eyes, whether anyone else knows the Bible or not. Do you believe that your faith could play a factor in us being taken up when Jesus comes back for His bride?
Please answer this question. Did our faith play a role in being saved? Would we have been saved automatically without hearing the Gospel that gives us the opportunity to have saving faith? Some people believe this, but this is not true according to Romans chapter 10 and Ephesians chapter 2. What we learn from Bible study is that our faith participation was our determining factor for receiving salvation from God.
Therefore, the number one reason for understanding the real God Bible type of Faith, is that it is impossible to be saved without it according to John 3;16 which everyone should have memorized. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever ‘believes’ in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life”. According to God, our “faith” and “believing”, is our only exit out of hell. This fact alone makes “faith” an essential topic to understand.
Does the fact that Jesus said He is looking for “faith” when He returns, bother you? It probably should. We have already seen examples in the opening that there are different kinds of faith on Earth, and some are not positive types. And that every human on earth was designed by God to live by faith? This means every human is living by some type of faith in some kind of belief of who they are, where they came from and where they will go in the future after their death.
Therefore, how do we know if we have the correct knowledge of the kind of faith that Jesus is specifically coming back to find? Jesus makes it sound like there is only an exact type of faith that qualifies with what He is searching for! Not caring about knowing, not wanting to know, not having the time to learn, or thinking we already know are all tricks of the devil to keep us ignorant. Ignorance gives the devil an advantage over us, and that causes us to have the wrong faith. In a game of spiritual tennis with the devil, any ignorance even partial is “advantage” Satan. We learn this from Hosea 4:6 that says, “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (ignorance)”.
Do you remember that Jesus taught us that straight was the gate and narrow was the way to eternal life (Matthew 7:14)? And that Jesus said, wide was the gate and broad was the way that leads people to eternal destruction, and many are they that will go in (Matthew 7:13)? In Matthew Jesus is describing two paths of “faith” and “believing” based upon individual knowledge. Many who are deceived and ignorant to believe lies, are blindly following their blind leaders and peers to their destruction. But the wiser ones on the narrow path have heard the truth of Jesus and have chosen to begin to walk in His Truth.
Perhaps we can get some clues to find out if we are in the correct path of faith in this foundational subject verse:
2 Corinthians 13:5 – Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
As we can clearly see, this verse is speaking of an examination of our “Faith” that we do ourselves. This is where we must begin to learn the right questions, to determine what we know or what we do not yet know to correctly evaluate our personal type and level of faith. This means we are not going around as Holy Ghost “Faith” inspectors of others. No, God wants us to only test ourselves. It is impossible for anyone but God to test others righteously.
Here is a verse of immense importance that is in harmony with the beginning foundational verse of Luke 18:8. Never forget that Jesus was teaching us in Luke 18:8, of Him looking for a very specific and focused type of “faith” when He comes back to the earth. These verses of Luke 18:8 and 2 Corinthians 13:5, appear to represent two statements of agreement concerning a potentially determining factor which strongly indicates that those people that have His type of faith will be the only ones that will be taken, and all the others will be left.
Drawing this conclusion is very spiritual and logical since every human is living by some type of faith or belief which can be divided into two binary choices. These choices are 1) us hearing and believing the Truth of God’s Word, so that we become born again and are translated out of the darkness of this world into a spiritual place called “In Him”. Or we are 2) living by default “in the certain death” sentence of the first Adam (Genesis 2:17). This certain default remains if we choose to continue to live in ignorance of God’s truth. The first Adam only gives us a death walk in the wide path option believing Satan’s opposing lies. This option is us placing our faith in anything else other than God’s Truth. And this choice results in us not being “In Him” (Jesus Christ the Last Adam) who is Life (1 Corinthians 15:45).
By keeping our Faith “In Him” (Jesus), keeps us on the narrow path. And by continuing to study the Bible we will remain His disciple (John 8:31). This love of the Word of God is the correct path that will ensure and lead us to our full Freedom (John 8:32).
Do you see how entering Christ’s Salvation is the beginning of our walk on Jesus’ “Narrow Pathway” Journey? If we can see this, then we should be able to understand that this highway is not a single one-time entrance ramp containing no opportunities for U-turns or exits from it. This would be the loss of all our human free-will choices after salvation. Sure, our journey begins “once” by accepting Jesus as Lord, but then Jesus must continue to be our Lord throughout our life on earth.
This is why the Bible says, “We Walk by Faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Walking by Faith clearly indicates that our Salvation is a step-by-step Faith journey on a pathway with a God determined destination! However, like any highway or pathway, the walker still has the option of turning back or exiting off. That is not God’s desire, but Satan the deceiver entices many to divert away from God’s plan.
Also, Romans 1:17 clearly says “the Just shall Live by Faith”, meaning having no faith, or incorrect or incomplete faith is certainly walking on a path of “death”. Wow! These verses provide us an emphasis on a correct living “Faith” walk of life and proves that having correct living faith is essential. Thus, the reason why we are learning more today about Faith.
There are still too many Christians that still believe in a doctrine of “sovereign election”. This doctrine teaches that since a Christian was saved by God’s choice, there is nothing that any of us saved ones need do, to remain saved. Yet, all these other verses we are reading and studying strongly indicate otherwise. Let’s get back to our verse in 2 Corinthians and let’s read it again:
2 Corinthians 13:5 – Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Notice how that in this verse of 2nd Corinthians, God commands that we in the church, each “Examine” ourselves individually to determine if we are “In” the “Faith”. Doesn’t this sound like another reference to a very specific type and level of faith that God is expecting us to grow into and obtain?
Remember God is speaking of us performing an Exam. Then do not forget that an exam is something that everyone as an educated human has gone through at a school or higher learning institution many times. Also do not forget an exam’s purpose is to determine if what was taught to us was learned by us, comprehended and put into practical application. Therefore, an exam represents a knowledge test. Therefore, a Faith examination is still a determination and evaluation of our knowledge of God’s Word. But guess what, in this verse God tells us to do the exam of our own level of “faith” knowledge. Therefore, we need to know what real living faith is, to examine if we have it and all the elements that are quired to allow it to work.
If God personally places us into His type of saving faith by His sovereign choice, would it not be completely unnecessary for any human to perform a self-examination to see if we were there or not? Can we agree? Therefore, there is a potential problem and conflict rising with the sovereign God belief in “Election” without “Faith”.
Now, check out the word “Reprobate” to find the importance of what is being stated. This Greek word G96 is a compound Greek word comprised of the G1 “Alpha” letter as a negative prefix which negates and reverses whatever is being connected. The primary Greek word being connected to, is G1384. G1384 is defined as someone being “approved”. What does that mean? One synonym of “approved” can be “accepted”. Wow!
If someone can be accepted, they also can be rejected. Who is doing the accepting and who is doing the rejecting? It appears that the judge is God. We know this because Jesus said in Luke 21:36, “Watch you therefore, and pray that you may be ‘accounted’ worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man”. “Watch” means for us to be alert and aware. Pray can means to have a conversation with God and ask for His help if you believe your faith is weak. But the main point is for us to see that God is placing the responsibility on us to determine if we are worthy to escape the coming tribulation.
Therefore, whose choice is it, for the person to be accepted or rejected? Is this God’s sovereign choice also? Who has made each of accepted or rejected? If it is God, why then is the believer in Jesus told to examine themselves to determine which state of existence and category they are currently in? There are only two possibilities given to choose from. Could it be the human’s responsibility to determine which category they want to be in and then to do everything they can to achieve that level of being accepted? Or can humans choose to do nothing about testing their faith and remain possibly rejected?
I sincerely believe it is a human’s choice and responsibility to determine where we stand in our faith knowledge. After all this belief agrees with 2 Timothy 2:15 which says, “Study to show yourself approved unto God”. Isn’t this verse clear about increasing our knowledge of God’s Word and by correct study, and this will help us stay on the right path to be approved by God?
Do you see where God is leading us? God is giving the human through the personal examination of their “faith” type and level a time to make this determination of their future eternal existence while they are physically alive here on this planet. This means that each person is responsible for doing their own self-examination test. This self-exam will determine their type of faith to insure they will be approved by God, or if they are lacking in correct faith. Or this test could result in the opposite answer of being rejected and show the need for repentance and improvement in certain areas to move them from rejected to accepted. Do you see the value of self-examination?
There are other areas in the Bible that confirm this belief. For example, do you remember what God said in 1 Corinthians 11:31? This verse says, “Judge yourself and you will not be judged”. This is a view of another command to do another self-examination, so that we have no need for a heavenly external examination and judgement by our God. Uh oh? It appears God has given humans a great participatory responsibility to contribute to their own salvation process and eternal destination. Therefore, let us move back to our main study subject of doing a “Faith” self-exam.
The only logical results of the faith test in 2 Corinthians are first the right answer, which is “my faith” is “present” and is “deemed acceptable” according to standards taught in the Word of God. However, the second answer that is not where we want to be, according to the placing of the G1 Alpha as the prefix, which reverses the state of being judged “acceptable”, and changes the evaluation to mean I tested my type of faith and I judged it to be deemed “worthless” or lacking in something that meets the level of God’s “acceptable” which potentially causes me to be rejectable.
Uh oh? This is more serious than we can imagine. Why would the Apostle Paul be writing a church containing previously saved Christians and telling them to test their faith; to determine its value from acceptable to worthless? This appears to say there could be many varying levels of a person’s faith beginning at not being saved having no faith, then rising to a newborn child’s unusable type of faith, and then potentially increasing and growing to a level called “acceptable” like God’s minimum standard that will keep us saved! Let us look at another verse that appears to confirm what we are being taught:
2 Thessalonians 1:3 – We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth;
Notice how Paul is commending these people in the church of the Thessalonians. These people are being praised for the “growth” of their “faith” and their “love”. Wow! We should all be looking for this type of praise from God. Do you know what this means? This means these people are feeding and exercising their faith and love muscles and they are becoming stronger and more spiritually dominate in their walk in life towards others. This means what is on the inside in the spirit is growing and is coming to the outside to be seen as “fruit” in the natural realm.
Can we see that there are also implied growth levels above and below the level of what God called the “acceptable” level? Those that increase beyond acceptable are clearly of such value that these types of Christians are certainly viewed by Christ as more than the minimum type of faith that He is planning and designing to find? It should be very clear that levels of “Faith” can “Grow”. This means that “Faith” levels can also potentially “Decrease”. Let’s compare this statement of acceptable with another verse found in Romans 12:2:
Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
Please pay attention to the fact that God lists what appears to be three levels of His “will” being performed in someone’s life. Some preachers and teachers try to say these are not levels but rather they are just three synonymous descriptions of God’s will. This type of thinking appears to be established on the extreme position of God’s sovereignty and His will always being done in full to everyone, all the time. But this leads us to error and conflicts with other verses in the Bible that teach us God’s will is not being done unless we pray and ask for it. If you don’t believe this, look at the prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray in Matthew 6:9-10.
Let us examine quickly the definitions of the three Greek words that are in question to what they represent. The Greek word G18 was translated as “Good”. The word “Good” is certainly a very positive word and it can be viewed easily as the opposite of “bad” and “evil”. But notice how a good quality item could be potentially very far from a “perfect” quality level as in a “flawless” diamond. Would you rather buy a pretty good diamond or a flawless diamond?
We can clearly see in Genesis 1 that the term “Good” can have varying degrees of measure. The Hebrew word translated as “Good” occurs 7 times in Genesis 1 and the 7th time it occurs it is adjusted with the modifier “Very” causing an implied greater or higher quality emphasis of a basic “Good” level of quality and value.
Also, pay attention to the term “Perfect” as compared to “Good”. In Ezekiel 28:15 God described the creation of Lucifer. In this verse God says, “You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created”. This Hebrew word H8539 translated as perfect, is defined “entire, without blemish, complete, full”. This description appears to describe Lucifer more like a “flawless diamond” and Adam like a “very good quality diamond”. If you agree or disagree, there is a difference being stated, otherwise why didn’t God describe Adam’s ways to be “perfect” also?
From these descriptions, we should be able to clearly see Lucifer’s level of perfection was not how God created our present world system it being described as only “very good”. This clearly teaches us “Good” has a potential range of measurable values which is less than perfection.
Next look at the term “Acceptable”. This is the Greek word G2101. Strong defines this word as something meaning “a thing that is fully agreeable or acceptable”. This definition alone implies there are levels of acceptance that are below this standard. For example, partially acceptable does not meet the fully acceptable level.
Consider the bartering of a sale of an item. The seller has a goal of the level that is acceptable to sell an item at to meet their desired value of the item. But the buyer has a different view of what is acceptable for them to pay for the item. As you can see there is usually a compromise upon each party to achieve the sale. Thus, further teaching the levels of “acceptable” for each person has a varying range.
It should be obvious that what is acceptable to God could be totally different than what is considered acceptable to every human. In fact, what is acceptable to one human can be radically different than what is acceptable to another.
For example, take the subject of abortion. Abortion is completely unacceptable to God. But to humans the range of acceptability can vary from it being completely unacceptable like God, then moving to it being acceptable in special cases. Then human attitudes can continue downward to the level of abortion being acceptable anytime, even after birth which at any level of acceptability, these types of humans’ “acceptable” are totally evil to God. Therefore, someone’s view of what is acceptable can vary in levels that are clearly measurable. But by what standards? We must use the Word of God to determine our definition of what is acceptable to Him.
Finally, analyze the Greek word G5046. This word was translated as “Perfect” in our verse. This word clearly defines an item’s type as one of the highest standards of measurement available. The Thayer dictionary defines the Greek word as “a level of completeness that lacks nothing to be considered fully accomplished”. In other words, this appears to be the “full” will of God being performed by someone without omitting any detail.
From what is easily observable by the Greek word definitions of the words “Good”, “Acceptable”, and “Perfect”, is that they are not describing the same levels of an item. What we are confirming is that God’s type of “Faith” measuring has multiple levels that can be measured. Therefore, in 2 Corinthians 13:5, where we are commanded to examine our faith to not be judged reprobates, it appears that God has set a minimum standard of “acceptable” for what He is returning to find on the earth.
However, remember what God writes to the church in Hebrews 12:2, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith”. This appears to suggest that God is helping us to grow our faith. In other words, it is with God’s help that our faith begins and continues to grow. This means we are in a partnership with God, and we must cooperate with Him to continue to grow our faith. This means that God will “NOT” cause or force our faith level to grow without our participation.
Hopefully, you have learned in the Understanding Bible Faith series that faith is like a muscle. When a baby is born into this world, this child has all the muscles that are necessary to function but only with great assistance from a mature adult. However, we also understand, these muscles are not yet developed to be strong enough and coordinated enough to feed themselves, walk, or much less crawl, thus the need for a mother and a father to help sustain physical growth in the beginning of a baby’s faith training and education.
No, it takes weeks and months of feeding, growth and movement to develop an acceptable level of maturity to function like a human. I believe this is very similar to how a new Christian is born into the church body of Christ. They have “faith”, but it must be fed and exercised to cause growing and mature levels of acceptability.
Conclusion
We have just begun this series by establishing with scripture that we are required to have faith. But not just any kind of faith. Jesus has clearly implied that when He returns to the earth, “Faith” will be what He is looking for. This further implies that this is just not any kind of “Faith”. But based upon other scriptures God’s return to the earth is looking for a “Faith” in the works of the Son of God who is Jesus Christ.
Then we spent a lot of time looking at another verse in 2 Corinthians 8 that appears to command every individual church member to examine their faith to determine if it is an acceptable type of faith that God approves of. What we will hopefully find as we continue this study are the co-dependent qualities that must be joined with our faith to produce a type of faith that is working and alive. For example, we earlier say a type of “Faith” called “Dead” that is certainly not what God is looking to find.
We also found references to a “Fake” or “Pretend” type of “Faith”. This also is not a type of “Faith” that God is looking for. But we did find a type of “Faith” called “Growing” that was being praised. This seems to be the type of Faith that “a Christian” chooses to walk with God by Faith called the narrow “Path”, the correct path that leads us to eternal life.
The remainder of this series will deal with information about the qualities of “Faith” that are absolutely necessary for “Faith” to be acceptable, working and living “Faith”. I hope and pray that you are interested in this topic and can see how important it truly is.
Thank you for your valuable time. God’s Word is so amazing that all our time could be spent studying it. It is certainly that valuable, or it should be. God Bless you as we all continue to increase in the Knowledge of God’s Word.
If you would like to continue your study in the series, please go to “Part 2“.
Ending 2024 Blessings – Beginning 2025 Blessings
~ We Were Made to
Be Great Blessings
For Such a Time as This ~
(Ver 1.0) Hope your 2024 Christmas Celebration of the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ was very blessed. Every day of 2024 was great in His Presence. 2024 was an amazing year. It could clearly be called a victorious year for the Lord. But it really depends upon whose side you were on. Satan has tried to take down and out the righteous. But only the evil ones and their pride filled agendas were lowered. God’s light is shining forth with great brilliance and God gets all the Glory. His Word, Blood and Name will prevail over the devil’s agenda. Jesus Christ is Lord no matter what the devil attempts against His Church.
If God has done anything great for you in 2024, it would be an exciting blessing for everyone if you would share it to encourage others. If you believe that you have not had a victorious year in 2024, then it might be time to change and prepare to expect the year 2025 to be better. Become pregnant with the Word of God in your spirit, plant it to grow your faith, and then begin to expect God’s promises, His Great Love and His goodness to happen to you in due time.
What many people do is to focus upon the wrong things. Too many of us are focused upon our problems, trials and tests. Maybe you also noticed that it has been like a giant storm was happening all around us since 2020, this storm appeared to be bringing us only great destruction and evil. Yet God was still doing great, powerful and supernatural things constantly even during the storm and many people who only were focused upon the evil missed God’s goodness.
If anyone asked God to work in their lives and expected Him to do it, then God was faithful regardless of what we saw or did not see Him do. Please do not be offended, but “IF” you believe God did nothing for you in 2024, you are just wrong. I can guarantee you that He did all that you allowed Him to do. Uh oh?
You mean people can limit what a sovereign God can do? Absolutely! Either we do not see what He did, don’t remember his faithfulness in the past, or we were just actually never in faith and expecting Him to do anything. All of our fears, worries, and doubts place limitations upon what God is able to do for us. There are many reasons how people don’t receive God’s best. But we all have failed before, and God is always there to help us change what we need to change to cooperate with His will.
God certainly did great things in 2024 if you saw them. Take for instance a bullet missing Trump’s head by less than 1/8 of an inch and only piercing his ear instead of his funeral taking place. Praise the Lord! Then look at the election. More enlightened and awakened Christians turned out than almost any time in history. Praise the Lord! These are just two major things out of many millions of things that the Lord has been doing in 2024.
One thing that the Lord has been teaching me this year, is to let Him help us more in the very little things of life. Somethings we get too self-centered and think we are in more control than we are. How often have you lost a minor thing like a screw? It was only one small screw, and it dropped somewhere. Did you bother to ask God to show you where it went? I have been doing things like this more and more and I am beginning to realize that God does know where it is, and He loves us so much that He does what is necessary to lead us how and where to find it. This is how amazing God is.
Here is what I am expecting in the next year. I expect God to continue to put on a show for us. I am expecting many more people to be saved, healed and delivered from Satan’s kingdom. I am expecting greater miracles signs and wonders from a God who is able to do exceedingly more than we could ever ask or think to ask. I expect more victories for the righteous and more defeats for the devil and his kingdom.
I am a very firm believer that the church of Jesus Christ will be taken out of this world very soon, but only after winning and being victorious over the devil. This means Satan’s kingdom will lose a lot of people and God’s kingdom will continue to increase. Always remember the prophecy of the Apostle Paul when he wrote in Romans 16:20 “The God of Peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly”.
Thank you very much for being a faithful reader and subscriber of the Advanced Study of the Word of the Living God. Also, thank you for your faithful prayers. Without the prayers of God’s people for each other many people could have experienced worse things. We need to give thanks to God for all the really bad things that never happened to us in 2024. Remember, God says in Psalm 34:19, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers us from them all”.
Let us keep our eyes upon Jesus, looking forward, praying and believing for the God’s best together in 2025. Let us never forget this verse:
1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
What an amazing verse this has become since the election of Donald J Trump. Would you put it past God in giving us a double meaning written in this verse? This will be the “Last Term” of President Trump. This seems to be a hidden clue in the Word of God that could strongly indicate the Lord’s return could happen in the next 4 years from 2025 to 2029. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Hopefully this should help motivate people to witness more and tell people about Jesus.
May God continue to bless you and enrich you with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in Christ (Eph 1:17). If you have not made Jesus your Lord now is the best time possible to make this decision. You will certainly never regret it throughout eternity.
Serpent Witchcraft – Part 7 –God Confirmation and Prophetic Update
(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 7”, a wrap up of information in the series of lesson called “Serpent Witchcraft”. This series came from a study of the book of Revelation concerning how the Bible describes the end-times as many have been observing it happen before our eyes for the last 100 years. This series has been researched and published specifically looking to find Bible answers related to the end-time attack of Satan to kill, steal and destroy (John 10:10) through a release of a global virus “plandemic”. We all should understand that God is omniscient, and nothing takes Him by surprise. Therefore, in this series we have trusted the all-knowing Holy Spirit to lead us to understand if this biological weapon release was mentioned in the Bible. If you have read this series previously, you know we have found a lot of hidden clues in the book of Revelation about this subject.
If you have not read this series of lessons, there must be a warning given in the front. This subject like many other spiritual Bible lessons is potentially highly controversial and could be troubling to those that have not been enlightened to see spiritual truths. Any human saved or unsaved, without their spiritual eyes being opened, the unlearned carnal mind normally resists and fights against new information discovered in the Bible. This is given to only help and to prepare your to expect to potentially see things that you have never seen with an open mind. If you have not been informed, it is probably because most of this information is still being censored by so-called fact checkers, big tech search engines, internet social media, and the normal propaganda news media outlets.
If you have not read this series from the beginning, you could be potentially greatly enlightened by starting your study from “Part 1”. However, this lesson might be a good introduction to get you interested in what was written in the Bible about these subjects. I personally believe our omniscient God wrote a significant amount of information and clues by the direction of Holy Spirit through the prophet John. Most of us know that John wrote the book of Revelation. These discovered revelations appear to be directly related to this subject of the corona (crown) virus and the world’s response to treat it. Much of the book of Revelation is becoming much clearer as we approach the fulfillment of the words, because we can clearly see the technologies that have recently become so apparent.
Also, please note that some of today’s lesson will deal with the spiritual influences within the natural realm, including Satan’s involvement in politics to take over the world. There are too many Christians that believe a Bible teacher should never deal with a subject like politics. Unfortunately, John the Baptist, Jesus and many others in the Bible did not feel this way. God sent prophet after prophet to confront kings and kingdoms. Do you remember Jonah being sent to Ninevah?
God has always been heavily involved in our world politics. At least He does what is legally righteous to do. For example, remember Nimrod in Genesis 10 who began a mighty world kingdom which unified the world to defy God by building a tower called Babel? Didn’t God get involved in this plan? What makes anyone believe God is not working to do the same today, with our cooperation and participation?
Doesn’t God say in James 4:7 to “Submit yourself to God”? But it does not end there! God continues to command for us to “Resist the devil”. This literally informs Christian to get involved with what the devil is doing in politics. “Doing nothing”, “changes nothing” and evil prevails. Does this bother you? Do you believe you may be disobeying God’s Word for not voting and not being involved in politics? You should be greatly concerned if you do not hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in these matters. Can you answer yes to two questions with confidence, 1) do you hear from God and 2) do you believe you hear Him correctly in even little details in life? I guarantee that He is trying to communicate with everyone individually in all of these matters. He definitely loves us that much. But there is no human that I know other than Jesus, that has perfectly heard His voice perfectly in every situation of life from birth to now. So, nothing here is condemning anyone?
Take for example, the covid jabs that were forced upon the world. Did everyone ask God if they should participate? Does everyone feel confident they heard from God and made the right choice to participate or not to participate? We all have missed hearing God correctly at some time or the other, haven’t we? We also all know someone that was very ill from covid, and we even know some that died. Therefore, this knowledge could have produced a massive fear campaign which used by Satan to get people to take the jab. Did everyone have peace when taking the jab or not taking it?
As for my house, I felt very strongly in the decision of not participating in the jab. There were just too many red flags that were raised from the messages and tactics driving the narrative. There was never any real “peace” when others were taking the jabs. As a result of this we lost ministry opportunities directly because of this choice. This was simply because of the fear message of the government and the media that caused many doors of human contact to close. This was clearly a demonically inspired new plan.
However, there were so many that were forced to take the jabs or lose their jobs! Do you know anyone that just willingly complied without seeking God? Many of these have regretted this choice but that is not a condemnation upon anyone personally. There was a massive amount of pressure coming from Satan’s workers in the world to force everyone to take it. I wondered a lot why this was, what does Satan potentially gain from forcing people to take the jabs. And this preconditioning of the mind to take a forced jab is very much like taking Satan’s mark. This is exactly what will happen again soon in the tribulation found in the book of Revelation with the mark of the beast.
If you believe you heard from God to participate with 100% accuracy, then He is responsible for removing any potential harm that could have occurred from taking them. If you are wavering now and have experienced any adverse effects from taking them then God is still God and can help with whatever concerns, you are experiencing. This is of course only written for those that are still alive after taking them.
Are there any consequences for disobeying God’s commandments for Christians? Do you remember when Jesus said very plainly, “Why call me Lord, Lord and do not what I say?” That my friend is a warning with dire consequences for disobedience, believe it or not!
We have already touched on a lot of potentially controversial subjects so far. How are you feeling about these? Are there any words that have been upsetting or offensive to you? If you do not feel that you are spiritually mature enough when discovering a new viewpoint found in the Bible, to react in the love of Christ, it might be highly advisable to go read other websites that only teach what you may be familiar with.
Thank you for judging and preparing yourself in advance for potentially controversial and unexpected references and subjects that you may not have fully understood in the Bible or was happening in our world by Satan’s design. Please be advised that there will potentially be many more references in this lesson that may be offensive. Also notice that like before in mentioning the “jab” there will be other references that are figuratively encoded to hopefully keep some search engines from removing them from search results.
For the sake of walking in love, we will not be naming names in this lesson, but we will be comparing certain new facts to other parallel historical events and Bible accounts. Finally, we will also not be calling anyone a name such as Hitler or Stalin. This type of “name-calling” language is not walking in love to share the truth and will only cause greater divisions.
INTRODUCTION
Todays’ topic deals specifically with the exegesis of Biblical eschatological subjects found within scriptures written from Genesis to Revelation. Our focused view has been on God’s foreknown facts that are revealed about what the world went through beginning in late 2019. This satanic “plandemic” took the world by sudden storm, bringing the entire world into a state of chaotic fear. The lies that have been allegedly spread through this time since then are becoming openly known and published through the growing number of platforms that are still committed to provide us the basic rights of our “free speech”.
In this series we have been going through the study of prophecy in the Bible. This is commonly called eschatology, which focuses on the “last things” or “end times”, including events like the Second Coming of Christ. This branch of study examines various prophetic texts found in both the Old and New Testaments. But we are primarily focused upon a virus that was allegedly intentionally released for a purpose of evil.
If you have not noticed, in the world today, many of those that are living in darkness have grown increasingly darker in nature and behavior. Lies are being openly spoken everywhere as if no one cares to know the truth. But it appears these lies were and still are cleverly designed to indoctrinate people into moving away from what is Godly, good and truthful. This causes it to be easy to conclude these lies are originating from the spirits controlled by Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44). But thank God, He is still God and is not done with any of us yet!
I cannot speak for anyone but myself concerning what I believe the Lord has shown us about a lot of things that were a part of an evil plot of Satan that was released around 2019 upon the entire world. This is exactly why it was called “covid19”.
Many understand the Bible says in Isaiah 46:10 that God knew all about the end of the world from its beginning. One of the many reasons that I love the Word of God is the fact that God writes about the end long before it happens. And He can do this because it can teach us that only He is God. Also, it teaches us that these things, along with others that are written in the Bible will be happening just like He foresaw (John 13:19).
Today’s lesson will begin with a quick review and then we will go over a new update of what has been recently discovered by scientific research concerning the forcefully mandated jabs. These new facts will help confirm how the Word of God is amazingly true, and how this Bible study series was very accurate in how God’s word was reported to apply to Covid as “Serpent Witchcraft”. All the information discovered about Covid in the book of Revelation will not be repeated in this lesson. But first, we will do a quick review of some of the main points that we discovered in Revelation.
General Overview of Serpent Witchcraft
Every serious Bible student understands how Satan is called the spiritual enemy of everything good, and especially of God who is the source of everything good (James 1:7). The name “Satan” literally means “adversary”. This series is about how this evil spiritual being, produced a strategic attack of Covid at the precise timed event of an election for President in 2020. It has become very clear from the uncovered evidence how this plan for an enhanced Covid virus was allegedly intentionally released by a lab. It can also be logically concluded that this was planned by Satan as a clever design to remove one man out of the White House from a second term. Further we all should know that this nation that released this evil, has a representation of the symbol of a Great Red Dragon. Another amazing coincidence is that we should all know that this same symbol, is a symbolic name used by the Holy Spirit to identify this adversarial enemy of God, named Satan in Revelation 12:9 and 20:2.
Next remember that this enemy named Satan who was called the Great Red Dragon is additionally revealed to be the symbolic deceiver named the “serpent” in the same verses. This is the same “serpent” that is mentioned in the title of this lesson. The first mention of this deceiving serpent was in Genesis 3:1, and he is only clearly identified in Revelation 12:9 and Revelation 20:2.
Now recall what a natural serpent is. A serpent is a venomous and potentially sneaky and deadly reptile attacking people unexpectantly and silently. Also, a poisonous serpent’s main way of attack is through their mouth biting and injecting their poison. This is an amazing description of what we lived through with covid. A serpent’s bite is a figurative representation of a far greater spiritual poisoning. But in 2019-2020 it was both 1) spiritual poisoning, as well as 2) a hidden physical poisoning.
Romans 3:13 - Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
What is spiritual poisoning? We receive the answer by understanding Romans 3:13. This verse describes the mouths of spiritual beings that speak deceiving words (seeds) that produce the fruit of death. We find from the words of Jesus in John 8:44, that it is Satan’s inspired words that are plainly the source of every lie. These evil words are designed to corrupt our minds and deceive us (2 Corinthians 11:3).
Therefore, we know that there are types of words that clearly represent a language of deceit and lies leading to death. And by antithesis there must also be a language of truth leading to life. Jesus claimed His words to be Spirit Words of Life in John 6:63. God defined the death words to be the same as the figurative poisoning of asps (another synonymous name for serpents) in Romans 3:13. Remember, we saw this death producing example first in Genesis 3. But we have seen this again recently in the words of evil people that were clear lies during covid. These words deceived a lot of people.
God purposefully foresaw the symbol of this evil spiritual being, and it was especially wise of God to describe Satan as a serpent, knowing how he would manifest himself in the last days. Then remember how the jab medical instrument that was forced on the American people and the rest of the world resembles a serpent’s fang by like design. Then recall that many of these jabs were designed as two injections, the same as the mouth of a serpent’s bite. We are about to discover there is more to the story than just a similar design of an under the skin injection.
Also recall, that these verses identifying the serpent in Revelation further reveal Satan to be the deceiver of the whole world. To be labeled a deceiver, simply means Satan convinces people to believe a lie as if it were the truth. This strongly describes what has happened to the entire world population during Covid and all of this was prophesied to happen in the book of Revelation.
Hopefully, you remember the previous lessons spoke of a rider of a white horse that was written about in Revelation chapter 6. It was amazing how this information describes a peaceful world conquest like we observed almost happened in 2019-2020 with Covid. Almost every human on the planet suddenly was locked down with house arrest and most willfully complied with. Then when the serpent’s “tooth” jabs were released, there was a massive, forced compliance to cause everyone to peacefully take their marks without question or lose your jobs and not earn money to eat or feed your family. The evil of this time was then very dominant with most attempts at truth being silenced (canceled). This cancellation of truth is continuing to this day silently in many cases. However, we see God raising up new social media sites that have allowed free speech and truth to be spoken.
Doesn’t this sound like the description of the beast in Revelation chapter 13? Do you recall everyone will be forced to take the “mark” of the beast. And then we learned this beast was the same word describing the viper that bit the Apostle Paul that everyone watched to see if he died after taking the serpent’s poison injection? If this is not a parallel to what we saw happening in Covid, surely it has become much more real now to everyone than ever before. If you don’t know this, please keep reading to find out more about what is happening, the news media has not been telling anyone the truth.
Next, please recall that the first horse in Revelation 6 that was being ridden wore a “white coat” and this rider is said to be riding this powerful horse to conquer the world peacefully. Remember the symbolic horse can represent power as well as the color white for “peace”. Both are qualities of what took place beginning in later 2019.
Horses are very powerful beasts. For example, many measure the power of the gasoline engine of an auto in “horsepower”. Therefore, we find an image of a leader riding and controlling a powerful white coated beast that will be used to conquer the world in Revelation 6.
Who in our world today has significant power and is famous for wearing “white coats”? Today almost all doctors, physicians, pharmacists, lab technicians and nurses wear white coverings and coats. Who is in control of these types of workers? Can they do just anything they want like a wild horse? No this is not how it works. These are all being controlled by government powers. They are certainly under the power of the government in the USA, through agencies called NIH, CDC, FDA, etc.
Remember also that the color white, is a symbol of purity, honesty, righteousness, and integrity like a bride’s wedding dress. Would anyone normally expect a bride to suddenly take out a gun and shoot the groom during the middle of the wedding ceremony? I hope not.
Therefore, this symbol of a white horse under the control of a power, seems to indicate a world conquest will come through some methods of unexpected great deception. Could such a conquest be like what we observed in 2019, which began as a sudden virus release which almost instantly spread throughout the entire world? And could this alleged virus release only cause everyone to seek answers from a white coated medical industry being controlled by powerful governments?
Can you see how this message of covid was the cause of almost everyone believing that they needed an immediate solution for a savior? Who better to provide this rapid solution than through the peaceful looking and formerly trusted medical and pharmaceutical companies that provided the solutions for these new health problems and looming death causes.
Also recall how these big pharma groups and medical professionals wielded such great power of life and death decisions, but especially during the plandemic. Almost all these white coated people that help bring about the solutions played a significant role in administering “serpent fang” jabs. And these white coated large pharmaceutical manufacturers made billions of dollars. What did they put in these fang-based shots, that the rider of the white horse wanted to put in everyone to conquer the world, leaving him with an empty “bow” with nothing else to shoot? I believe we should all want to find out.
Now recall what else Revelation 13 said. In this chapter we found a beast and a false prophet that forced everyone to take a “mark” in order to buy or sell! Doesn’t this also fit the pattern of the forced serpent “fang mark”? Didn’t the government leadership force everyone to take an arrow shot that left a mark? Didn’t they also say if you don’t do this, you will not be able to work? If you can’t work, can you buy anything to feed your family? That is extraordinary pressure to take the “mark”, if you ask me.
No, I do not believe it was the mark of the beast, but it certainly was a rehearsal to reveal who is going to easily take the mark and who is not going to be fooled, for the real mark that will be coming soon for those left on the earth. Many Christians fell for this plan at first, but some became led by the Spirit of God and reopened their churches despite government threats, lawfare and pressures. These pastors that kept their doors open are literally heroes and we should celebrate their ability to hear from God and then their bravery to resist the devil in our government.
So far, we have reaffirmed who the “serpent” is, as being Satan using the Bible. But we may need to better understand God’s choice that He selected to use to identify Lucifer as a symbolic “serpent”. What does this word mean?
Next, we need to make sure everyone understands what “witchcraft” is, in the Bible. Hopefully you read the other lessons and know that the English word translated as “witchcraft” in Galatians 5:20, comes from the Greek word “G5331”. This word G5331 is transliterated as “Pharmakeia” and has the meaning “medication” as in Pharmacy. But it also means “magic” as in casting a spell.
From this Greek word we get words like “pharmaceutical”, “pharmacy”, “pharmacist”, etc. What we have learned is that while medicine can be useful and helpful for many, it can also be turned to become nefarious and very evil, and this is what I believed occurred in the Covid attack of 2020. It was white coated individuals in labs and in doctor offices that created and help distribute an alleged poison that has killed more people than most have heard about.
God’s Exposure in the News &
Updates on Covid Serpent Witchcraft
Over the course of time, it has become more evident how much pressure the President of the USA was under throughout his term beginning in 2017, but especially in 2019 and 2020 when an alleged bioweapon was released on the world. It has become inconceivable the demonic opposition that this man faced leading the USA.
This evil spiritual opposition included “deep state” bureaucrats, elected congressmen and women, many in the US Senate, impeachments, opposition of almost all the news media and Hollywood celebrities, and at the end, almost all the social media platforms, and then finally an alleged intentional release of a bioweapon called C19.
Facing such challenging spiritual giants, God needed a strong and fearless David like character to stand against them and now to take them down. This was who God raised up again in the 2024 election.
In 2019, the 45th President was potentially misled by the leaders of the CDC, FDA, and NIH and was pressured by the media to cooperate with their plan. This plan was certainly inspired by Satan for the rapid creation and distribution of new pharmaceutical jabs that we cannot truly call vaccines. This is because these jabs were unlike anything ever given to humans.
These jabs were never fully human tested mRNA injections, and they now appear to have been allegedly designed with the intended purpose for more evil than good. When a SARS vaccine was first tested on ferrets in 2004 it was scrapped as dangerous because all the animals died. That trial had to be well known by all the future vaccine developers.
It now appears obvious that the government’s initiative labeled “Warp Speed” was exactly what the devil wanted everyone to believe as their ideal solution and savior from the C19 death. This was clearly a deception just like we find in Revelation 13 with the mark of the beast. This mark was exactly the same, it promised the ability to temporarily eat to live but then only resulted in guaranteed “death”.
But if these created jabs were so good and safe, why were they paying people to take them at the first release? This was done especially in the lower income parts of the nation. Then why was the government forcing people to take them or lose their job later in the roll-out? Why were all US military forced to take the jab or be removed from service? All this sounds now a lot like an antichrist one world takeover preparation that is described in Revelation.
The world is rapidly discovering that these “shot jabs” were allegedly heavily laced with poisonous mRNA types of particles which were allegedly designed to eventually cause a delayed “death” upon many individuals that were forced to take them. But allegedly this would occur randomly by design, and slowly as to not be associated easily with the serpent’s bite.
Many are now discovering that these deaths were caused by massive heart attacks, blood clots, strokes, and now we are even seeing something called “turbo cancers” that suddenly appear. All these have caused many rapid and sudden deaths without any known family history or other known cause. These have been allegedly identified to have only come after taking the “jabs”.
Haven’t you seen the videos on the internet posted in 2021, 2022, and 2023, about news anchors collapsing suddenly with something that looks like an unexpected stroke or heart attack? These occurred while they were live on their broadcast. Why is there such a large number for these years of these types of episodes? Why are the causes not being truly reported?
Didn’t you see the videos of healthy young athletes in 2021, 2022, 2023 collapsing on their sports fields while competing, running or playing to win? We can be almost 100% confident that all these people were required to take the vaccine or not participate. These were football players, soccer players, tennis players, and other sports.
Haven’t you heard of the parents walking into their young boys’ rooms to wake them up in the morning just to find them dead of potentially cardiac arrest? Many of these people claimed that these kids had recently had the vaccines. This had even occurred with toddlers as young as a year and a half who were given the jabs without their consent. Haven’t you heard internet news and video posts about EMS workers that were alarmed to see the rise in calls for kids having strokes and cardiac arrests?
Haven’t you seen some moms and their daughters on video testifying about not being able to walk or speak after taking the jabs? Their descriptions of their lives that had been changed from normal youth activities to now being in a state of crippling and debilitating existence was devastating.
Haven’t you heard and seen about the videos and documentaries that were made to report the experiences of morticians in the United States and what they were finding while embalming those experiencing sudden and unexpected deaths? Most of these people found extreme blood clotting throughout the entire body after these people had allegedly taken the jabs.
What about my uncle who was a healthy senior citizen that played golf and walked for exercise, suddenly having a stroke after taking the jab? What about my healthy daughter-in-law that had suddenly had a miscarriage after taking the jab? You cannot tell me all these examples, and there are literally many thousands that you can find, were not made to allegedly do these things intentionally. There are many stories like these on the internet that can still be found.
Haven’t heard about any of these things? It is probably because you watch the mass media alleged fake news. These people have allegedly covered up these stories because of the massive amounts of money they receive from Big Pharma as ad revenue. No one can deny this is taking place because just watch the news and see how many drug commercials are played versus all others.
We have discovered now by proven researchers and test trials that there were several other proven existing medications that were effective in treating and preventing the symptoms of Covid. Most of these existing drugs helped to successfully keep many from death from covid19. However, these appear now to have been allegedly covered up by the heads of NIH, FDA, and CDC, possibly for alleged personal gain and greed. These people allegedly killed a lot of people by removing known treatments that worked, and these could have potentially saved so many lives.
Perhaps you can recall one very effective Covid fighting drug was labeled by NIH, FDA, CDC and the news media as horse medicine. However, this drug has been around since the 1970’s and its creator achieved a Nobel peace honor for its creation. Yes, it has also been used for animals, but it is plainly commonly used for humans because of its unique qualities and safety. It is deemed safer than most common pain relievers and it is now a proven safe drug for fighting Covid. This has now even been acknowledged by the admission of the government offices previously mentioned.
Another common safe drug was also proved effective but could not be prescribed by doctors because of the failure of the government to approve it for usage of treating Covid. All the alleged silencing and the alleged mis-directions away from using existing drug treatments appear to be a work around for a legal problem for the rapid production and application of this new untested drug they called a vaccine.
If there were any drugs that worked to treat the virus condition, then an “Emergency Use” authorization of an untested new vaccine would have been completely unlawful. Therefore, government agencies have allegedly removed working treatments and approved other drugs with low to no effectiveness to possibly allegedly kill more people to make the emergency push of an extremely profitable yet unproven solution the only solution and a lot of people allegedly got richer from it.
Remember we have previously seen this evil prophesied in Revelation 9:21. This verse, as you may hopefully recall speaks of evils committed by certain nefarious people who refused to repent. These evils are listed in Revelation 9:21 as committing “murders” followed by their commitment of “sorceries”. Therefore, we find a direct connection of “murders” with “witchcraft” our key subject in this series.
The term “murders” is self-explanatory. Murder is simply the intentional death of a human such as Cain slaying his brother Abel, and then telling God “Am I my brother’s keeper”? There appears to not be enough people today that are concerned with their brother either.
The “term” for sorceries, needs more explanation to be understood clearly how it applies to the corona virus. But hopefully you will understand sorcery is a form of witchcraft. What did Revelation 9:21 say? It said, “They did not repent of their murders and their sorceries”. This means these two words are connected by God’s design. It strongly implies that the murders were committed by whatever the “sorceries” are representative of.
Therefore, let us look at this Greek word again. The Greek word translated as “sorceries” is “pharmakeia”. Remember it is this word that we get English words like “Pharmacy”, “Pharmacist”, “Pharmaceutical”, etc. These modern words are all directly connected to the people in the industry responsible for mass producing and distributing the government mandated “jabs”. It is exactly this industry that wears the white coats that we looked at earlier. It is exactly this industry that allegedly got significantly richer during this alleged created crisis.
Wow! I believe this is exactly what we saw happening during Covid. People were being told to stay at home until they couldn’t breathe anymore and then go on ventilators in hospitals and most of these people died without the proper treatments of proven drugs. This literally sounds like major crimes against humanity.
Now we find that there are alleged excessive deaths from the forced jabs. If these deaths were accurately reported and tabulated the jabs would have been stopped immediately. This is because it is allegedly highly likely that more people have now died from taking the jabs to protect them, than from the allegedly intentional released plague.
Many in Congress have now discovered that it was the head of the US NIH that had allegedly secretly kept the creation of the gain of function Corona virus away from public knowledge. It was allegedly originally created in a government funded university lab in North Carolina, but when a previous president publicly shut the program down, it was allegedly moved secretly out of the country to Wuhan China.
The USA government allegedly secretly funded this research, and it appears that it was allegedly also intentionally leaked by the lab in China. This appears to have occurred at just the precise time to allegedly intentionally disrupt the US election and economy. It accomplished this by producing fear for shutting down most normal commerce and basic standards of living and voting. However, there were certain business exceptions for the alleged benefit of certain rich and powerful corporations that were deemed “necessary” to stay open.
Further, we know all gyms, small businesses and especially churches were labeled unnecessary. Access into medical facilities like hospitals became extremely narrow for entrance into. Many necessary surgeries and treatments were canceled. Other facilities like nursing homes were in total lockdown with no ability of relatives and families to see their loved ones. Also do not forget that all children could not go to school and had to be locked down at home allegedly causing emotional stress and trauma and many teen suicides. All of this was unnecessary evil beyond our comprehension.
But remember liquor stores and abortion clinics were all labeled as necessary. These were all very strong and clear indicators of who was really behind Covid and the shutting down of these selected entities and churches was Satan. God would never close the Gospel from being preached. God is the one that commanded us to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel” (Mark 16:15). Therefore, we know with 100% confidence that the serpent was the one at work during Covid.
Let us now get into the main part of what has been discovered lately concerning this “Serpent Witchcraft” forced agenda. There has been extensive research from Labs and doctors that have been able to test the ingredients being placed into the covid jab. One of the most significant things that has been identified are ingredients from over 30 different types of snake (serpent) venoms. Wow! This has been confirmed and you can even read about it on the CDC website.
Why is this so significant? This allegedly was done to be a silent and slow killer. Just as injecting literal snake venom into a human body can kill people with clotting, so is placing spike protein snake venom producers into a mandated jab which can also allegedly kill with clotting. Let us stop and review some known history to help us better understand what has happened.
Snake antivenom was first developed in 1895 by French scientist Albert Calmette, who produced it by inoculating horses with the venom of the Spectacled Cobra at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France. This marked the beginning of the production of snake antivenom. Antivenom was developed to counter the effects of snake bites.
Antivenom itself does not directly cause heart attacks or strokes; however, it is used to treat the effects of snake venom, which can lead to such conditions. Snake venoms can cause “blood-clotting problems” and “low blood pressure leading to shock,” which may increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes if not treated promptly.
If you have been awake and paying attention, you may have noticed what has happened to a lot of people in the world after taking the corona jab. While not everyone has been affected by this, many have suffered heart attacks and strokes shortly after receiving the jab.
For example, as I stated earlier, I know personally that my uncle had a significant stroke shortly after taking the jab. We should have all seen the videos of star athletes suddenly and unexpectantly collapsing on the field either in soccer or football games after receiving the jabs. These are just a few examples. There are many other reports available online. Search for it yourself.
Another easy to find news article on the internet comes out of the University of Arizona. Science labs here have discovered that even in many covid 19 deaths there is an enzyme that only comes from snake venom that was a very significant factor in their deaths. The fact that snake venom has the great potential for harm and can cause heart problems like myocarditis and other issues appears to be connected to the corona virus and its alleged remedy the mRNA jabs.
What we have learned so far is that God knew what He was writing in the book of Revelation warning us about a “White Coated” horse with a controlling rider that had a “bow”, but nothing left in his quiver to shoot. With this act this rider almost peacefully conquered the entire world. It appears that God is claiming there will be coming a pandemic that will cause great fear enough to cause everyone to willingly submit to whatever the rider is saying. He will be speaking confidently and convincingly, and he will easily conquer the whole world with his fear message for everyone to take his mark from “shot” arrows in their arms. But in these arrows and from their tips will pierce the skin of many humans to bring about the introduction of poison.
Just as it was a brilliant way to conquer the world in 2020, so again it appears it could be the same strategy in the future again during the tribulation. There are still many bio-labs creating more bioweapons. And when they are released, only God knows for sure.
This is potentially one of the next parallel reasons of the second red horse being released to bring wars and we can see this now with wars going on between Russia and the Ukraine and Israel and several surrounding nations. Allegedly the US was giving a lot of money to labs in Ukraine to develop new bioweapons and Russia would not put up with this, just as the US would not put up with Russia’s nuclear weapons being placed in Cuba in the early 1960’s by President John F Kennedy.
However, the US has been pushing their buttons to cause a potential new World War 3 between NATO and Russia with at least 3 nations providing Ukraine with intercontinental ballistic missiles. In retaliation Russia has threatened to hit back with nuclear weapons. This is exactly what the devil wants to happen. The US and Russia are both the major last hold outs to join the united new world order of government.
It is also very important to understand that the US Congress recently released a C19 report. It was well over 500 pages in length and has a lot of significant information confirming much of what has not been reported by the news media. Most of the truthful information that is available on C19 can be found on “X” and “Rumble”. There is limited information available on “Fakebook” and “Untrue” (codes), if the content providers carefully chose their words and spoke in coded forms. Otherwise Fakebook and Untrue have still continue to censor most of these truths.
Conclusion
A lot of Christians are deceived to believe whatever happens anywhere in the world; this is God’s will. In their thinking if anything good or evil happens then it is all God’s will for it to happen. But this is a lie! What kind of God would that be? It would not be a never changing God who is righteous, Holy and just. It would rather describe a God that changes from day to day, from evil to some and good to others. This kind of God would clearly make Malachi 3:6 a lie.
Our God is Love. He is only Light and in Him there is no darkness. Our God is Righteous only. Therefore, God gave His creation, including angels and humans the ability and the right to choose to serve Him or the right to disobey Him. God never forces any angel or any human behavior unless they are legally judged to be full of their evil. God will allow and permit everyone their own right of choice to love Him or hate Him. This simply means God allows what humans allow.
Yes, God is sovereign, but being sovereign does not mean everything happens the exact way God desired it to go. If God made everything happen exactly the way He wanted, you and I would not be able to do almost anything that we wanted to do. Don’t believe me? Then you don’t know God very well and how Holy He is, and how unholy humans choose to be.
Here is just a short list of verses where humans made their own independent choices:
- Genesis 3:11 – God speaking to Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat?
- Genesis 4:7 – God speaking to Cain, “If you do well, shall you not be accepted”.
- Deuteronomy 30:19 – God speaking to Israel, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore CHOOSE life that you and your seed might live”.
- Luke 10:42 – Jesus speaking to Martha, “But one thing is needful: and MARY HAS CHOSEN that good part, which shall not be taken away from her”.
- Luke 6:46 – Jesus speaking of future human judgment, “Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; BUT HE THAT DOES THE WILL OF MY FATHER which is in heaven”.
These are only 5 examples of humans making independent choices and there are many more that can be found. All these facts of Truth confirm God sovereignly gave the right for all His created beings to make their own independent choices. But when humans do it without consulting God, He is not their Lord and if He is not their Lord, then He is probably not their Savior either. If God allows this choice to happen, this means he must also allow evil to take place.
What we have learned from past Bible study is that God is infinitely powerful (Omnipotent) and all wise (Omniscient), and this simply means every evil independent angelic choice or human choice while they are permitted and not God’s will, these also cannot stop God’s ultimate will from being accomplished. This is because God knows how to work around them all very easily to accomplish His will. God is so much smarter than anyone He has created that our foolish choices only affect us and not His plan. Did you understand what was just said? It was very important so please read it a few times again and again to make sure it is understood, you will be glad you did.
However, the evil choices of angels and humans might change how and when God’s ultimate plan, will be fulfilled and accomplished. For example, God says very plainly in Isaiah 14:15 speaking to Lucifer aka Satan and the serpent, “thou shall be brought down to hell, the sides of the pit”. Yet God and humans are still waiting for His sovereignly spoken “will” to occur and it has been over 6000 years at a minimum of waiting that has passed.
What we must conclude from our Study of the Bible, is that God did not commit murder by releasing the Covid Virus upon humanity. We further must conclude that Covid was not God’s will, because God did not create it, man did. This further identifies God’s willingness to allow humans to make stupid and evil choices to hurt each other.
But here is the other side of the nature of God that we have not discussed in this lesson. God knew it was coming and could have warned us about it, and He could have told us what to do about it if we were spiritual enough to ask for His help and then listen and obey Him.
In fact, He did all these things for those that were seeking Him. There were modern prophets that were told the plandemic was coming. God also gave all humans His Word to fight against this plague. Remember, Psalm 91 says “Because he has made the Lord His refuge and the Most Hight his habitation, there will no evil befall you, neither will there be any plague come near your dwelling”.
Psalm 91 was a chapter, that I was led to memorize and quote out loud every day during Covid, and still do much of the time. All of God’s promises are “Yes” and “Amen” to Christians according to 2 Corinthians 1:20. God protected many people by faith in Psalm 91. Praise the Lord.
As far as taking the “jab” or not, that was everyone’s individual choice. If you refused you may have lost your job, but that would be better than death, or a stroke or the many other things that this shot has allegedly been doing. Hopefully, you prayed and asked God whether you should take it. I cannot speak for you, but I believe the Lord advised me, not to participate. There was just no peace in my heart to allow this substance in my body. Especially after what I believe the Holy Spirit led us to discover in the book of Revelation.
It has always been very concerning how this shot was forced on people and even very young children without any formal consent. In other words no one reported accurately what was in the jabs and what were their true abilities to help or what were their true risks to harm or kill. This was one of the first red flags that should have concerned us all.
This Bible lesson can easily be labeled as misinformation or disinformation by the big tech, mass news media or governmental agencies. Yet some of the facts of this article are published on several internet websites.
If you have any trouble searching and finding information on the internet to confirm what is happening, please use wisdom on how to search to obtain the information. For example, never use “Google”, “Bing”, and “Yahoo”. These have many filters of AI censorship built into their platforms. Just like “Youtube” (UnTrue) and “Facebook” (Fakebook). These tools will shadow ban a lot of truth tellers not allowing their information to be easily found.
Therefore, the current tools that will provide fair information access to all sides will be “DuckDuckGo”, “X”, and “Rumble”. You should be able to search anywhere and find true research and facts, yet even in DuckDuckGo, we find a search result of a lot of propaganda. These sources are “fact checkers” which can be proven not to be telling the truth with research. Other search results claim the soundness and safeness of the jabs. But if you get on “X” and search for “vaccine adverse effects” and see how many people are talking about this.
Also search for the term “Died Suddenly” and see what people are reporting. If you are experiencing trouble finding good links to truthful information, you are free to leave a comment and ask for some. For example, notice how hard it is to search and find results for certain key word searches. “Died Suddenly” is just one example. When you search for this phrase, there are a ton of sites called “Fact Check” that come up first explaining away why things that are stated on a few hard-to-find websites are being called false and misinformation. Notice how many sites come up that oppose connections of Covid with snake venom or also notice that there are a lot of website connections with snake venom being used as a solution for Covid. These are all designed misinformation sites that lead you away from finding the truth. Satan is very clever this way.
This was a different Bible study than the normal on this site. Yet this series was designed to inform people of how this information was foreknown by God and was written about in the Word of God almost 2000 years ago. If you were enlightened, it worked. If you were offended, it was not received in the Spirit of Love in which it was given.
There is a lot of information coming out and will continue to come out in the next few years about the subject of past serpent witchcraft jabs. Please become informed. There are many voices speaking the truth, in the midst of the overwhelming lies. Thank you for taking the time to read here. God loves you! We Love you! And we will pray for you no matter what you have experienced from this information and whatever you need from God. Thank you and God Bless you.
Happy Thanksgiving – 2024
Happy Thanksgiving brothers, sisters, friends and family. This is a glorious time to be alive before Jesus returns to take us out of the world very soon. Hope and pray that you are all doing well and will remember to take time on this day to taste and see how good the Lord is to us all. Here are our spiritual food verses for today. It comes from Psalms 100:
Psalm 100:1 – A Psalm of praise. Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
Psalm 100:2 – Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Psalm 100:3 – Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Psalm 100:4 – Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
Psalm 100:5 – For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
What a blessing it is to have the Word of God to feed on every day. Especially today in the USA, a day that we celebrate as a special time for increased emphasis and reminder for giving thanks, called Thanksgiving. Job 23:12 says, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food”. Therefore, as we recall the great and mighty works of our Almighty God, make Him your priority in this day and feed on His Words first, for they are spiritual life to everyone that finds them (Prov 4:22).
Did you notice what Psalm 100 said? God instructed us to come before His presence with singing, by entering His gates with thanksgiving. After everything the Lord has done for us, who will remember His great works and be happy and thankful enough to obey Him? Being thankful is a choice today and every day. There is always something to give Him thanks for.
Are we blessed to know God? Are we blessed to have His Word? Are we blessed even more to have His Spirit living inside us? Are we blessed to have the ability to praise Him? Are we blessed because we are not in the darkness and going to hell? These alone are enough to shout an eternity for.
Let’s praise and thank Him for the opportunity to live in His presence. Thank Him that no matter what our circumstances are, we can depend on Him. For His Word has said, “For He will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). But never forget the next verse that teaches us how to release our faith to release His promises in our lives:
Hebrews 13:6 – So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.
Hebrews 13:6 instructs us to open our mouth and say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear what man can do to me”. God is teaching us that we must come into agreement with His spoken words and accept them by speaking them. Because He has said to us He is with us, we must say He is helping us. This is what faith is, it is not based upon what your enemy is doing to you.
In these days of transition from great darkness and lies to increasing light and truth, let us keep our eyes upon God who is our source of all Light and Truth. Fo God has also said “While we look not at the things that are seen, but we rather focus on the unchanging God and His Word” (2 Corinthians 4:18), we can trust Him to do what He has said according to 2 Corinthians 4:18, and Numbers 23:19.
What are you thankful for today? How many things can you list that God has done for you? You may be going through some tough times, but rather than focusing on what is not good, look to your source of everything good. For He has said, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from Him” (James 1:17). He is our source for every need. He is our supplier of every good gift.
Look back at Psalm 100 verse 5. God proclaims His goodness, and His mercy is always present, and they will never end. That alone should give you hope to begin your day giving thanks to Him. Let us purpose in our heart to sing blessings of thanksgiving unto the Lord today. This is important every day, not just today. Yet we are being reminded by a Holiday that we should do everything to make a Holy Day. We can do this by showing someone that does not know Him, His Great Love!
For those in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving. For those in the rest of the world every day should be a time to give thanks to God. He is not finished with any of us, and He will watch over His Word to perform them in our lives. But we must choose to continue to hear His voice and be led by His Spirit to cooperate with His works.
We love you! God loves you! And the best is yet to come! His name is Jesus Christ and if you do not know Him, now is a great time to receive His free gift of salvation.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Deception the Greatest Weapon of Satan – Part 7 – Spiritual Warfare Good Versus Evil
(Ver 1.0) This is Part 7 in the series of essential Bible lessons on one of the most significant causes of many of the problems that Christians and even the general population are living through today. We now are living at the time of the very end of the church age of God’s Grace. People in the world that do not get saved very quickly are about to go through the worst times of all human history (Matthew 24:21). I know this, God knows this, Satan certainly knows this, and you should too.
If you feel that you are going through a state of confusion and are having trouble discerning between what is the Truth versus what are lies, what is Good versus what is evil, what is Right versus what is wrong, you are not alone. But I believe that you may be at the right place at the right time to begin to allow the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see things as God sees them. Stop right now and pray the Word of God:
Lord Jesus! I ask you according to Ephesians 1:17-18 that you give me the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. The eyes of my understanding being enlightened, that I may know what is the hope of your calling, and what are the riches of the glory of your inheritance in the saints. Thank you for opening my eyes to see what is true in your written words and how they apply to my situation right now. In Jesus Name. Amen!
Today’s subject is “deception” and “lies” of the devil versus the Truth of God. Both the lost world and even God’s saved Christian people are being faced with this constant attack of deception from Satan, every minute of every day. This is happening in more ways and from more people being used by the devil, than can be imagined or named. The lost world has easily fallen into the belief of most of these lies, but this deception has even caused some people that say they are Christians to also fall or drift away from their individual Bible beliefs and personal faith in God.
Most of the world doesn’t believe in the existence of spirit beings, like God or the devil. But there are also too many Christians today that believe there is no devil or hell. There are also too many other Christians that believe Satan is completely defeated and powerless, and we don’t have to be concerned with him anymore. All these people in the world and these types of Christians have already been deceived. This is our topic today about how this has occurred. If you have not read this series from the beginning, you might like to go to “Part 1” to start. Otherwise, this short lesson will still be beneficial to anyone that has the time to partake of it.
Embracing and Building Our Minds
on God’s Foundation of Truth
One definition of “deception” can be defined as someone who adds to, subtracts from, misdirects, replaces, hides or conceals the truth for their own advantage. But this definition could be applied to good or evil intentions of deception. Remember in earlier lessons we learned the concepts of good deceptions that are designed to help another. For example, I gave the story of my mother when I was a child, if you remember she mashed up squash and stirred and concealed it into my cream corn. You see I would not eat squash as a child and my mother felt this would be good for me, so she deceived me into eating it by placing it into a substance that I did like. Today as an older man, I do eat squash on purpose, and I like it. I guess my mother knew more than I did as a child.
I believe this is potentially how God is as our loving Father. He at times keeps things from His rebellious or foolish children who do not know what is best for them. God being omniscient always knows what we need. But there are subjects we are not mature enough to receive yet. But all God wants to do, is to get us to grow up spiritually and He knows many more ways of accomplishing this than we could ever imagine. And sometimes He does this in ways that are hidden from our knowledge or understanding as my mother did with squash to her son, who refused to eat it.
But on the negative side of deception, there is a different motivation and application other than for the good of others. For an evil purpose of “deception”, it can be defined to describe someone who presents untruths as in the guise of truths. These deceivers have great negative intents to get others to believe the lies to keep them from being born again and growing up spiritually.
The Lord be willing, we will someday do an in-depth study on Genesis 3:1. In this account of the first human deception, God warned Adam not to eat from one tree or he would surely die. But Satan places doubts in the humans’ mind by simply contradicting this warning saying, “you shall not surely die”. Clearly this was a lie intended to encourage the humans to commit sins, and it did work very successfully.
Another technique of deception we can see today is to cause people to view a person differently than how they had viewed them before by simply relabeling a good person as evil, or an evil person as good (Isaiah 5:20). For example, recall a recent popular and well-known TV personality that had a number one primetime show for several years from 2004 to 2015. This person was loved by every celebrity, news media and talk shows, and all Hollywood. Even every politician loved him.
But quickly all this popularity and love suddenly changed when he ran for President of the USA in 2016. Now these same people that praised him, had suddenly changed their narratives to call him Hitler and a Nazi. Where good words were once spoken about him, he was re-labeled by politicians on both sides, the media and modern celebrity culture as an evil man, simply because of a potential occupational shift. Why would a man labeled good for TV suddenly be thought of as evil, when he desired to fulfill a new and greater calling and purpose for his life?
This relabeling inspired by Satan caused many humans to believe that a good man could have suddenly changed to an evil man that must be hated. But we can all see that the only thing that had changed was the sudden shift in the words that were being said about him. That is a modern-day example of a great deception that was implemented to shift people’s attitudes and votes. If you do not believe this could be done to you, I am sorry to say you have been deceived.
This is just a very simple way to deceive people and it is repetition of what Satan did to God’s reputation in Genesis 3. By reversing a true personal label describing someone from being clearly good and labeling them as something evil like Satan did by implying God was a liar begins to plant the seeds of doubt about God’s character.
Most Christians should have been taught and understand that God is the first and final authority and source of ALL Truth. Everything that God says is Truth. In fact, the Bible clearly tells us in Hebrews 6:18 that it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we can depend upon God’s Words to always be True and free from every attempt of unrighteous deception.
John 14:17 calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. This just further confirms God is our Truth source. Jesus also confirms this by stating in John 6:63 that His Words are Spirit and Life. And in John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Therefore, God is dependable to give us Truth which produces Life. Satan on the other hand is only reliable to lie and deceive according to John 8:44, where Jesus said very clearly, Satan is a liar and the father of lies. We can again confirm this deception is what happened to Adam and Eve. If they had believed and obeyed God’s command they would live, but they chose to obey Satan and they both died.
Therefore, we are given a very clear set of guidelines in the Bible of two opposite personalities and forces with radically differing moral values. God is truth, righteousness and good, versus Satan who is called a liar, unrighteousness and evil. We can further confirm this by John 10:10 where Jesus was comparing his purpose for coming to earth versus Satan’s purpose for coming to earth. In this verse Jesus said, “the thief (Satan) comes not but to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that you may have life, and that life in abundance”.
It is very interesting to know truth in the Strong’s dictionary means “stability”, “certainty”, and “trustworthiness”. Without a firm foundation built upon God’s truth, humans have opened their minds to the lies of chaotic deception that can never be trusted. This is why Bibles have become illegal in public schools for children. This makes them easy prey to deception, unless the parents take this responsibility, as they should.
Therefore, God has drawn a line in the sand, and we are asked by God to step into the “cross” truth side with Him. God has said in Deuteronomy 30:15, “I have called heaven and earth to record against you today, I have set before you, life and death, and blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life…”. This is our daily warfare that we will be discussing in this lesson.
Identifying the Enemy
Here is one of our basic foundational verses for this Bible series of lessons. It comes from the book of Revelation chapter 12:
Revelation 12:9 – And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
As we can see from this verse again, there is a spiritual enemy that will soon be cast out of heaven. Until this happens in the soon coming future, he is still alive and doing so much to drag every human to hell with him. We need to ask, how is he able to cause even Christians to depart from their faith and follow him to hell? This verse describes the answer to this question on how he is very successful in deceiving “everyone” on the planet, including some Christians. God informs us that this strategy is based upon a concept of lies called “deception”.
We also learn from this verse that this enemy is named Satan and the devil. We further learn for the first time who is the spiritual being that was symbolically labeled as the “serpent” in Genesis 3 and has grown significantly to be symbolically called the Great Red Dragon in Revelation 12.
Therefore, we are learning that “deception” is a key weapon and strategy of this enemy and has been his primary tactic since the very beginning of humans. We should know that the devil’s “deception” represents an intentional misguidance through words, that direct someone away from knowing the truth.
We know this tactic of deception affects the church simply because of two factors. First the Bible warns Christians not to be deceived (Luke 21:8, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 15:37, Galatians 6:7, etc.). And second, we can see the effects of deception by observing the incredible numbers of denominations found within the Christian body of believers. All these denominations represent the presence of deception, based upon there being only 1 real God view of the truth.
Remember the early church when they were started in Acts chapter 2, they remained in “one accord” for a long time (Acts 4:24). But as the church number grew and increased, suddenly there arose dissensions, conflicts and disagreements (Acts 11:2). This was clearly the introduction of satanic deception fighting against the spread of the truth, and this has increased to such a level today that it is difficult to comprehend.
Christians today will literally shun a fellow believer simply because they do not agree 100% with what they teach. This is an example of true demonic deception because usually neither of them knows or realizes they are not God who knows the complete truth, and in their pride, they fight against someone exactly like them that God has chosen to grow and learn with them.
Deception within the last days before Jesus returns has increased within so many churches that they have become no different than the lost world. When a church embraces the murder of children, same sex unions and other abominable things, this is a sign that it won’t be long before these churches could all be taking the mark of the beast to worship the “antichrist”.
Satan has been able to keep a vast number of Christians divided against each other fighting over differing beliefs of doctrines. That is an incredible tactic of deception, and as long as the church is arguing against another church, they are not winning the unsaved world, nor are they resisting or hindering the plans of their enemy to take over and control the world.
This study subject is about the top strategies of Satan to send people to hell and to defeat Christians, called “deception”. It is this exact evil plan of deception that was implemented by Satan in the beginning (Genesis 3:1). And this original plot of deception worked so well against 2 humans in God’s planted garden, that it is still the same strategy being used today, only on a larger scale.
Satan’s schemes to deceive must be made known and understood to allow us to stand against them. God’s word says “His people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6). Just as Adam and Eve were ignorant of this tactic of Satan, so also are many of the people of God. Satan is our spiritual adversary (1 Peter 5:8), and he desires to devour us by stealing, killing and destroying us (John 10:10). But this is only available to him by him tricking us to open the door to give him legal access into our lives and this is called falling into his trap of deception.
As we have previously learned, no natural or spiritual army should go up against an enemy without learning their enemy’s weapons and strategies. The army should always be trained in the basics of their weapons that will be used to overcome these enemies. This training is done individually and as a unified working unit in their basic offensive and defensive weaponry. These are the fundamentals of how to overcome a known enemy’s tricks and traps.
Jesus Christ is a Christian’s commanding officer, and we must call Him Lord of every aspect of our lives. He won the war for us, but Christians remain here in combined teams and individual spiritual warfare to battle and work for Him. Christians must cooperate with Him against these evil spirits to enforce His won victory. We accomplish this primarily through living in “Peace” (Romans 16:20), being led by His Spirit (Romans 8:14) and by using His given spiritual authority accessed through our faith in His Name (Acts 3:16).
These are some of the main factors that will cause us to win the victory over our enemy by us cooperating with God’s plan. Hearing from God and obeying His voice will cause us not to be destroyed. Let us begin to examine some of these basic tactics of deception work.
Satan’s Tactics of Deception
There are many ways how a Christian or the unsaved world can be further deceived. Did you notice I said “further”? It should be obvious that all Christians are at least partially deceived about something, because only God knows the entire truth and we all grew up in a world full of deception. These lies of Satan that we have all encountered had some effect and influence upon each of us, whether we admit it or not. This is why the Bible commands us to not be conformed to this world. And it says we are freed from this corruption only by the “renewing” of our minds. The implied renewing agent is of course the Word of God’s Truth (Romans 12:2).
There are significantly too many ways to be deceived to list in one lesson. But we will cover a few of the things that God teaches us in His Holy Word about our enemy and his tactics of deception.
Ephesians 4:27 – Neither give place to the devil.
We are commanded to not give the devil any place in our life. This verse clearly teaches us that it is what we choose that must determine the access of Satan to enter in and take ground from us. When an enemy attacks their opponent (us), this means they are trying to occupy the territory that we are in possession of. This is a spiritual warfare that we are participating in willingly or unwillingly. For a Christian there is no option but to participate because Satan will not stop trying to defeat us, unless we resist him (James 4:7).
This warfare takes place in the spiritual realm and is fought with spiritual weapons that include primarily words and thoughts. The battle is for truth. Each Christian has varying degrees and levels of truth if they are saved. It is impossible to get saved without hearing and believing the Truth of the Gospel (Romans 10:9-10, 17).
If Satan can get a Christian to believe any lie that is not a part of the Bible, he has taken a small bit of ground to overcome us. This is why we must learn the Word of God and put it into our mouths to win. God’s Word is always Truth, if it is rightly divided and understood. If Satan can get a Christian to believe a wrongly divided Word of God, this too brings deception. So, we must make sure we are hearing from God correctly. We also must verify every word that is being taught to us, with our own Bible studies (Acts 17:11).
We learn in the Bible that God’s Words are the most powerful (Hebrews 1:3, 4:12). This means whatever Satan tries to say to us we can be like Jesus in Luke 4:1 when He was tempted by Satan. Jesus set the ultimate example to follow. First Jesus knew and understood the Word of God. He did not have to say to Satan wait a minute while I look up that verse. No, Jesus just said, “It is written” and quoted the right verse to counter the devil’s temptation to sin. So, if we can learn His Words and keep these words in our mouth, we are practically guaranteed victory (Hebrews 10:23).
But if Satan can get a Christian to get distracted by his thoughts or their circumstances, this can take their focus away from the Holy Spirit’s voice, and His Written word. These tactics usually always are designed to initiate deception. And this is the beginning which was devised by the devil to change our previously focused God beliefs in a new direction of believing things that are not true. And when we continue to think negatively and wrong, for enough time, this is designed to change our spoken words. Once we speak wrong and believe it, Satan has us exactly where He wants us (Proverbs 6:2).
Finally, all of this can then align us with the spirit of fear (Satan) (Job 3:25). This can allow Satan to gain an entrance to control us and even to destroy us like he did Job. And all of this describes how Satan can gain an opening to take away enough spiritual ground to take full advantage to win over us.
The more ground (mental and spiritual focus) Satan takes by replacing our right thoughts and words (Truth), the greater impact we allow him to accomplish. When a Christian’s thoughts are completely shifted away from God’s spiritual ways, to align with carnal worldly ideas and beliefs, this Christian has been turned away from following God’s narrow path leading them to Life Eternal.
The only other direction to travel is to follow with the Satan influenced people in the natural world in the wide path representing there is no God judgment consequences for sin, or there are many ways to God deceptions. Satan desires everyone to be led into the deceived common and comfortable wide path because this is leading them all to eternal damnation. This is exactly why Satan wants no Bibles in public schools for children. Instead, he is feeding children lies to corrupt their beliefs and these can become strongholds.
2 Corinthians 2:11 – Lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.
This verse further confirms what God taught us in Hosea 4:6. God wrote to us in Hosea 4:6 that being ignorant of Satan’s devices (plans and strategies) is one major reason that gives the devil an advantage to defeat us. But there is another opening that caused by Christians not being a doer of the Word of God. Jesus taught us this in a parable of the wise man that built his house on the foundation of the rock (of Jesus) by doing what Jesus said (Luke 6:47-48).
Some Christians believe they can go to church and listen to the preacher’s message and then walk out and live their life like they want to. This is based upon the assumption that the preacher is teaching them the Truth. But Jesus clearly teaches this will only get your life destroyed by the storms of life caused by Satan. Everyone will have a storm it is practically guaranteed, but when they do come, those that know and do the Word of God, their house will not be shaken or fall. It is not so fortunate for those that either do not know the word or refuse to do it, they are deceived and will not stand. Satan is so much stronger than people know. He has been here and alive for thousands of years longer than us. He has been in the presence of God in heaven, and he knows how to fight better than any human alone. Thank God we are not alone if we are saved!
Sometimes a Satan victory over a Christian only means the Christian dies younger than they should have (1 Corinthians 11:30). But other times it could mean that Christian believer could have been tricked into departing from their faith completely (Hebrews 3:12). This means at the end of their mortal life they are joined back with Satan’s destination to live eternally in hell (1 John 5:16, Heb 10:26).
For example, this verse in 1 Corinthians 2:11 immediately follows verse 10 that stipulates one main reason why a Christian could give Satan an advantage. Verse 10 describes a state of unforgiveness in the life of a Christian. This means someone has potentially done something evil or horrific to them which caused them mental, physical or emotional hurt and pain. But instead of giving this to Jesus Christ, they carry the burden themselves as a heavy load of unforgiveness. This obviously is a sin and when a Christian operates in unforgiveness, they have given their enemy an opening to attack them by not doing what Jesus commanded them to do (Mark 11:25). This is a prime example of one technique of deception to keep Christians from obeying their Lord and Savior.
Deception taking place today can be easily identifiable through Satan’s usage of many other significant strategies revealed in the Word of God. There are so many of these that we cannot list them all, nor can we teach them all fully and in depth today. These methods of deception include, but are not limited to the following:
- One very Popular Strategy of Satan is for him to use a deceived person and fill their mouth with his spirit of accusation against a righteous Christian. Satan is called the accuser of the brethren in Revelation 12:10. He is constantly at work to divide humans with this technique of accusation. However, Satan uses whatever the deceived person is guilty of doing, to accuse the good person of doing it (Romans 2:1-3). For example, God gets accused and blamed by Satan and his people, for every death, evil and destruction, but Satan is the one guilty of these things according to Jesus in John 10:10.
- Another key strategy of Satan has become a plot to actively and openly deceive people and nations with massive and overwhelming unified lies from many mouths of Propaganda (Revelation 12:15). Satan telling these lies over and over through mass media, until people and nations are influenced into accepting the lies as truth. This is has become an overwhelming deception plot like a “Flood” of untrue words. It is now being used by Governments and their State Run News to keep all their people in-line with their evil agenda.
- Another common Satan strategy is to mix a small Portion poisonous lies with a greater portion of truth (Genesis 3:1-5). This Causes the lies to be planted in the hearts of people and accepted as truths more quickly. Then Satan can bring more new lies that can then be jointly slipped into the message for increased deception as each previous lie is accepted. This is a progressive deception and there is a pun intended by design in this technique name.
- Another very popular modern method of deception is to make evil lies entertaining and funny. Anything that is untruthful and evil can become entertaining to indoctrinate people into accepting the same flow of deceptive evil. Modern television and movies have used comedy extensively to play a huge part in building up lies in humans. They funnier they can make sin they more people are led to enjoy it and participate in it.
- Another popular and successful Satan Strategy to deceive Christians is to mix one of the Greatest Truths of God’s Word into a known cultic taught message so that those that are beginning to know some of God’s basic Truths will immediately reject the greater Truth. For example, there are multiple Christians churches today that deny the virgin birth of Christ, the Messiah. With out this truth this makes the Lord Jesus just a man and denies His direct claims to being God.
- The final tactic of deception to be listed today, we will call the antichrist deception. This is going to be a man that appeals to the masses. He will be a man of the greatest deceptive attributes possible. He will look physically nice and appeal to many people. He will appear extremely intelligent and appear to have a solution for any problem. But the most deceptive quality is he will have the ability to speak lies as if spreading them smoothly like butter or jam on a piece of bread that will be eaten up by most that hear them. Many will be drawn to him but at the end of his smooth talking there will only be death and destruction for the entire world. This spirit is working in people today, but they are not the final coming antichrist.
Perhaps you also have seen all these tactics taking place recently? The strategies of Satan have been working because too many people who know a lot of the truth, are too passive to raise the red (blood of Jesus) flag of truth against these plots to deceive. By doing nothing there is no way to overcome the lies and deception taking place. Knowing God’s Truth and speaking it in love, loud and clear today is the only way to victory.
For example, Satan has even taken considerable ground about the basic family unit created by God. In the beginning God made them male and female and there were only these two in the first family. But some churches believe God created a lot of other genders and family types. But Malachi says God never changes. How it was in the beginning will be how it is in the end.
Christians in the New Covenant and New Creation are constructed uniquely by God, and we are supposed to know the truth of the Word of God. We were designed by God to have an advantage over the Old Covenant people, the lost unsaved world and even the created angels.
For example, those in the world are easy prey to Satan’s deception. But real Christians should have the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Truth living on the inside joined with our spirit (1 Corinthians 5:17). And God on the inside causes us to be far greater than the deceiving enemy in the world (1 John 4:4). Yet too many Christians who have the Spirit of Truth, don’t choose to listen to Him, when the lies of the enemy are presented, nor do they spend the time to read and study the Bible to figure out what He might say.
Conclusion
This has only been a basic review and overview of just some of the evil strategies of Satan to deceive the world and the saved church. We are living through a great rise in deception today. It surrounds you, it bombardes you from every side of your existence. It is Satan’s plan to overcome you using these constant words of lies deception. We will end this lesson with just a couple of key verses of hope and promises of God’s strategies to overcome Satan’s deception:
John 8:31 – Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
John 8:32 – And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Are you a believer? If yes, these verses and words were spoken to you. The keys to be set free from Satan’s deceptions, tricks, traps, and works of evil, is to continue reading, studying and listening to the Word of God, both day and night and always being led by the Holy Spirit. Yes, the world is a busy place with lots of distractions and important things we must also do. Most work, most have a family life, many have children and there are just necessary things that must be done to live here.
But spending as much time as you can, will benefit you more than you can possibly imagine. Seeking to know the Word of God like a valuable treasure that it is, will cause God to bless you with more and more revelations to knowing Him and His ways. To know the Truth, and to understand it will keep you from being deceived. To be ignorant of the Word will allow Satan to begin to deceive you into a path of destruction.
Romans 16:20 – And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
This is a prophecy that has not yet been fulfilled. This very clearly says it will be our God of Peace that will bruise Satan under our feet very soon. We know this because our church age of grace is ending very soon. According to this verse, the church was designed by God to win over our spiritual enemy and to crush Satan’s head under our feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace (Ephesians 6:15). There are times it does not look like this is possible to occur, but God said this is exactly what will happen. And God is not a liar (Numbers 23:19). All we need to do is to choose to participate and cooperate with His plan.
Thank you very much for reading and studying the Bible with us today. Hopefully you can begin to recognize and see all the deception that is taking place around us. It is on the internet. It is found on television, in newspapers, movies, and even in many churches. If you ever recognize lies being spoken, it is time to stop reading them, watching them, or listening to them. Jesus said very clearly for us to “take heed what you hear”. God also instructs us to guard our hearts with all diligence. Protecting what you are allowing in your mind, blocks what gets planted in your heart.
There is a flood of lies coming to you in this season of time. The church must stand up and preach the truth to counter the devil’s lies. God is not finished with America. God is not finished with Christians all around the world. The victory has begun by the Lord Jesus Christ but must be enforced by the Body of Christ being led by His Spirit. God has prophesied the Bride of Christ to be a victorious woman over the devil (Genesis 3:15, Revelation 12:1, Romans 16:20, Luke 10:19, Romans 8:37, 1 John 4:4, 1 John 5:4, 1 Corinthians 15:57, 2 Corinthians 2:14, Isaiah 54:17, Revelation 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26, 3:5, 3:12, and 3:22, to only name a few).
God bless you very much and please keep being a faithful doer of the Word of God and not just a hearer only. Only doing what God says ensures us that we can stand through all the deceptions and storms of life (Matthew 7:24). Being in God and remaining with God, will cause us to always triumph and overcome all evil. God is good and Good will always overcome evil. Truth will always prevail over lies. God can’t be defeated, so let us remain with Him always and He says He will always remain with us and on our side (Hebrews 13:5-6, Psalm 118:6).
Have a blessed day and night and continue praying always in the Holy Spirit. Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible here. We pursue Truth to know it, apply it, and live it but also to share it with everyone that is willing to learn it. Finally, never forget how much God loves us. He is doing and will continue to do exceedingly and abundantly for us, with us and to us than we can even imagine.
2024 Election – Submit and Cooperate with God and Resist Satan
(Ver 1.0) This is one of the most important Bible lessons you will possibly ever read after becoming a Christian. Why do I say this? It is because of the end-times that we are living within. If you are unable to read this entire lesson due to time constraints, I would strongly suggest that you at least watch this video. I recently watched this video, and it was so well stated with truth that I felt like sharing it with everyone that has subscribed here. It is from a pastor named Josh Howerton from “Lakepointe Church”. I do not know this man, nor have I listened to anything else that he teaches. But this video is right on target with what needs to be taught in every church immediately.
For those that can read the rest of this lesson thank you for your faithfulness. Today, we must know today that Satan is a real spiritual being with amazing powers to deceive the entire world (Rev 12:9) and even Christians as we can read from the mouth of Jesus in this verse:
Matthew 24:24 – because false messiahs and false prophets will appear and display great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
This could be the news everywhere in America and the world, if anyone told the truth. The news media are the false prophets for the godless plan of Baal and Satan’s evil agenda. There are too many people in the world today that believe they are God, when some day soon they will discover they were only deceived by the god of this world.
This verse does not say that it is NOT possible to deceive the elect, as some might like it to say. If this is what Jesus wanted to say, he would have said, “It is impossible for the elect to be deceived”. Since He did not say it that way, He is saying there are ways for Christians to be deceived.
What then determines if a Christian can be deceived? It is their personal choices to whom they are listening to. Jesus warned us very clearly, “Take Heed what You Hear” (Matthew 4:24). Why is it important to not listen to evil voices telling lies? Jesus explained this war of words in Mark 4:13-20. This parable is called the Parable of the Sower, but it is more clearly identifiable to be about God’s Words versus Satan’s words that are two kinds of opposing seeds. These two types of seeds are competing for domination of the same soil, called the human heart.
If it was only a power match-up, there are no words more powerful than God’s words (Hebrews 4:12). But that is not what is happening in the world today. The Bible was removed from schools by Satan’s design in 1963. Therefore, most of the lost world are being dominated by only voices of evil influence in too many schools by too many evil deceived teachers. When a person hears only evil, they are easily misled to believe lies.
If you believe that you are a Christian and yet you are listening to the satanic controlled mass news media, you might want to pay close attention to this lesson. If you are believing the propaganda that the news is telling you today, you could be an example of a deceived or possibly a former Christian that has been led astray away from hearing the voice of your “Great Shepherd Jesus Christ”. Please don’t be an easily misled sheep and follow any voice that you hear, especially those voices that are attempting to indoctrinate you with lies:
1 John 4:1 – Dear friends, stop believing every spirit. Instead, test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
If a Christian could never be deceived to follow a wrong message from an evil spirit, would God have needed to write verses like this in your Bible? Please, wake up! Don’t believe anything anyone teaches if there are no Bible verses given as the foundation of Truth. Test every spirit, God says and see who the source is.
All words come from spirits and there are only two dominant influencing spirits. The first and only spirit that Christians should be listening for, is the voice of the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit that is one with our spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). God normally speaks with us Spirit to spirit (Romans 8:14). However, there is another spirit in the world that is named Satan who has a very large number of evil spirits that are constantly trying to mislead real Christians back into their former darkness and confusion.
Words are “seeds” that have great power to speak a release of either “truth and life”, or these seeds can be released to mislead us into “lies and death”. God’s words are designed to lead us into eternal life and His narrow path to heaven. But Satan’s words are clearly designed to bring you into believing lies for the wide path leading to hell. The Holy Spirit is the only source of Absolute Truth (John 14:17), and Satan is the inspiring source of all deception and lies (John 8:44, Revelation 12:9). It depends upon which spirit and voice that we choose to yield ourselves, determines which words will take root in driving us in the direction of their spoken words:
Job 26:4 – To whom have you uttered words? And whose spirit came from you? (NKJV)
One thing that many of us have learned from living on this planet for many years, is that whatever the devil does or says, is not the truth. It has been rare to find the voice of God’s Holy Spirit anywhere on mass media news. Therefore, whatever they are telling you, the opposite is usually closer to the truth than the trained parrot propaganda that is coming out of their lips.
Another parable that focuses upon this issue is found in Matthew 13:24-30. This parable is often referred to as “the parable of the weeds” or it is also called “the parable of the wheat and tares”. In this example, Jesus clearly teaches us there are only two planters of seeds in the human heart. The Good crop came from God and produces wheat. But the enemy seeds came from Satan, and these produced only worthless weeds called tares that were cast into hell to be burned eternally.
Since words are seeds, they are planted into your heart after hearing them. The more you hear them the more they can take root and choke out the other antithesis seeds. It is impossible to not hear satanic seed words today. But it is possible for us to choose to turn them off and not listen to them constantly so that they do not take root. This is how Christians can become hopelessly lost from God forever, if they only focus on what Satan is deviously saying, teaching, or just outright attempting to get you to believe his lies. This has been happening in the world for many years and Christians need to stand up and counter this tactic with the “Truth” of God.
One thing that I have noticed today in living life in the USA, is to watch and observe what Satan is saying and doing. By learning his tactics, we can better know what to do in cooperation with God to counter every evil plan. Uh oh? That is a new concept to many Christians. Too many people that say they are Christians do not know what the Word of God says. For example, they do not understand that they have an enemy that is attempting to deceive them, their family, their children, their spouses, their friends and co-workers. And these types of Christians can also not be aware that they will be held responsible for not fighting against this enemy plan by telling people how not to be deceived.
James 4:7 – Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
We have an enemy that is trying to deceive us and silence us from sharing the truth. God is more powerful certainly, but do not underestimate your enemy’s abilities to trick, lie and deceive. This literally means we submit daily to God’s Spirit and His Word, and we do what He instructs us to do. Remember the Word of God and the Spirit of God will always agree. Then while doing what God says, we also completely “resist” everything that the devil is trying to do to steal, kill and destroy us (John 10:10). This simply means we choose to work with God and against Satan daily.
So, what is Satan doing that we need to “resist”? First, for a short history lesson about politics and the church. When the nation was founded, one of the greatest foundations for creating the United States was God and the Bible. Many people moved to America to establish and obtain a place of religious liberty. Meaning they did not want a state driven religion. This concept has been twisted to mean they wanted total separation of the church from the state government. But that is far from the truth.
America’s foundations upon the Judeo-Christian values were and are still built into all the foundational documents of the nation. The founding fathers of the USA were a majority of men who were Christians. They intended this not to be run by men that were not Christians, but those that were true Christians. These were the leaders they intended to be elected to govern us. However, Satan has other plans to shift us away from this and one key example occurred long before the 1960’s.
Congress of the USA began to implement laws requiring tax-exempt organizations like churches and non-profits to come under a federal government requirement to be tracked as a 501-C-3. This legal process began in the early teens of the 1900’s. This law was further enhanced and expanded in 1943. And then again in 1954 when it became more in line with the modern tax codes and requirements.
These laws migrated all US churches under the control of the federal government by claiming it was giving them tax-exempt status. That sounded good but this is the way Satan uses a government’s works to deceive. Every law is named to be a positive benefit but has a hidden agenda for evil control.
The legal right to be called a tax-exempt organization was what a church was from the beginning. In fact, there were no federal taxes at all when the USA was established. Wow! It was also a tax rebellion against England that gave the people of America the further drive to form their own nation. America was being taxed with no representation within the English government.
What these laws were really designed for was to track every financial transaction movement of every donation. It also gave the government a list of who is donating to a church and how much. This sounds like a good way for the antichrist to gather up and execute all the Christians in the tribulation.
Here is another key hidden feature of becoming a registered tax-exempt organization. All churches were forced to become silent about everything that is political by an amendment to the 1954 law. This amendment was introduced by a man named Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ would become the 36th President of the USA after the 35th President named John F Kennedy was unexpectantly assassinated in Dallas Texas in 1963. This sounds a little too close to what is happening to the 45th President now. I suggest you do some research and find out why.
Ever since 1954, Church pastors were suddenly required to shut-up and not speak about political candidates or who to vote for, and if they did, these churches could lose their tax-exempt status. This was clearly demonically inspired to “SILENCE THE CHURCH”.
Churches have placed too much trust in their government that they were doing things for their good and not for evil. This silencing of the church has caused only the devil to have a voice in politics and we can see the evidence of this by the vast increased levels of corruption that have been occurring in the USA since then. But this is also a global problem because the antichrist desires to rule the entire world, but the USA is one of the last strongholds of Christianity. The founding fathers of the USA were surely turning over in their graves when this was enacted and no church that I know of pushed back on these evil laws.
By understanding that Satan desires Christians to passively submit to his agenda of evil, should cause us to not remain silent any longer. We are all on the verge of losing all our rights of freedoms. This election is possibly the last one that a Christian may be able to ever participate in. This is based upon the current administration’s labeling of Christian conservatives to be domestic terrorists.
With the current weaponization of the Dept of Justice against their political opponents and the church, we are depending upon and trusting in God to intervene and save us. He is certainly working to do this, but today we need to understand that He needs our cooperation to cause it to happen. What do we do? Let us begin a list:
- AS A TRUE CHRISTIN NEVER DO NOTHING!
- Pray! Ask God for His will to be accomplished and not Satan’s plan. Ask God to turn Satan’s evil workers against themselves so that their power will be broken and to bring all their plans to steal the elections to nothing (Psalm 37).
- Remain in Faith, Believe God is going to save the Nation and will judge righteously not allowing the righteous to be destroyed with the wicked.
- Bind the evil spirits and their voices that are attempting to dominate the news narratives.
- Become a voice of opposition against evil.
- Post the truth on social media and if they remove you for stating the truth, so be it. Move to another platform that promotes free speech like “X” and “Rumble” to name only two.
- Register to vote.
- Think Righteously! Believe Righteously! Speak Righteously! Vote Righteously!
- Realize “Jesus” is not running for any office, but that does not mean Christians do not vote if someone is not perfect like Jesus.
- Read the political platforms of both parties running. Compare them to the Bible. Then notice that it was only the DNC that celebrated the murder of innocent babies and that is enough reason alone not to vote for and these candidates. But the other reason was the removal of God from their platform.
- Christians must Go and Vote for the closest candidate that will model what the Truth in the Bible instructs us to do and how to live. There is by far only one political party and candidate for President that comes close to modeling Biblical values, and his initials are DJT.
- Please understand that #45 DJT helped Christians values more than any other president in the last 100 years. He strongly aligned himself to help Israel. He moved the USA Embassy to Jerusalem when all others feared and failed. He appointed more conservative judges to the supreme court that helped remove a national mandate of the murder of babies. He also initiated the building of a wall to stop illegal drug entry and kept a legal migration policy, stopping terrorists from entering our nation.
God’s Sovereignty Alone Versus God
and Human Cooperation
Proverbs 29:2 – When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
Too many Christians have the false opinion that God sovereignly selects all the nations’ rulers. But this is NOT TRUE. We know this from reading the Bible. Notice what God wrote about political rulers in Proverbs 29. This verse clearly teaches us that God many times has nothing to do with elections. If God chose to sovereignly elect one corrupt evil ruler one time, and another righteous ruler another time, this makes our God inconsistent and unpredictable. Therefore, there are other factors that must be taken into our reasoning.
For example, begin with the first sinner. No that was not Adam and Eve. The very first sinner was the highest angelic being named Lucifer, who was created perfect originally without sin. However, 1 John 3:8 informs us Satan sinned from the beginning of creation. Therefore, if God created Lucifer perfect without sin at first and then Lucifer rebelled and sin according to Ezekiel 28:15. Did God sovereignly change His mind? Or does God sovereignly cause Satan to sin after first sovereignly creating him perfect? If He does, then God is evil or good depending upon possibly His mood on any given day.
You see we are finding that created angels as well as created humans were made to have a “freewill” choice. It is this sovereign design element of created beings that requires God’s creation to cooperate willingly with His desires. Therefore, we learn quickly that God needs humans to vote with His choices to get them to happen. Don’t believe this? Let us examine the Bible to confirm it.
For example, God did not want the first king of Israel, King Saul. God had a government system of judges, and the people of Israel demanded God to given them a king like the other nations of the world. Uh oh! God told the prophet to give them what they wanted and anoint King Saul. But this was not the will of God nor the plan of God to do this. This is one example of many that are possible. For the sake of time, we will only view one other verse on this sovereignty of God issue:
Hosea 8:4 – They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.
Looking at the last part of this verse first, we understand that God had implemented commandments and laws against idolatry. Therefore, the will of God was for Israel to only serve and love Him. But Israel continually set idols in the place of the True God. This clearly teaches that God’s will is not consistently done upon the earth, doesn’t it?
We find the great confirmation in the beginning of the verse that God’s sovereign will for kings and other rulers are not always His choices either. Hosea 8:4 clearly says, “They have set up kings but not by me”. I don’t know how much clearer God can be with His words. Therefore, if people can set up kings without God’s input of His choices in the Old Covenant, it is the same today.
In the 2020 election it was very clear that corrupt elections took place in several key states to push the election away from DJT #45. This is because he was so feared and hated. But it is interesting before he ran for President in 2016 and won, he was loved by everyone that suddenly turned on him. That speaks volumes of information to me, as well as it should to you. Remember we learn from what the devil does and speaks. And if Hollywood, the music entertainment industry at large, and even politicians all spoke good things about DJT before running for office. What then changed after being elected? All these groups were and still are mostly influenced controlled by Satan. This must tell us that God is for this man and Satan is not. Wow!
The United States of America was founded as a republic, and not as a democracy. In a democracy the majority of votes causes the rule of government to shift from good to evil or evil to good even by a one vote advantage. But in the republic system, there is a more fair and balanced approach to government. In the USA, the people of the nation are the ones with the power to govern and not one king or dictator. In this system, the voters select the leaders that best represent them and their values. In this type of government God requires Good People to vote for His will to be accomplished. If Good People do not vote for God values, we let Satan win and we become complacent in evil.
I have voted in every election for President since 1976. I also choose to vote for every state election in off years. I have recently changed to vote in every election, even the very small local elections which are normally shifted away from all major elections. These kinds of tactics help to cause smaller turnouts of voters. This makes them more easily to be shifted to an evil agenda.
Millions of Christians did not vote in the last many elections. These people have been deceived to believe their votes don’t matter, God will do whatever God wants done. But we have proven by the Bible that this is not how it works. God requires His people to seek Him and hear His voice in every matter of life, especially elections. God needs your vote! He is not going to stuff the ballot boxes with false and fake votes like Satan did and wants to do.
We are coming to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ to take us out of this evil. But while we are here, we are still demanded to resist Satan’s plans and to even overcome them. If every Christians voted for “Righteous Rule” it would be impossible for Satan to place his choices into power to keep the church “Silent”.
Conclusion
Do you want more people to be saved and not go to hell? If the church is silenced permanently, it will make the USA become like China with only underground churches. When these people are caught, they are imprisoned. Many of them are also killed. If you don’t believe this can happen in the USA, you are deceived already.
This lesson was a short encouragement to cooperate with God and to work with His plan and purpose to resist the devil. The church was taken by total surprise in 2020 with the release of a toxic man-made bioweapon to cause churches to shut down and elections to be run differently. Satan has an agenda to do this again. Satan believes he can win, and he thinks this because Christians have been easily deceived to cooperate with his plans. It is time for this to change now!
Thank you for reading the Bible lessons on this website. Please like and share with everyone you know. Share the video sermon link of Pastor Howerton. It is through correct knowledge of the truth that builds a Christian’s faith where we gain access to more of God’s Grace provisions (2 Peter 1:2). God Bless you and strengthen you with the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the Knowledge of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:17)
Understanding Bible Shalom Peace Part 2 – Victory Comes by Staying in Peace

(Ver 1.0) This is Part 2 of the Bible study series about the Almighty God of “Peace”, and His amazing Works always performed in the ways of Shalom “Peace”. This lesson is the second in the series and if you have not started reading this series from the beginning, it is strongly recommended that you begin with “Part 1”. Today we will continue learning God’s “Peace” concepts found within His Kingdom government. But this lesson will move us further to connect us with God’s works of Peace being received through the unity of Peace in humans.
In this lesson we will be learning how “Peace” is a dominant connecting God force which accesses and possesses His Power. This means by us choosing to live our life in His kind of Shalom “Peace”, it places us in agreement with His ways. With us choosing to be in union with “Love” and “Peace” in our spirit and soulish thoughts, carnal actions and spiritual words, the world can easily see that we are different and real Christians.
This is because a true God kind of internal “peace” can work outward in an external display of “Peace”. This real “Peace” is so different than anything those in the world call “peace” who are living in fear, hatred, and worry. Most Christians are going through the same things they are but have a different attitude because we have a God of Peace on our side.
Living in God’s “Peace” also appears to open doors of opportunity for hearing from God more quickly and easily, to help us know what to do in every situation. This daily chosen lifestyle of “Peace” replaces any “fear” and thus aligning us with the ability for receiving God’s great gifts of Grace. As we remain in “Peace” we connect with His power to help us. This is the reason why Satan is doing everything possible to destabilize our lives, our families, the church, our governments, our planet and our relationships with God and each other. If you are ready to learn more about this essential subject, let us begin.
Staying in the Peace of God that Wins Over All Enemies
It is essential to learn that over the course of Bible recorded history, there has not always remained a total state of Godlike “peace” in heaven nor on the earth. For example, if everyone lived in the “Peace” of God with each other and with God, we would never have any problems. We started learning these truths in lesson 1. Please remember what we learned in Part 1 where God spoke about a spiritual warfare taking place and a soon coming victory:
Romans 16:20 – And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
Please notice, this verse begins with the added emphasis of God being “Peace” and ends with the mention of His “Grace”. Why do you think God is emphasizing His lifestyle of “Peace” and His gifts of “Grace” in this verse? Why isn’t God mentioning any other of His qualities like His “omniscience”, “omnipresence”, omnipotence, etc. that are more aligned with winning a war? Please tell me if you understand that crushing someone’s head under your feet is a figurative expression for conquering an enemy? Could it be that living a life in “Peace” is the way to “victory”? I believe it is.
But to the natural mind and normal human ways of thinking, this verse appears to be a contradiction. We have a God of Peace who is at war with an evil spirit named “Satan”. But we learn here that He will use us in the church to crush His enemy’s head under our feet for our victory. God implies this is how an Omnipotent God operates in “Peace”. This is both strange and amazing news for us.
First, it is amazing God trusts us this much to take on this responsibility. But then we know because God says He will be the one doing the crushing of Satan under our feet, that this guarantees us His power to accomplish it. So how do we cooperate with this crushing? Let us focus on another set of spiritual warfare verses to learn more about these concepts of Peace and Grace during spiritual battle.
Ephesians 6:10 – Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Ephesians 6:11 – Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
Ephesians 6:12 – For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:13 – Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Ephesians 6:14 – Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
Ephesians 6:15 – And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Ephesians 6:16 – Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Ephesians 6:17 – And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
We do not have the time to teach all these verses in this lesson. But we can clearly read and notice that God is writing to us about a spiritual warfare that we are in. God clearly says it is not with flesh and blood, meaning we are not fighting against humans in the flesh. Uh oh! Not every Christians believes what God just said here in verse 12.
But God makes it more clear by listing 6 classes of spiritual weaponry that will certainly cause Satan to be crushed under our feet as we saw will happen soon in Romans 16:20. Satan is certainly one of these and possibly is the chief ruler called a “principality”. We are not going to teach this in full either, because we want to learn how we fight and how we win in accordance with utilizing our subject of Shalom “Peace”.
From reading these verses, it looks like “Victory” over Satan is obtained by us wearing “All” the armor of God that was mentioned in Ephesians 6:14-17. But notice that one of the key pieces of armor listed, covers our feet and this is what God mentions that He will use to crush the head of Satan.
This sounds important. What are our “feet” supposed to “wear” or be “covered” with? Isn’t it amazing that on our “feet” we are instructed to put on the shoes of the gospel of “Peace” (Ephesians 6:15). God has just connected Himself (the God of Peace) to our “feet” with the common emphasis of “Peace”. Could this be how we win over Satan? It appears that the “Peace” of God in unity with our lifestyle of “Peace” is a key determining factor for allowing God to use our “Feet” to crush Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). Let us now discover what this means to God.
Joshua 1:3 – Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.
In the Old Covenant, God placed another amazing emphasis upon our human feet. God speaking to Joshua told him, that wherever he set his foot, God will cause him to tread down his enemies. Notice that this is another unity agreement of two in “Peace” with each other. There is the Spirit of the God of Peace, coming into partnership with a human that must also remain in peace. The human Joshua had to hear the voice of God to get direction and then be willing to obey God without fear.
Then these two that are in a covenant partnership both choosing to work in peaceful harmony with each other determine the victory. This is truly because 1 John 4:4 says, “you have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world”. This literally means that Joshua if he and Israel obeyed and did not fall into the trap of the sin of fear, would win every battle, over every enemy. Therefore, we need to learn what God is speaking of in these real statements of “Peace” shoes, walking and treading down our enemies.
Colossians 2:6 – As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:
Wow! Notice this verse is about “walking” in Christ. Is Christ not, called the Prince of Peace in Isaiah 9:6? Do you think this has anything to do with our feet having on the shoes of the Gospel of “Peace” and walking on our enemy? Of course it does!
How did you receive Christ? According to Ephesians 2:8 we received the salvation of Christ Jesus by another partnership of peace being first, God’s Grace and second our faith. Didn’t this agreement of grace and faith place us “In Christ?” According to Galatians 3:27 and other verses it did. How did this occur? One of the key steps was that we had to hear the “Gospel of Peace” and believe it (Romans 10:14)!
This is another key example of us regaining our “Peace” with God. We could never receive Salvation if God was angry with us and saw us as evil and unrighteous. Fortunately for us, this is not the case. According to Romans 5:10 we were reconciled to God by the death of Jesus Christ, and we were saved by His resurrected “Life”. To be reconciled teaches us there has been given a gift of perfect “Peace” now between God and humans.
Do you see that it was God’s reestablishment of “Peace” in Christ that even gave us any opportunity to be saved? God had to solve the human problem of “sin” corruption that kept us far apart from His perfect “Holiness”. God accomplished this in Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection from the dead.
Because man is unable to keep God’s standard of holiness and perfection, God chose to become a man to accomplish this requirement for us. God made Jesus our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), and because He kept the law and was sinless (Hebrews 4:15), we are given His gifts of righteousness and peace to legally restore our access back into God’s full grace (Hebrews 4:16). These works of God in Christ made available to us, His Grace, authority and power to rule and reign in this life over our enemy! We know all of this by reading Romans 5:17:
Romans 5:17 – For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
Here is an amazing verse that is ignored by too many Christians. God has done more for us than many realize. This verse clearly states we “reign” now in this current world, which was dominated by Satan, our enemy. To reign in life is clearly the action of God to make us a kingdom of God representative here on earth. This means we need to begin to believe it and act like it. Let’s learn more about this now.
Let us return to further analyze Colossians 2:6 again. What does it mean to walk in Christ? We have touched on this when we read God’s commandment to Joshua. Remember this commandment involved a partnership between God who knows exactly what to do to win, telling those that could not win without God’s help, exactly what was needed for them to do to achieve their legal victory. This means they walked by “Faith”, having confidence and trust in God that what He said to do would cause theme to overcome their enemies.
For example, go back and pay attention to what happened to Joshua in chapter 5 before the fall of Jericho.
Jos 5:13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?
Jos 5:14 And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant?
Jos 5:15 And the captain of the LORD’S host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.
What we are observing is more key verses about “feet”. This pattern was also repeated in Exodus 3:5 when God told Moses to remove his shoes because the ground was holy. God’s holiness and our feet are directly connected or perhaps we should say they were formerly opposed to each other. Of course, we are speaking in figurative expressions with spiritual meanings as God also is doing numerous times in the Bible.
It appears like God when speaking to natural humans and then telling them to remove their natural shoes, is a symbolic representation for a far greater spiritual truth. What we are about to discover is that what we are wearing on our feet symbolically defines the direction of our travel and shows our heart’s motivations. For example, do you recall what John the Baptist said about the “feet” and “shoes” of Jesus?
Mark 1:7 – And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
Here is an amazing statement. John speaking about Jesus said, “I am not worthy, to stoop down to unloose the latchet of His shoes”. John clearly declares that Jesus will be coming after him, as a far superior man. John further implies Jesus will have an immensely greater purpose for being here on the earth than he. John is implying the existence of God in the man Jesus, and His lifestyle, His works, His character, His assigned role and objective targets were of such immense value that there were no changes, or modifications to His behavior, that were needed to be performed.
John has made a prophetic comparison between who he is and who Jesus is, and this comparison involved their “feet” and “shoes” which is symbolic of the steps that they will travel on the earth, and what they will accomplish. Finally, compare the words spoken about Jesus, to the words Jesus spoke about John. In Luke 7:28 Jesus said, “I say unto you, among those that are born of women, there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist”. If the greatest Old Covenant prophet named John was not able to take the shoes of Jesus off his feet, who could this man Jesus be, except the Creator God?
Here is another key description of “feet”, but this time it is Jesus that is washing the disciples’ feet. Please read these verses carefully and pay attention to what is being spoken, in the light of what we are learning about feet and shoes. Notice how many times feet and things about the feet are mentioned in these verses:
John 13:4 – He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself.
John 13:5 – After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.
John 13:6 – Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
John 13:7 – Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
John 13:8 – Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
John 13:9 – Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
John 13:10 – Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.
John 13:11 – For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not all clean.
John 13:12 – So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?
John 13:13 – Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
John 13:14 – If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
John 13:15 – For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
John 13:16 – Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.
John 13:17 – If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.
John 13:18 – I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.
John 13:19 – Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.
John 13:20 – Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
The earthly ministry of Jesus was accomplished by largely traveling by “foot” from place to place. In this region of the world the roads were mostly dirt, and the “feet” of the travelers would be significantly made dirty with the loose dust, dirt, mud, etc. Therefore, it was customary and courteous of every house you entered for the servants of the homeowner to wash your feet. But notice that Jesus takes on the servant’s role and washes every foot of the twelve disciples. This is truly an amazing thing for the Spirit of God, the Creator of the universe to become a physical part of His physical creation and then to wash their feet, who does this?
This event demonstrates a great act of humility for God. But it also demonstrates one of His primary purposes for coming to the earth by figuratively informing them, that He was here to change their ways of life. Can you see the symbolism being communicated in this lesson? When we walk through our life choices with clean feet intentions, we are not setting our minds on committing evil. Look at these verses to help confirm this:
Proverbs 4:25 – Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.
Proverbs 4:26 – Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established.
Proverbs 4:27 – Turn not to the right hand nor to the left: remove thy foot from evil.
There are numerous verses in the Bible like these. They all speak of human feet and the ways that they are pointed in to do evil or to do good. These are symbolic representations for us walking in love and peace towards others or walking in selfish self-serving intentions to do everything we can, including evil to others to enrich ourselves. These are the two paths of life that Jesus was speaking of in Matthew 7:12-14. Jesus is symbolically washing the disciples’ feet to teach them that He will direct them into a new living way, if they choose to follow Him.
Do you recognize the incredible “Peaceful” works of God that are being performed by God in person, to establish us back into His ways of “Peace”? God has made a personal visit on the earth, and said to them, “I will make your feet clean removing your sins, and I will guide you in a new way of life, by my Holy Spirit. If you go through the description again of the verses we just read in John, you should be able to see some of the symbolism being utilized. For example,
- Every disciple uncovered their bare feet by removing their shoes. This is symbolizing Christians taking off the old carnal selfish ways of the first man Adam.
- Then Jesus stoops down to each disciple, just as John said he was not worthy to do. Jesus doing this to each man individually teaches us Jesus was a sinless man/God who is worthy and able to do something wonderful for us. It also teaches us to be humble enough to serve those that do not deserve kindness.
- Then Jesus washed every sinful man’s foot one at a time. This signifies two things. First, the forgiveness of all past sins. Second, the removal of all future man’s sinful thoughts, spoken words, actions, intentions, desires and ways. Jesus accomplishes the first by the power of His shed blood (Colossians 1:14). Then Jesus accomplishes the second by the cleansing of their minds through the washing of the water of the Word of God (Ephesians 5:26, Romans 12:2).
- The entire symbolic process of what Jesus has done for us all in washing the disciples’ feet, is to change our death destiny direction following Satan who is leading the world into the wide “Path” to their destruction (Matthew 7:13). This is us taking off our old shoes (ways). Then Jesus must clean our dirty feet (ways to) sin to turn us around by our repentance and giving us a new desire to change directions. This is accomplished by us putting on the new man shoes (ways to walk righteously) that were representative of the “Gospel of Peace”. All of this places us upon His narrow new path that us being led by His Holy Spirit into everlasting life, salvation and righteousness in “Peace” with God.
That was a very fast overview of the major points. We just do not have the time to teach everything that is possible to say about this process God provided to turn us around in a completely new, different, and better way to live.
We are still missing a lot of definitions to the symbolism that is being taught to us by God. Remember, to remove our old man nature shoes is an expression describing us leaving behind our previous natural ways of thinking and acting. God is trying to teach us in all of this that our human ways of achieving victory over an enemy (Satan) is not His ways.
This is simply because our normal way of achieving victory over a human problem is us trying to eliminate a flesh enemy causing the problem. But this is not what God did with Satan, at all. The immediate removal of Satan, we will soon find would have been a completely illegal, unjust and unrighteous act of God, and would have violated God’s character traits of “Love” and “Peace”.
But it is still important to remember according to Romans 16:20, God’s spiritual warfare is completely focused upon the full defeat of the spirit enemy named Satan which He prophesied would occur in Genesis 3:15. Also do not forget that He was going to accomplish this through creating enmity between a spiritual woman and Satan. Hopefully, you understand that we are quickly learning who this woman represents, is the Church (Eklesia). But God is going to achieve this victory over His enemy by asking us firmly to change our ways and to cooperate with His powerful Holy Spirit inside us to accomplish this great victory. Let us look at what Jesus said about His walk with the Father to help us understand the example that He set for us to accomplish this.
John 5:19 – Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
This is an amazing verse. This verse reveals to us that Jesus even though He was God in the flesh, He was not in His omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent qualities. In fact, Philippians 2 teaches us that God set aside His deity powers to live (walk) life like a human. In doing this Jesus lived an example for us to follow and pursue after. Remember, Jesus said “I am the good shepherd” in John 10. This means as the “sheep” of God, who we are, we must follow His leading.
This is exactly what John 5:19 says Jesus did with His Father. Jesus declares to us that he was in cooperation and chose to remain in agreement only with His father’s words of instruction. This was Jesus living in Peace with His Father. And this is the exact pattern we can read about in Joshua 5 and 6 in the victory over Jericho. Just as God instructed Joshua to symbolically set aside his natural ways of the flesh, Jesus chose to do likewise to follow the Spirit of Peace. Hopefully, you already know Joshua in Hebrew is the same name Jesus in Greek. God did this to establish two examples to teach His ways, for us to follow.
Romans 8:6 – For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Wow! Here we go finding and discovering our life ways of God. We are to imitate the examples of Jesus’ ways, and we are instructed to take off the old unholy shoes worn by our previous old human self-centered ways of life. God is teaching us that we are to change out our ways of life by taking off the old man’s (Adam’s) ways and putting on the new man’s (Jesus’) ways of life. God is teaching us the ways to overcome our enemy Satan. When we do this, we will overcome Satan every time.
1 John 5:4 – For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
As you can “see” God has again promised the church a victory over Satan by exercising our faith in His Word of Instructions. God wrote us this book so that we might know and understand who He is and how He works always in “Peace”. By us following these new transformed ways we will win over our enemy Satan, because we have God’s help doing it through us. Praise the Lord!
Conclusion
God’s kind of real Shalom “Peace” is not the absence of all conflicts. Real Shalom Peace is the internal spiritual calmness and confidence in Jesus Christ, so that no matter what the enemy is trying to bring against you or do to you, you know God is with you and will cause you to win (1 Corinthians 15:57). Walking and living in real Peace, is also not avoiding your enemy. God did not choose to ignore Lucifer after sin was found in him, but how He planned to win through operating in “Peace” is much different than the “way” we would think He should have done it.
Living in “Peace” does not mean that God is doing nothing. In fact, as soon as Lucifer rebelled, God began to speak words that initiated His plan of victory (Isaiah 14:15). As we continue through this series of lessons, we will be seeing how God reveals to us His ways of speaking with authority causes Him to win over His enemy Satan. These are the ways of Shalom “Peace” in action. This also means what He says, and when He says it, matters greatly. We are discovering that the ways of “Peace” demonstrated by God are how He works even during major conflicts, and this is why He desires to teach us to do the same.
Amos 3:3 – Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Here we find the main point of the lesson. If God is a God of Peace, which He is, and we are told to be imitators of God in Ephesians 5:1, this teaches us that we are supposed to walk like God walks, talk like God talks and live like God lives. And we are now seeing that all of these ways are done in Shalom “Peace”. By choosing to think and act like God, we are aligning our feet in the same direction as God desires us to travel with Him in. If we turn our feet off of the path (way) even a little bit, we are beginning to drift further and further off course from knowing God, hearing from God, and this causes us to be open to our enemies’ attack.
Yes, God says if 1 lost sheep wanders away, He would leave the 99 to find this lost one (Luke 15:4). But anytime we begin to stray we potentially open ourselves up to evil and this could allow Satan an opportunity to end our life. You see in Psalm 23 David wrote about walking with the good shepherd through the valley of the shadow of “death”. In this the sheep says, “I will fear no evil because you are with me, and your rod and your staff comfort me”. But notice this sheep has not left the shepherd while death surrounded them. What we are learning in these last days, is that we better stay close to our Shepherd, Jesus Christ always. We do this by “walking” in the same direction as He is leading. This means we are in “Peace” together and are not focused upon the evil that surrounds us being united with Him.
Are you beginning to see how God’s power is received and accessed through us abiding in His ways of Shalom “Peace”, which is found only by us choosing to remain in His presence? God operating in us and through us, leading us and instructing us, and Him helping us to change our ways of living brings us victory! Do you see how victory is achieved by us also walking by “faith” and not by human sense knowledge like our natural “sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7)? By us choosing to live in His kind of “Peace” we can more easily hear from God faster and more accurately. This is because we are tuned to the right frequency of “Love” and “Peace”.
God is broadcasting His direction and instruction on the channel of Love and Peace, and if we are not tuned to hear this channel we will probably be in tune with “fear”, “worry” and “doubt” being broadcast all around us from Satan. God has the advantage because if you are saved, He lives in our spirit inside our body. But even saved humans can too easily drift in our minds to focus only upon the flesh circumstances where Satan influences, rather than to remain n “Peace” thinking on the Spirit of God inside.
The promise God gave to the church in Romans 16:20 guarantees us the victory over God’s enemy. This was our key lesson verse today which introduced the subject of Satan as our enemy that will be defeated by God using our “feet”. We know this enemy Satan is the ancient serpent that caused sin to enter and reign in our current world (Genesis 3:15). This is your first indicator today, that God’s ways of “Peace” are not our normal human ways (Isaiah 55:8).
We learn in Romans 12:2 that we can begin the process to becoming transformed out of our old worldly “ways” (path) into God’s new spiritual “ways” (pathway) of life, by simply “renewing” our minds. This means we do what God told Joshua in Joshua 1:8, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written there in and then you shall make your way prosperous, and you will have good success”. This is another way of saying God will cause us to “WIN”, if we do exactly what He said to do.
Luke 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.
This statement was given by Jesus in Luke 21:26 warning us of the end times that we are living within, now. There are many descriptions of things that will cause “fear”. Satan will be hard at work trying to move every human into the pathway of “Fear”. Perhaps you have heard one statement from politicians that says, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”, and thus they are continually trying to create a crisis to control the agenda and lifestyles of humans.
“Fear” is the opposite force of “Peace” and “Faith”. According to God’s Word in 1 John 4:18, only God’s real “Love” will cast out all fears that will be trying to come against us to make us fall into this trap. This is why we have emphasized God’s powers of “Love” and “Peace” ruling in our heart today. They go hand in hand to lead us into victory.
Uh oh? There appears that there are a lot of Christians “not” walking in “Peace” today. It looks like they have forgotten to put “Peace” on their feet as they are walking through this world. Any fear, any worry, any doubt, any anxiety, etc. are all indicators that we are not wearing our shoes of “Peace”. How can we reduce our fears to zero and increase our “Peace” to the maximum? God reveals this in a verse written by Peter:
2 Peter 1:2 – Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
God reveals to us that we can greatly increase our “Peace” simply by greatly increasing our knowledge of Him. This means the more we learn, study, focus upon, and commit to memory His Word will cause us to live, walk and operate in His Shalom Peace Ways. This is confirmed in Isaiah 26 where God says:
Isaiah 26:3 – Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
This verse just said, “I will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed (focused) on me”. If we are constantly reading and thinking on God’s Words, He increases our awareness of His presence. His presence awareness is what helps us to remain in “Peace” through any storm.
Did you notice the words “perfect peace” in Isaiah 26:3? What is “Perfect Peace”? This phrase is formed by doubling the Hebrew word H7965 transliterated as “Shalom” meaning “Peace”. Translators could have said, “I will keep him in peace, peace, whose mind is stayed on me”. Or they could have said, “I will keep him in great double peace whose mind is stayed upon me”. But I believe what God is saying is, “If your mind and thoughts inside remain focused on me, your internal spirit will be in total Peace. This total peace will cause God to work in our external circumstances to bring them back and return them into Peace also.
This may sound strange to some, but God hears your thoughts. I believe Satan cannot hear your thoughts, but God repeatedly demonstrates in the Bible that He knows every thought. This means if we are worrying, we have just left the “pathway” of “Peace”. And “worry” is just one kind of negative thought that can defeat us.
This is amazing if we can see it and apply it into our lives. When we choose to remain at “rest”, and in “Peace” within our spirit, God’s Spirit of Peace can speak His Words to us and through us to nullify the enemy’s chaos around us. Do you recall the situation where “Jesus” was sleeping in the boat as the disciples were going to the other side of the sea? A huge storm came upon them. But was Jesus ever worried? Jesus didn’t even wake up from His sleep. This is an example from God how we should just let “Peace” rule no matter what.
But the disciples jumped into the spiritual boat of “Fear” and believed they were about to die. They awakened Jesus and accused Him of not caring! Wow! Did you know when you live in “Peace” some people will think you are crazy and could be someone that cares nothing about what is happening in the world? What did Jesus do after they had awakened Him? He looked at the wind and rebuked it and then said to the “waves”, “Peace Be Still”. Wow Again!
This just made the disciples more “fearful” with them saying, “Who is this man, that even the wind and the waves, obey Him?” This was said directly after Jesus had just rebuked them saying, “Why are you so fearful, how is it that you have no faith” (Mark 4:40)? Jesus just confirmed that none of His disciples were internally in their spirit in agreement with Him. This also confirmed because the disciples were in “fear” they were not in “Faith” or “Peace”.
Uh oh? Jesus just said if we had just believed what He said and also remembered the power of His words, we could have remained in “Peace” and overcame the storm. He also implied that this could be done by speaking a command in “Faith” to the wind to stop, just as He demonstrated to us (Mark 4:40).
Jesus just taught us a valuable lesson of God’s “Peace” at work. Jesus had such great internal spiritual “Peace”, even a huge natural storm had no effect on Him. But this lesson also showed the negative effects of having no “Peace” and walking in fear. It is very clear to me that Jesus was wearing His spiritual shoes of “Peace” in the chaotic circumstances caused by Satan to kill them. And this situation was defeated by Jesus’ Walk in “Peace” through exercising His “Faith” by speaking “Words” (2 Corinthians 4:13). Let’s examine another New Covenant example, this time after Jesus was raised from the dead, to prove the church was supposed to follow Jesus’ example.
Do you remember when “Paul” was arrested and was being taken to Rome to be tried by Caesar in Acts 27? The ship that Paul was on encountered another huge storm. Everyone on the ship was also in “fear” of certain death like the disciples were. In Acts 27:23, Paul informs the fearful that he had a message from an angel sent by the LORD. God sent this angel to tell Paul there would be no loss of life. But before this Jesus personally appeared to Paul and said to him, “As you testified in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness in Rome” (Acts 23:11. Therefore, Paul had it from the mouth of God, he was going to make it to Rome.
When you hear God speak, what should happen? We should believe whatever He says. This hearing should cause believing and we should have “faith” (Romans 10:17). This was the same for the disciples when Jesus said, “Let us go to the other side”. Jesus did not say, “Let us try to make it”, or “If we are lucky, we will get to the other side”. What Jesus said, set and guaranteed the outcome before it happened.
Also, Jesus had great confidence that no storm was going to kill Him, because He knew God said He would be hung on a cross. Therefore, knowing and believing the Words of God, causes the other attempts of Satan to become laughable. This was the same for “Paul” and he had great confidence in God’s words and knew he would make it to Rome, even if the ship did not.
As we should remember from Acts 27, the ship sank and they lost all the cargo, but all the ship’s men made it to shore. However, on the island of Malta, Paul was building a fire and picked up a pile of sticks that had a deadly viper in it. This beast bit Paul and everyone was expecting Paul to drop dead almost immediately. Did you notice the “fear” in everyone else? But Paul just shook the beast off in the fire and acted like it was nothing. How could Paul do all of this?
It is because Paul was in “Peace” on the inside in his spirit because he was believing God. It really did not matter what the external circumstances of this world were trying to do to him to kill him. Paul was walking by faith not knowing what was going to happen next, but He knew what God said to him would happen. This caused him to stay in Shalom “Peace”. Is this amazing news, or what?
Can you see how this fits what God said through Peter? “Grace and Peace be multiplied to you through the Knowledge of God”. You can only get grace and peace by listening to the Word of God which allows you the choice to believe. But then notice that Jesus taught us in Mark 4 about the “Sowing of the Word of God?” Jesus said, “some seed fell on wayside soil and the birds of the air came and devoured it”. Birds represent the devil and demons.
How does Satan steal the Word of God out of the hearts of people? One tactic for this theft was performed easily because these were people who did not hear correctly to understand God’s words. Remember all thoughts are words in the spirit realm. They can come from God, Satan, or your human desires. Therefore, managing our thoughts closely is very essential for staying in “Peace”.
Another Satan tactic is to just blind the human mind with other distracting thoughts to keep a person from understanding what was said. This can be done with rapid fire thoughts keeping them from thinking about the Truth that they are hearing. A distracting thought could be any kind of subtle thought of deception, a distraction coming from the darkness of this world.
Think about this, how many times have you been reading the Bible and suddenly get a thought about doing something else that you need to do, like fix your hair, clean the house, exercise, call somebody, etc. What about a sudden desire for sweets, salty snacks, or other food you crave? Do these feelings ever come upon you and suddenly you must have them? These are all clever subtle tactics to keep your mind occupied away from receiving the Truth. But Satan needs other tactics if someone really understands what Jesus said to them after these words are understood enough to cause joy to rise in their spirits.
As you have seen there was three examples, that we just went through and two of these were “storms” and the third was a physical attack of Satan (a viper, serpent). This could also be like a physical fatal illness like cancer. This could just be a physical hidden poison secretly being given to you in your medicine or shot. No matter what the plan of the enemy, it can be nullified if you remain in “Peace” and “Trust” God to cause His Word to come to pass in your life.
What has God spoken to you? If you know for sure it was God, write them on big pieces of paper and place them all over your house or wherever you live. Keep them as the focus of your heart, and these Words will help you remain in Peace.
This is why we are studying this subject today. This is why we are increasing our knowledge of the God kind of Peace. This knowledge “will” cause our “Peace” levels to drive out the fears that the enemy is trying to get us to buy into. It is very interesting to know that God’s letters written to the church almost always begins with a greeting that contains the connected word “Grace” and “Peace”. Check out this example:
Romans 1:7 – To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can easily see the source of all “Grace” and “Peace” in our lives comes only from knowing God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We should know that God says in Romans 5:1, that we have Peace with Him because of His works accomplished in Jesus Christ’s by His shed blood. This teaches us that God has reconciled us back into a right relationship with Him and this knowledge alone should increase our “Peace” when talking with Him, to receive all His Grace.
How is Your Peace Today?
Today is the anniversary of 9/11. Perhaps you remember where you were this day? Perhaps you watched it on television happening as I did. This is a very sobering real moment in history that should make anyone think, and ask the question what if? What if it was you in the planes that crashed killing everyone instantly? What if it was you above the flames in the towers? Would you have jumped? What would you be thinking in your fall to your death? Do you ever think about death?
Do you have any feelings of uncertainty? Do you know what would happen if you died today? Where would you spend eternity? Maybe you do not believe in life after death. Are you sure? How can you ever be certain? Have you died before? Have you seen the other side? Can you guarantee there is no God? Is there any certainty that hell does not exist? Can you prove it? If you do not know the answers to these questions, there is no way that you have any “Peace” with dying. Wait, till death suddenly stares you in the face, and then ask these questions very quickly. Unfortunately, death does not always give you time to ask these questions.
However, if you believe Jesus is God and He died for you and did not stay dead but rose again to be alive forevermore, and then you have never received Jesus as your Lord, you know that you have no real Peace. If desire to give your life to Him and allow Him to come into your heart, He is offering you this opportunity by calling you to come out of the world so that He can give you His Spirit of supernatural Peace. Click the link below to go to the link and give your life to Christ, so that He can give you His eternal “Peace”. This “Peace” can keep you no matter what you are currently facing in this life.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible here with us. We love you and care enough to spend the time to help you learn about God and His risen from the dead Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Until next time, be blessed and remain in Peace, the devil will have other plans to try to get into fear sooner than you may think. But you will overcome them by walking in “Peace”.
Be the Peaceful in the Light Versus Chaotic and Evil in the Darkness
(Ver 1.0) For your information this is NOT a political post for Trump. It is only a statement of Biblical values and truth about what happened to us all on July 13, 2024. I was not planning to post anything this soon, but what we have just witnessed is too enormous to ignore. We have just witnessed a huge evil take place that some prophets are calling the “Shots Heard Round the World” to awaken everyone. This is a very sad time in America. At least one father and firefighter lost his life protecting his family. Please join us in praying for this family’s loss. Two other gentlemen were critically wounded but are still living and we must join together to pray for them and speak life to them.
Jesus said, “They are blind leaders that lead the blind. And when the blind lead the blind they both fall into the ditch” (Mat 15:14). The blind are those that have not yet seen or choose to turn from the light of Jesus Christ. They remain in darkness, and we have many of these leaders in Washington D.C. that are provoking violence with their words.
We are living in this massive time of darkness that has been attempting to overrun us to rule the entire world prematurely. The antichrist desired and planned a surprise attack to be implemented in 2020 to stop the reelection of one man that they fear to be the president of the United States. This man is too rich and cannot be bought or controlled with money gifts and bribes. If you don’t like the truth and are offended with the truth that is being laid down, you are welcome to leave this website and never return. No matter what your choices are; I WILL NOT STOP TELLING THE TRUTH! I DO NOT DO THIS WEBSITE TO BE POPULAR. It is past time for the church to wake up from worldly and religious brainwashing and from pastors that are trying to appease everyone with a watered-down message to satisfy the itching ears of their people.
Recently we witnessed one of the devil’s plans to create even greater darkness and overwhelming chaos than what many could have imagined. There was an assassination attempt on the 45th President of the United States through a coordinated and planned evil work of darkness. The news media which has been consumed with greed, has refused to tell the truth about it, but these groups have turned into government propaganda tools to deceive people. However, the truth is still being posted on the internet anyway. God has raised up and established new internet platforms that are growing to help replace the massive tech-giants that are operating in the same cancel cultured darkness of the godless being used to silence the truth.
God protected the #45 man in such a way that proved it could have only been divine intervention. The bullets the were intended to kill #45 came within millimeters of being successful. They grazed his ear and blood could clearly be seen. The shooter was only about 150 yards away. It is virtually impossible to miss a stationary target at that distance. Yet we watched one of the greatest miracles to save him.
If you think you are a real Christian and do not discern good from evil, or truth from lies you may be deceived into potentially thinking you are more than you really are. Deception in this world is boiling over the top. Many have bought it for so long they could be never returning to God. This work of Satan proves the existence of evil and chaos. It is not from God who is still the God of Peace.
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ must stop being passive and allowing evil to control them. If you don’t pray, it is time to pray and thank God for helping us and for saving #45. If you have been praying, thank you. But do you believe God heard and answered you? If yes, it might be time to stop asking and just thank Him that this United States of America is protected, favored, blessed and is experiencing a great awakening of revival, and especially thank Him your name is written down in the Lamb’s book of Life.
But praying is not your only responsibility as a True Christ follower. Jesus Christ said “All authority in heaven and in earth was given to Him” after being raised from the dead (Mat 28:18). Jesus immediately transferred and assigned His authority to His church on the earth. He also taught us in Matthew 16:19, whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on the earth, will be loosed in heaven.
We are in a spiritual war in the spiritual realm. The spirits of darkness have been ignored too long. The church let them take Bibles out of our schools and this resulted in massive confusion only. This was enormous spiritual power that too many Christians believe they do not have access to anymore. Yet, Jesus will never change His mind. He gave it, now use it against the spirits influencing people in the world that have been controlled by darkness too long.
Share Jesus with someone today. Jesus loves all those that are deceived. Many have seen the Light during “Covid”, and many others are now seeing the “Light” during this election, because of the massive overreach of evil against one man. They have overplayed their hand, and this evil is causing too many people to awaken from their sleep. Those in the darkness are becoming even more desperate than ever before. It would not be surprising to see what they have planned before the election in November.
Continue to pray and believe. God is doing more than you know or realize. The prayers are causing things to turn for God’s good. If we join in prayers of faith united in purpose and in one accord, there is no darkness that can overcome us, because “Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world” (1 Jn 4:4). Take the verse in Revelation 12:11 and claim we overcome evil with the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony”. Finally, stand together on Isaiah 54:17, “No weapon that is formed against us will prosper. Every tongue that rises in judgment against us we condemn. This is our inheritance in the LORD and our righteousness is of the LORD”.
Everyone is either on God’s side or Satan’s side. There are no other choices to choose from. By default, you are on the side of darkness and Satan will use you this way in your silence. If you are on God’s side you will open your mouth and spiritually “fight” (but with yours words of prayer and authority in Peace and Love) as #45 said after standing up after taking cover.
Hopefully you have read the end of the book (Bible), and you have seen God wins and Satan is thrown into the pit forever. But before the end, the God of Peace will use us (His church body) to bruise the head of the serpent under our feet according to Romans 16:20.
Thank you for taking the time to read this short message of warning and encouragement. Remember, one can put 1000 to flight and 2 can exponentially put 10,000 to flight, but only if we join together united in the Spirit of Christ as one body. Please stop fighting your brothers and sisters and fight the real enemy. Satan enjoys creating your doctrinal fights so you will ignore what he is coming to do to you. It is past time for Christians to put aside name calling between us. It is time to walk in LOVE and FORGIVENESS and let “PEACE” rule in our hearts. Amen
Remember we love you, God Loves you and Jesus is our LORD and Savior! Please leave us a comment or a like saying you are praying with us for our nation during this critical time before Jesus returns.
Understanding Bible Shalom Peace Part 1 – Introduction
(Ver 1.0) This is Part 1 of a new Bible study series about the Almighty God of “Peace” and His Amazing Works of “Peace” performed in His Kingdom of “Righteousness”, and “Peace” and “Joy” in the Holy Ghost (Rom 14:17). This series will attempt to answer the basic questions that every human should have on this subject of peace. This series also will provide a perspective of peace and the reasoning for peace that many have never seen in the Bible. Finally, we will further explore 1) the origin or source of all true “Peace”, 2) the present “now” condition and existence of peace or lack thereof, and 3) the future ending of “Peace” on earth and in heaven.
I will warn you that some of this information could be offensive to new Christians and Christians that have never studied the deep spiritual subjects of God. This subject study is intended for mature Christians that are Spirit-filled and have studied the Bible intensely for at least 10 years or more. I hesitated to put a number on this, because Christians mature at differing speeds just like natural children. Judge yourself and make up your mind before you continue.
Please do not fight over trivial things. We can disagree on spellings and pronunciations without calling anyone out as being false or wrong. Only God is justified to seek absolute perfection from anyone. But, if anything offends you, or if you run across something you never heard before and it sounds like “heresy”, please take the time to study it out more closely before you rush to judgment and ignore what I believe the Lord God wanted to teach today. You are also very welcome to ask questions and leave comments if there are areas that were not clearly stated or easily misunderstood. Please leave any positive contribution on any included “Peace” subject matter. Let “Peace” be the dominate motivation in commenting on the subject of “Peace”. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you to make constructive criticisms. These are accepted if they are spoken in ways motivated by “Love” and not “strife” or “hate”. Name calling, vile words, and speaking evil about anyone or anything is un-Christ-like and is never allowed to be published on this website. Peace and Love are two of the key driving motivations of this Bible teaching website. Thank you.
Here are some of the basic questions that people have that will hopefully all be addressed in this series.
- Who or what is the spiritual enemy of man and God? Is there a real enemy named Satan?
- Why isn’t Satan in hell right now for every evil he has committed in heaven and on the earth?
- If God is good, why does He allow evil?
- How does the Bible explain and balance the existence of a God of Love and Peace who is also sovereign and omnipotent with the existence of evil?
- What does God define His type of “Peace” as?
- How does God’s definition of “Peace” differ from the world’s type of “Peace”?
- Does the World have any real “Peace”?
- Did the Kingdom of Heaven live in perfect “Peace” before the cross?
- Does the Kingdom of Heaven contain perfect “Peace” after the cross?
- Has Heaven ever experienced total “Peace”?
- Has the Earth ever experienced total “Peace”?
- If God is the God of “Peace”, why is there so much evil, chaos, death and destruction taking place in our world, even to Christians?
- We can all see that there are natural wars taking place, but is there also spiritual warfare taking place today?
- How can spiritual warfare exist with spiritual “Peace”?
- Does God have a plan to restore “Peace”, stability and unity back to the universe?
- Will there ever be any real “Peace” that I can see and experience on earth?
- Why does my heart feel so restless and empty, making me feel like I’m existing in a state of fear and confusion about my future?
Here is a list of subjects that will be introduced today in this first lesson of the series:
- Introduction to the God of Peace and His Ways of Peace
- Introduction to God’s Definition of the True Shalom type of Peace
- God’s Hidden Meaning of Shalom Peace
- Conclusion
Finally, it is noteworthy that this lesson was shortened for those with limited time to study.
Introduction to the “God of Peace”
and His Ways of Peace
Most Christians have heard the truths given to us in the Old Testament concerning the seven covenant names of God. If you have not, these are names of God that describe the truest characteristics of His Holy personality involving the people that are in covenant relationship with Him. These names are as follows:
- Jehovah Jireh – LORD, My Provider
- Jehovah Nissi – LORD, My Victory Banner
- Jehovah Rapha – LORD, My Healer
- Jehovah Tsidkenu – LORD, My Righteousness
- Jehovah Raah – LORD, My Shepherd
- Jehovah Sabaoth – LORD of Hosts
- Jehovah Shalom – LORD, My Peace
These are all very strong positive names and each of them describe one key attribute that reveals God’s truest strengths. But the one that we are studying today is the LORD my Peace. God has named Himself “YHWH Shalom” (Peace). This teaches us that true “Peace” is one of the key forces motivating God’s thoughts, plans, motives, desires, and actions. Therefore, the primary way to understand God correctly is to read about what real “Peace” represents.
Amazingly many Christians have learned to see the true God through the attributes revealed clearly to us in the Gospel accounts of Jesus. Remember Jesus was the YHWH God walking the face of the earth in flesh (Jn 1:1-14, Jn 14:7). This physical appearance of God is the most accurate representation of who God truly is. Jesus exemplified the qualities of “Love” and “Peace” amazingly well.
In fact, Jesus using Biblical typology is referred to as the King of Righteousness and the King of Peace seven times in the Bible because God calls Him a priest made in the order of Melchisedec. This is a critical part of our lesson series to remember. Only Jesus can and will remain our eternal High Priest and our eternal King of Peace forever. It is also interesting to note that Melchisedec was the king of Salem meaning “Peace” (Gen 14:18). This city is the early name of the same city named “Jerusalem” that Jesus is said to rule over. Jerusalem also means a city that was “Founded Peaceful”.
However, we need to focus on all the names of God that were just given. All these names must be balanced together equally. There appears to be a controversy with the name “LORD of Hosts” being united with the other peaceful names, but there are no contradictions. The LORD of Hosts means; God is the LORD over armies.
If God is described to be named Jehovah Shalom (Peace), what does an omnipotent God of “Peace” need with an army of war? How could the same LORD of Peace that compassionately heals people to bring life, be a LORD over a strong force of power that can bring death? This is not that complicated. Having a powerful force of great strength helps a kingdom, nation or government to keep the peace and avoid wars when used correctly. However, there is also another truth that cannot be ignored. We are about to discover that God has an enemy (Psalm 55).
Rom 16:20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.
In at least 5 verses in the New Testament, God is described as the “God of Peace” which is parallel to the name Jehovah Shalom. These verses identify “Peace” to remain one of God’s major qualities of His character in the New Covenant. Notice that we again see a potential contradiction between the God of “Peace” and a “bruising” someone under the feet of someone else in Romans 16:20.
To “bruise someone under the feet” is a figurative description of conquering an enemy for their defeat (1 Kings 5:3). This typically is done in a war and that is the opposite of “peace”. Thus, God identifying Himself as “Peace” in a violent action like war appears to contradict. But there is still no conflict. Mostly we just do not understand what is being taught.
The name Satan comes from the Hebrew word H7854 meaning God’s adversary, opponent, and enemy. This helps us to understand one of God’s primary peaceful goals is to defeat His enemy named Satan. Remember that this verse in Romans 16:20, was written a long time after the death of Jesus on a cross. This teaches us further that there is still a spiritual war taking place and it appears God’s strategy will be the feet of the church that will be used to finally conquer Satan. Looking around us in the world, you must admit that Satan is still alive and well. This is based upon all the evil that has been greatly taking place openly right in front of us.
We are being introduced to the fact that God has an enemy that is fighting against Him. Satan is trying his best to cause his dark and evil kingdom to rule over all, including the God that created him (Lk 4:5-6). That is not wise at all. But this explains a lot about God’s key “Peace” quality and why it is also necessary for Him to have armies to keep His peace.
There are several spiritual wars in the Bible, but we will only focus on two major spiritual battles that need to be quickly mentioned to help confirm what is being taught. One is written about real past spiritual warfare, and the other is a prophesied future coming spiritual warfare and both are described as incredible power struggles of good versus evil.
The first example to understand was a major spiritual warfare given by Daniel as he is praying in chapter 10. This war begins when Daniel prays asking for an answer for Israel. God sends him the answer by way of an angel. The answering angel was sent on the first day that Daniel prayed, but there was a spiritual war taking place that delayed the answer for 21 days from arriving. The answering angel also has to send for Michael a chief heavenly angelic authority to help him get through the evil opposition. That is an amazing example of spiritual warfare.
But there is another very significant future spiritual war that occurs between angelic armies that is written about in Revelation chapter 12. This war occurs when Satan brings 1/3 of the angels against Michael and his angels. Go read this account and you will discover very quickly that this future war is when Satan will be forever cast down from heaven and all evil angels will not be allowed to reenter. This is very important to see and understand, but we will address it more later in the series.
We will soon be learning in this series how the God of Peace is working in His ways of never changing love and peace which must also be balanced with His power, strength and righteous judgments. All of this together is accomplishing His desire to re-establish everlasting “Peace”. Simultaneously God is also “legally” and “righteously” eliminating all His enemies and their evil works along with their unrighteous influences.
Let us continue to focus upon what God is saying in Romans 16:20. This verse says God will use the “feet” of the church of Jesus Christ, to bruise Satan. Let us define who the church is first. The church is symbolically referred to as the “Building” (1 Peter 2:5), the “Body” (1 Cor 12:27) and the “Bride” of Christ. We will only be addressing the woman identity labeled as a “Bride” in this introduction. We will begin to find this truth in 1 Corinthians 16:17 where God writes “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”. That is marriage covenant terminology that was first written as law concerning the first man and his wife in Genesis 2:24.
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 is requoted in Ephesians 5:31 again, but this time it is directly referring to a great hidden mystery that God is speaking of it being Christ and His church bride in Ephesians 5:32.
Eph 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Eph 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
It is very important to know that the first created Adam in Genesis chapters 1 to 4, was a planned pattern by God for the “Last Adam” (Jesus) (1 Cor 15:45). Romans 5:12-14 is the primary confirmation that declares the “Last Adam” (Jesus) to be a “figure” (type, pattern) of the first Adam. This simply means what God did to take a flesh bride out of the first Adam, has been repeated in the Last Adam to take out a spiritual bride. We will continue to talk about this in the series as we learn more about the ways the Living God of Peace works.
Then previously in Ephesians 5:25-27 God speaks of husbands and wives in direct relationship to Jesus being the husband that loves his church and is making her ready by the cleansing power of the Word of God in verse 26. And in Ephesians 5:27 this clean bride is being “presented” to himself as the glorious church (bride). This is all wedding terminology between the church bride and the Son of God.
Too many preachers of the Word of God today are ignorant prideful males, and they feel anyone calling them a bride is profane and demeaning. Therefore, they explain away the verses in the Bible that speak of these truths in spiritual terms. Do you know that in the Bible God says in Galatians 3:28, that “In Christ, there is neither male nor female?”. Yet they fight you for calling them bride.
Did you know God called the nation of Israel His virgin bride wife (Isa 62:5)? Please go read Jeremiah 31:32 where God speaking of Israel as His wife, said I was a husband to you”. People must learn the truth, not because I said it, but because God said it. In the spiritual realm of existence God’s covenants are marriages with a people of males and females. They all corporately are His bride, and He is always their Husband the Head of the Family. This is the way it is and will always be, whether you like it or not!
This knowledge identifies the church to be the New Covenant woman bride that is being used by God to bruise the head of Satan in Romans 16:20 and it further directly connects us to Genesis 3:15. There are many other lessons that explain this in more details on this website, if you are unfamiliar with who you are to God as the church. Please just understand that the Church of Jesus Christ is considered a symbolic spiritual woman and bride.
Next, let us define who Satan is. We must understand that Satan is the “head” ruler of the kingdom of darkness in this world (Acts 26:18, Col 1:13). Let us look at some other key identifying characteristics of this enemy. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Satan is called the “god of this world”. This lower-case “g” “god” is the exact same Greek word translated as capital “G” “God” as referring to our Creator. Therefore, Satan is not a nobody or a powerless being. Then notice in Ephesians 2:2 Satan is called “the prince of the power of the air that works in children of disobedience”. Therefore, Satan is considered at minimum a “prince” of a kingdom. Jesus himself claimed Satan has a kingdom in Luke 11:18.
If you are a serious Bible student, Romans 16:20 should begin to fit into the pattern that was written about in Genesis 3:15. With a little study we should be able to see how Romans 16:20 is a parallel prophecy of the verse found in Genesis 3:15. If you recall, this verse was God speaking to the “serpent” saying, “I will put enmity between you and the woman”. Notice the emphasized hatred and implied war is between a serpent and a woman. Then God mentions head and feet saying, “your head (the serpent) will be bruised under foot”. God does not identify which woman is being spoken of in Genesis 3:15, but He has now identified her in Romans 16:20, to be the church bride of Christ.
Most are going to criticize this teaching because almost every Bible teacher has taught this verse is about a “seed” and that connect that to be the Lord Jesus Christ. They further claim this brusising took place on the cross. But yet we can’t find a verse that claims what they teach mentioning Jesus to be the “Seed of the woman from Genesis 3:15”, or about His feet standing on the serpent.
Instead, we find verses like Luke 10:19 which is Jesus speaking to the church saying, “I give unto you authority to tread on serpents, scorpions and all the power of the enemy”. This was Jesus speaking to leaders of the church and it applies to us today also since we are in the same church body as they were.
We also see that Psalm 110:1 is quoted at least 5 times in the New Covenant claiming it was written about Jesus. This verse is the LORD (YHWH) God speaking to His Son saying, “Sit here at my righthand, until I make your enemies your footstool”. Wow, these verses go along with Romans 16:20 exactly. Jesus is currently seated in heaven at the right hand of God, and God said He would use the feet of the Bride of Christ to bruise the head of Satan (the serpent)”.
Notice, God does not inform us, who the “serpent” is in Genesis 3:1. But thankfully, God defines the name of the serpent to be Satan in Revelation 12:9 which is another key chapter about a woman standing with her “feet” on a very key object. This woman is standing on the moon. This object is defined to be the ruler of the night and darkness in Psalm 136:9. These are all God’s clues about the same bruising and the same woman being spoken of using direct or symbolic representations to identify her.
Now we have seen all the key connecting information that is necessary to interpret these verses correctly. Satan is defined to be the Genesis 3:15 “serpent” in Revelation 12. Then in Romans 16:20 we have a woman called the church who will be used by God to bruise Satan the serpent under her feet, and this has yet to occur and must happen very soon. Since this had not happened when Paul wrote this letter, we can deduce this is a prophecy of an event that must happen in a future context. Then you must realize that this time of bruising occurs before the rapture. Now is the time when the rapture could occur and therefore, the serpent’s head will be bruised before the bridegroom comes and gets His bride. Did you know this is why Satan hates this teaching and wants to silence it?
Do you see the connections being made here? We have three verses about a woman who is at war with Satan. In every situation we have her “feet” standing on the head of the ruler of darkness who is Satan. These are all verses that predict a victorious church and defeated enemy Satan. This is not an accident. There are many other lessons that teach this in more detail. These will not be repeated here. This is just being included because these are the wise choices of an almighty and omnipotent God of Peace, who is working to bring about a lasting eternal “Peace” over His enemy.
God chooses to use a foolish looking woman who appears weak to Satan, and she has been identified to be the church. Remember the first woman who was the wife of the first Adam was deceived (2 Cor 11:3). This wife was tricked by the serpent. But the church, the wife of the Last Adam will not be tricked. The natural wife who was the mother of all natural humans, is not the same as the “spiritual wife”.
For she represents the wife of Jesus Christ whose Spirit now lives in us and He has become joined with our human spirit, causing us to be much more powerful than we appear on the outside sometimes to our enemy (1 Jn 4:4). The Omnipotent God of Peace loves to use foolish things to confound the wise (1 Cor 1:27).
We should all know that God has surprised His enemy Satan by defeating him while hanging on a cross. During this event, He died, and His side was pierced by a sword allowing blood and water to flow out of His body (Jn 19:34). This was the spiritual birth of the church which is like the taking of the woman out of the first Adam (Gen 2:21-22). But this woman would be used by God to fulfill a prophecy with the crushing of the head of the serpent under her feet. Remember this woman is what God calls a weaker vessel (1 Pet 3:7).
You see if God in His omnipotent power defeats Satan, God could potentially appear to look evil, after all He is the one that speaks and the sun, moon, and stars just appear (Psalm 33:6). God’s power is so much greater than Satan, it is not a fair fight. This is not the way of God seen in His True Light. Do not forget that even Jesus (God in the flesh) stripped Himself of His deity power to become a humble servant man that died on a cross (Php 2:7-8). That is clearly not what Satan expected to happen and this is the man that God calls the Last Adam. This man of peace was the God of Peace that became like the first Adam, but He chose to keep the hundreds of Laws and Commandments of God to be without sin (Heb 4:15), while the first man Adam having only 1 commandment chose to revolt.
Are we beginning to see how God’s ways are not our ways (Isa 55:8)? What would we do if we were omnipotent, and someone became our enemy trying to steal our kingdom and glory? Humans would probably just kill them instantly in a fit of rage. But that does not sound like the True God, when we see Him correctly. If you believe that it does, you may not really know God as well as you should. Look at this verse of confirmation:
1Co 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
Finally, how is the God of Peace whose ways are not our normal human ways, using the church bride to defeat His enemy Satan? If you recall in Ephesians 6, God lists His armor for us to put on in this spiritual warfare that the church is involved within. God lists multiple pieces of spiritual armor including a belt, a breastplate, a helmet, a shield and a sword.
However, notice that one of the weakest sounding parts of the armor were the “shoes” that are supposed to be protecting the church woman’s feet. The church’s feet are supposed to be shod with the “Gospel of Peace”. Now put this together with what we just read in 1 Corinthians 1:18. God’s Gospel of Peace preaching the cross is completely foolish to everyone that is perishing. Is Satan going to perish? If we read the back of the book, we will quickly discover that he is.
Therefore, what some may consider weak and foolish is where God has placed His great power. Wow! That sounds like the God of Peace has guaranteed our victory, through wrapping our feet with the powerful Gospel of Peace, doesn’t it?
The church should be preaching this Gospel good news unashamedly and more today than ever. Do you remember what Paul said in Romans 1:16? Here Paul wrote “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation, for the Jew first, and also unto the Greek”. This proves again the Power of God is found within foolish good words of peace. The time is growing very short for the end of the church age of God’s divine Grace. Yet we have His promises that we will overcome and He (the God of Peace) lives in us to guarantee our victory.
Introduction to God’s Definition
of the True Shalom Type of Peace
To begin to understand the subject of “Peace” we must learn to see the subject through the eyes of God and ignore human traditions. The English word “peace” occurs over 400 times in the KJV Bible. Within the New Testament the word “peace” is found over 100 times. The key Greek words translated as “peace” in the New Testament are G2270, G1514, G1515, G1516, G1517, G1518, G4601, G4623, and G5392. The Greek language as you should be aware is a much more descriptive detailed language than English and usually has several Words to describe the same subject. Each Greek word expresses details and types of “peace” which are usually applicable to only one version or feature of “peace”. For example, Jesus is called a “Peace Maker” using the Word G1517 through the blood of the cross (Col 1:20). This literally means there was a problem between God’s created humans that were under bondage of sin and Satan and their Creator God. This sin problem was solved by the bloody death of Jesus hanging on a cross approximately 2000 years ago (Col 1:20).
Then there is another verse that Jesus said about the church when He was calling us out to also be peacemakers (G1518). Jesus personally, promised the church that we would be blessed if we choose to become peacemakers like Him. Here is what Matthew 5:9 said, “Blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called children of God”. To become a child of God is the only way to be saved. Therefore, to follow and pursue after making peace with all men should be one of our greatest priorities (Heb 12:14).
In the Old Testament Hebrew language, the translated English word “peace” occurs over 300 times, originating from the Hebrew words H1826, H2790, H7965, H7999, H8002, and a few others. But we will be focused today upon H7965 (Shalom) for this study. The Hebrew word H7965 “Shalom” occurs over 230 times in the Old Testament, and it was predominately translated as “peace”.
Let us first review the definitions of the English word “peace” before digging into the Greek and Hebrew words. In the English language Peace as a noun is defined as:
- A state of tranquility or quiet silence
- The absence of war with enemies
- An agreement or treaty to end hostilities
- Freedom from quarrels and disagreement; harmony in personal relationships
- Concord and friendship between governments
These are just a few of the basic concepts of what peace represents in the English understanding of the word. Let us go over a few of the basic concepts found in the New Testament Greek word. We look first at the Greek word G1515. This word is defined as:
- To join (unite, bring together) in a state of peace implying harmony and agreement
- To be “One” meaning there are no divisions or disagreements
- “Prosperity” the implied result of living in peace with no conflicts implying safety and freedom from evil and conflicts including thefts
- “Quietness” the implied result of no war, strife, argument, disagreement, fighting, wars, destruction, chaos
- “Rest” the implied result of living in peace with others without the need to be on constant guard or watch for an attack
- Peace is also implied as a state of mental and physical “Health”, which is free from any oppression of thoughts, such as worries, fears, doubts or being physically ill, sick, weak, etc.
This Greek word G1515 parallels a lot of the English meanings that we saw before in the English definitions. But it has added a few new important details to the views found in the concepts of the God kind of “Peace” verses a human narrowed focus of peace. Let us transition to the Hebrew next to find a few potentially new aspects of “Peace” to God’s definition.
The Hebrew word H7965 transliterated as “Shalom” is by far more than a simplistic idea of just being “quiet” or “still” as in a calm and peaceful day, or sea. Looking at the Strong’s definition we find what this word literally means:
- “To be safe”, implied from enemy attacks, weapons, captivity, danger, accidents, harm, thefts, destructions, etc.
- “To be well”, implied to be whole, complete, free from mental or physical illness or disease, etc.
- “To be happy”, implied to be emotionally stable, secure, free from worry, and fears
- “To be prosperous”, implied to be more than blessed enough to bless others, free from lack, want or poverty
- and “To be in health”, implied to be in a physical or mental, condition of fitness and strength, having freedom from weakness, lack, where there is nothing missing, and nothing broken, and to abide in possession of God’s perfect human design originally made in His image and likeness.
This definition parallels and states more clearly what was found in the Greek word G1515 definitions. Therefore, to God the concept of “peace” concretely includes “spiritual” applications, physical applications, calm mental and emotional thoughts free from worry, stress, and fear, as well as living prosperously without any lack or want. All these qualities describe the original spiritual conditions and characteristics of God and His purposed original design for humans that were made “in” His image and after His likeness (Gen 1:26). This state of original “peace” between God and man has been restored now through Jesus who has blessed us who believe in Him and have placed our confident trust in Him.
From these definitions of the word “Peace” we can derive what it is not, and this will help us quickly determine if we are “In Peace” or “Out of Peace”. Here is a short list of what is NOT PEACE:
- Evils
- Destruction
- Chaos
- Divided against enemies
- War, Aggression, Hostility, Strife and Fighting
- Death, Demise
- Illness, Sicknesses, Diseased, Weak, Fatigued or Feeling Poorly
- Loss, Shortage, Poverty, Lack, Famines
- Struggles, Tensions, Strains, Tiredness
- Pressures, Worries, Fears, Concerns
- Having the need to focus and deal with Lies, Deceptions, Tricks, Traps, Snares
What we will soon discover is that God’s kind of “Peace” that was built upon unity, harmony and being one in spirit, was fully established at the beginning of His original works of creation in Genesis 1:1. This type of ultimate peace is not what we are observing now. What we can see happening in the world today is the continuation of pure evil and chaos that entered by the sin of the first Adam. God warned Adam that he would lose his peace when He said, “The day you eat, you will surely die”, speaking of the tree of the knowledge of “Good” and “Evil”. However, God’s type of unified harmony became reestablished for those that were entering into the church in Acts 2 and onward.
God’s new creation being re-born in Christ Jesus was the beginning of living internally in spiritual “Peace”, but it will only be completely reestablished at the end of God’s current creation. This completed and “restored” Peace can only be released and experienced fully after all “evil” influence has ceased, and this primarily was written about in the book of Revelation chapters 21 and 22.
During our present condition and time of existence of internal spiritual peace, we are experiencing very limited external peace in the world. While we are living in internal peace, it is being joined with what looks like massive chaos and evil. What we must conclude is that God’s enemy Satan is working very hard to disrupt God’s plan to eliminate all evil. All evil will be eliminated with God’s finalization of a New Creation resulting in a New Heaven and a New Earth.
But these center times that have been occurring in between the beginning of the first creation and its ending, there has been a time where we can see there have been selected opportunities for everyone to live in some external peace, but it has never lasted. We can clearly look at our present world system and find various levels of evil, enemies, wars, chaos in our personal lives, in our work, in our families, in our friends, in our governments, etc. Therefore, final realization within the New Creation will receive a return of the God kind of Peace and it “will” have at the minimum these qualities:
- Safety,
- Goodness,
- Love,
- Unity,
- Harmony,
- Freedom,
- Prosperity,
- Blessings,
- Health,
- Life Eternal,
We have only touched on “peace” as defined by God. Hopefully, you gained a basic knowledge that God’s true peace is all-inclusive providing us spiritual peace with Him as gift, and complete freedom from all evil influence eventually in the future.
The Hidden Meaning of Shalom Peace
There is a hidden meaning of the word Shalom, found in the ancient Hebrew alphabet spelling. These pictograph letters selected and used by God to spell the word Shalom, are the 1) Shin, the 2) Lamed and the 3) Mem. These three letters were selected and designed by God with His purposed plan to restore “peace” within His Kingdom forever. Remember this word spells the word “PEACE” and it was joined with His name “LORD” (YHWH) to declare who He was and what He will do in Jesus Christ.
If you have been studying the series of lesson about Jesus being found in every letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet, you should be convinced when Jesus said I am the Alpha and the Omega in Revelation. This applies to Him claiming He was every letter in the alphabet. Since Jesus was Jewish, He spoke Hebrew and said the words Alef and Tav to another Hebrew man named John who wrote the book of Revelation in Greek for most of the lost world to read. Therefore, John was inspired by the Spirit of God to write the first and last letters spoken by Jesus as the Alpha and Omega. This is based upon pure logic, common sense and also example of when Jesus spoke to Saul on the road to Damascus. Jesus clearly spoke to Saul in Hebrew also (Acts 21:40).
This revelation strongly suggested that since Jesus was the beginning of the alphabet and the ending of the alphabet, He could logically be found in every other alphabet letter also. This means, the Shin, the Lamed and the Mem are letters about Jesus and placing them together provides us a hidden message about what God is doing through Jesus to re-establish “Peace”.
The first letter “Shin” is a picture of the two top front teeth of a man. Remember, Jesus was God in the form of a man (Jn 1:1-14). This letter as the two front teeth represents an instrument that cuts or divides because it is very sharp. This too describes Jesus’ work on the earth in the flesh. Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 10:34?
Mat 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
We can clearly see Jesus claiming to have come into the world in the flesh not to bring peace, but rather a sword. Swords cut, swords are for war, swords divide, and this is what the Shin represents in this word. Think about the two front teeth taking a bite of corn on the cob. They cut the corn off the cob, and then allow those pieces to enter the mouth, be chewed to pieces and swallowed. This is exactly what God is planning to figuratively do to Satan.
The next middle letter of the word Shalom is the Lamed. This letter is a picture of a Shepherd’s staff. It represents a Shepherd’s authority and power. Normally this letter represents Jesus, but we are going to find out by the next letter, it has a different application to the work of Jesus.
Finally, the last Hebrew letter in Shalom is “Mem”. This letter’s pictograph represents large waves of water. It represents moving liquids like water and blood primarily. But when water movement increases significantly it brings violence, destruction and death and these are works of Satan who is an extreme worker of evil (Jn 10:10). Therefore, the letter Mem can represent someone that produces “Chaos” and the disruption of “Peace”. We confirm this to be Satan by reading Revelation 12:15, “And the serpent cast out of his mouth, water (Mem) as a flood…”. This paints the picture of the Mem speaking words that are creating massive chaos. But it confirms exactly what is happening in opposition to peace.
Wow! Let us place the meanings of these three letters together to discover the hidden message concerning the works of Jesus Christ to restore “Peace”. Remember God is the God of “Peace” and think about what this meaning has to do with God’s works in creation.
Placing the letters of Shalom together we arrive at the meaning of the joined Shin, Lamed and Mem all together as God saying:
Shin = “He will destroy and divide
Lamed = the Authority
Mem = of he (Satan) that causes Chaos, death and destruction”
This will be the focus of the rest of this lesson series. We will be exploring the Bible to verify that this is exactly what God is still doing in our world today and it will soon come to an end and Satan knows this now and is fighting extremely hard to cause the plan of God to be slowed or to be stopped. But we all know this is a futile effort, because we have read the back of the book already, and have believed that it shall be even as the Lord has spoken.
Conclusion
We have only touched the surface to see a very small part of the Who, What, When, Where and Why of the subject of “Peace”. We were introduced to the basic Bible concepts of “Peace” as defined in the Word of God. We were also introduced to the meaning of the word Shalom hidden in the ancient Hebrew alphabet spelling. This word as we saw meant “He will DESTROY the AUTHORITY of the one that made CHAOS”. The “He” that will Destroy (Shin) is Jesus, the authority (Lamed) that makes chaos (Mem) in heaven and on the earth is Satan.
We further learned one of the names of God is Jehovah (YHWH) Shalom (Peace). We should have seen this name confirms Jesus to be the one that will destroy the authority of chaos, by us beholding (Hey) His hands (Yod) having been pierced by nails (Vav). Remember the name LORD YHWH is spelled Yod + Hey + Vav + Hey meaning Behold the Hands, Behold the Nails and this spells Jehovah. All of this was written about in Zecheriah 12:10.
God is the one that is eternal, all powerful, all knowing, all seeing, and who by His chosen name He purposes to dwell in a constant and never changing level of the highest order of “Peace”. This means He does no evil. God is also not the author of any confusion (chaos) but rather “Peace” according to 1 Corinthians 14:33). This verse in 1st Corinthians is a profound confirmation to what this series is teaching.
We will in this series be learning more about God’s characteristics of “Peace”. We will further see how God’s original works of creation was done in ultimate peace and perfection. But we will then learn where and when Chaos and Evil occurred. We will be answering some important questions about why is evil still in existence and appears to be doing a massive amount of preparation and rehearsal for a coming world government that will be led by the highest evil ruler, Satan in the form of the antichrist.
Nevertheless, we will learn that Satan does not win, and God’s ultimate “Peace” will prevail in Jesus. Jesus is prophesied to be the “Prince of Peace” in Isaiah 9:6. This shows us that this is what we all should have great expectations of seeing and experiencing soon. We will be studying all this and much more in future lessons.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with Agapegeek. We appreciate your faithfulness and encourage you to verify everything that is written. Do not believe anything without the Holy Spirit’s confirmation internally, along with Him confirming what the verses say using the ruling force and power of the Holy Spirit’s “Peace” in your heart. Continue to abide in the Peace of God that passes all understanding (Php 4:7).
May God of Peace continue to be with you and richly Bless you All!
If you would like to continue your study in this series on the subject of Shalom Peace, please click “Part 2“.
What are the Best Sources for Learning Truth – How Do We Find and Know “If” it is God’s Absolute Truth Vs Satan’s Lies or Human Reasoning?
(Ver 1.0) This is an answer to two questions received recently about where the best resources are found for learning, knowing, and understanding what truth is. Do we need to go to a Bible school or seminary to find truth? Are there great printed books or are there great resource materials on the internet for knowing the truth. Are these materials and resources available for a cost or are there also some that are free?
We should all know going to any book, printed material, school, seminary, college, etc. costs money. If money is no object, there are several resources that could be recommended. However, since the invention and rise of the internet in the 1990’s, called the information highway by some, the amounts of data that has been accumulated and is being made available is astronomically increasing at a staggering rate exponentially and most of this good information is free. Praise the Lord!
There are some exceptions, but most of the information on the internet is free and that is great. However, the problem rises very soon for us to be able to discern correctly which resource is legitimate truth and which ones are designed to mislead you, program you, or even to eventually deceive and destroy your faith and belief in the True and Living God. With the new rise of Artificial Intelligence within Applications and Websites, this is also a potential troubling concern for some people to realize and ask a basic question about, who is trying to control what you see and know and why are they limiting the information and spread of free speech.
These are some of the things we will address from a Biblical World View perspective. Yes, we are firm believers that the Bible is the source of ALL Ultimate Unchangeable Truth because it came out of the mouth of God to be written down for us to learn TRUTH. If this belief offends you, you are potentially in the right place to learn how to know for sure if what you believe is true or not.
What is Truth?
What is Truth? Is it different for everyone? Does Truth change? Or is it just our knowledge that changes our perception of “Truth”. Or is there an “Absolute Truth” that will never change? If there is “Absolute Truth” where is it found? Let us start with one definition of truth.
Truth is defined by some as “reality”. Truth is also defined by some to be “the state of things as they are”. Others define truth to be “facts”.
While all of that is good, it is all very subjective depending on what your basic groundwork of “fact” and “truth” is. If you are grounded upon the Bible, you are on a firm foundation. If you base your “fact checking” on the government, media, or internet, you are potentially being misled into believing “lies” to be “truth”.
Joh 17:17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
According to Jesus, God’s Word is the resource for Truth. Who can argue with God?
Do You Hunger and Thirst for God’s Truth?
Psa 107:9 For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry soul with goodness.
Mat 5:6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
One of the key factors for learning truth is for us to possess a very strong hunger and thirst (internal desire) to seek and search for it. It would be like someone that was lost in the Sahara Desert and was dying of thirst. They would be in desperate search for this liquid substance to live. This is the attitude we must possess for learning God’s truth. Only His Words can give us spiritual eternal “life” (Jn 6:63). But to give diligent search for water is not passive, it requires work to search to find it:
Mat 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
Mat 7:8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
Today TRUTH is not being presented everywhere you see and hear things. This hungry desire is based upon what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8. Here Jesus said we are required to do 3 things, 1) Ask, 2) Seek, and 3) Knock and it will be given, found, and opened to us (applying to many things, but certainly including knowing the truth). You may have heard of “Fake News” recently and this exists everywhere, and this revelation implies strongly that there should be a search for “Real News”. This applies to TRUTH also. There is “Fake Information” being presented as “TRUTH” everywhere also.
For the past 35 years I have been consumed with obtaining, knowing, and understanding all of God’s truth that I am able to receive. In doing so I have discovered and confirmed without any doubt this book called the Bible is the most amazing, intelligently designed, and wisely written book ever. It could have only originated from a very powerful supernatural being living outside of time and who was able to view and personally influence the over 40 men that recorded the letters and words written on every page. This means God All Knowing and God Almighty. No other source is even remotely possible.
This book called the Bible is also the all-time bestselling book in human history. The words have been translated into more languages than we are able to learn or know completely. This means this book has the potential power to radically save more than 8 billion people on the planet. This also means the Gospel is going forth into all the world and Jesus could be returning any second.
How can I make this claim that the Bible is so amazingly designed? I was a computer software engineer for many years. Working in this environment, God taught me at least three things through this incredible experience. These are 1) the reality of every intelligent design only comes from an intelligent designer, 2) there is a critical need to give attention to every detail found in the design, even the most minor ones, and 3) there are requirements, laws, and rules to maintain order, so that any information and data can be created, understood and for it to be made useful.
For example, any language that will be written must have a basic alphabet. Each alphabet letter has specific rules of design, including shape, size, sounds, etc. These are just fundamental rules to create an understandable book. If you have been reading this website long you are discovering the great order and meaning of the Ancient Hebrew alphabet letters having very significant prophetical meanings about the Lord Jesus Christ.
First, just like a complex software system did not create itself, neither did 40+ non-collaborating men create 66 books within over 1500 years of spread-out time span, and this just happen by accident. Neither could all these men have created a book that harmonizes and reveals the most amazing information that is possible without an unexplainable outside influence. This just could not happen by chance. When discovered this created book could have only come from God who created everything. This is why Satan, and his world hates this book and have been doing everything possible to eliminate it from being spread and taught. No other book has been so extraordinarily band from nations, schools, cities, governments, etc.
Second, when you begin to pay attention to every detail of the Bible you begin to realize the extreme intelligence of the designer. For example, in a computer software language that is used to create written programs and applications, they all have rules and details of structure. Every detail in the Bible’s design matters, exactly like every detail in a software design.
For example, a very old computer language called COBOL, created English like statements. For example, “ADD CURRENT-INPUT-VALUE TO TOTAL.” is a very readable English computer statement based upon simple readable and understandable rules. To be used by a computer it must be “compiled” into machine language to convert what we can easily read into what the designer of the machine’s rules can process. Uh oh? This sounds like the Bible significantly. Do you remember these statements in the Bible:
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Rom 8:6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Rom 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
What we observe in the Bible are two conflicting rule systems. God’s thoughts and ways are so much higher than a human. We can also see our natural thinking ways are an enemy to how the Spirit of God sees everything. God’s Laws and yes, God operates under self-imposed rules, limitations, constraints of behavior and moral character that a natural unsaved human does not normally conform to. For example, Numbers 23:19 says “God is not a man that He should lie”. This means humans potentially lie continually, where as God will never do this.
Therefore, understand that there are differences of rules, and laws found in the Spiritual design of the Bible that need to be learned with the help of God the Author, for us to begin to understand what was written. Missing one spiritual rule, is like missing one specific “period” in one certain statement of the computer COBOL language that could cause the entire intended meaning to change. Therefore, like COBOL teaches us that every single letter and punctuation brought meaning to the designer’s design, so it is with the Bible.
Every computer system has imperfections and weaknesses. These are called “bugs” in computerese. But the Bible was written by God to give man the right of freewill choice. This designed choice gives unsaved humans the illusion of flaws causing those to not understand it, but to those who want to know the truth, the details are made known to us by God personally living inside of us to open our ability to understand. This alone proves it is the most amazing book ever.
The Bible is a book written from the level of an omniscient being speaking to people who know nothing in comparison. Yet we can grow in the knowledge of its content and meaning with His help through our very diligent study. This is why most people don’t have a clue what this book says or means, because it is written by the most intelligent Spirit, and we are all barely like 2-year-old children in comparison.
The third reality I learned from the experience with computers and with studying the Bible, is the requirement to understand there are rules behind everything that is written to make any of it understandable, useful, and working in our life. Think of a box of alphabet letters like the game Scrabble pieces. If you shook them out and scattered them on a board in random order, what words would you spell. In most likelihood, none. Therefore, to create understandable and meaningful words we must follow the rules of the language, and this requires intelligent design. So, it is with the Bible.
Just like an ignorant 2-year-old would not understand a complex software system written in Java, so the Bible is the same for someone that does not want to know God.
The Bible students that asked the questions and left the comments are like many others today that have the drive, hunger, passion, and desire to grow to know God’s actual truth. In comparison, there was another recent commenter that said the Bible studies on this website were not read entirely because they are too long. This could be an example of someone that could be partially committed to learning God’s Word, because of being too distracted by the cares of this world. To find the truth, Jesus said very clearly that we must “continue” in the Word, until we know the truth. This means no one but God fully knows the truth, and we must continue without stopping, making it our priority.
What I have noticed about successful Bible study are that people that were fully committed to know and hear from God spent whatever time was necessary to hear from God, because it was that valuable and necessary to them. Personal time spent has a much more valuable return on investment, than all the money that could be spent for materials.
For example, check out in Matthew 15 when Jesus was teaching nearly 10,000 people. He stood there teaching them for almost three days and they were so hungry for the Words that He shared with them that they no doubt slept on the ground and had not eaten in three days. And then notice how this spiritual hunger example, compares with someone that does not want to spend a couple of hours to read or listen to one Bible lesson. Who is hungry? Are you that hungry that if Jesus was speaking outside of your city, you would walk out to hear him teach for 3 days? Who has this deep desire to know God and His truth. If you had any comprehension how many hours were spent hearing from God to write these lessons, and how much time it saved you from doing the same, a couple of hours is nothing to possibly learn one new thing that you have potentially never seen or heard before.
What are Good Bible Knowledge Sources?
What are some good sources for learning God’s knowledgeable viewpoint of His truth? Where and how do I gain the knowledge of God’s Truth. Number one is from the personal reading and studying of the Bible which is the source of all truth. But second is to be led by the Spirit because it is God who authored the entire book. And never forget that He is the Spirit of Truth (Jn 14:17) who leads us into all Truth (Jn 16;13). Without His help we will never find the truth because the human carnal mind alone is just like a two-year-old that is just incapable of seeing and understanding spiritual truth. Thank God, He gave us a helper named the Holy Spirit.
Before I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit like occurred in Acts 2, I understood nothing that was written in the Bible. After receiving this experience, He was the ultimate factor that changed me forever and He is our greatest asset to knowing the real Truth, because He is the Spirit of Truth that wrote the book (John 14:7).
However, the revelation knowledge of the Word was not automatic just by being born again, and then receiving the Holy Spirit baptism. The Holy Spirit led me to ask for it, and this was what began an insatiable hunger and thirst for the greatest quest for knowing Him and everything that He has revealed for us to know about Him.
What happened one morning while I was praying in the Spirit. I found myself suddenly asking God for no reason to give me revelation knowledge of His word. Many months later I discovered this prayer was written in the Bible as a prayer that Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus. In Ephesians 1:16-23. I highly recommend everyone pray this prayer for themselves. Ask the Lord to give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
After praying this prayer, I noticed while reading and studying the Bible, the words, phrases, and verses that I read would suddenly just come alive to my spirit and leap off the page. I began to see things, know things, and understand things that I had never seen or heard before. It brought such joy, amazement and wonder that it is truly indescribable.
Notice what I said. The same exact words on the page did not change, it was me that God was changing through living inside me and helping me to understand what they meant to Him. Remember God says His thoughts and ways of thinking are much higher than any lost unlearned and ignorant human.
The next greatest source for obtains the Truth of the Bible is by reading and listening to God’s called humans that are anointed by His Holy Spirit to be teachers of His Word. I have listened to hundreds of different teachers and have learned something great from them all.
I am one of those many teachers. I will never claim to be the most important one or the only one that you should learn from. I am not the all-knowing God. No human knows it all like our God. God purposefully does not give all revelation to anyone.
Bible teachers are like natural doctors and physicians. They are often gifted in certain specialties while others are like general practitioners that try to help everyone grow stronger in the basic knowledge of the truth.
Remember that no one except God knows 100% of the truth. Therefore, when we are learning the Bible, we want to judge what a teacher says using two sources of guaranteed Truth. These are the Bible and the Holy Spirit author that lives inside of us. That is IF you have made Him your Lord and asked Him to come live in your heart.
My favorite non-Bible quote is by Will Rogers. He said, “We are all ignorant, only about different things.” Keep this in mind when learning from every Bible teacher, including me. Never accept everything said to be Truth. But also, never reject anything they say because you have never heard it or don’t believe it is not the Truth.
Prove with your own individual study if it agrees with what you can see the Bible says and what the Holy Spirit inside witnesses to you about what is being taught. He knows whether you do or not. Become a Berean Bible student like Acts 17:11. They were open-minded and ever willing to learn something new. But they also confirmed what was taught with their own Bible study. One Bible teacher said be as wise as old cows, eat the good straw and spit out the sticks. Using this wisdom will allow you to learn from anyone that is truly anointed by God.
Using Modern Bible Study Tools
I have used the eSword Bible study software for almost 35 years. Is it the best tool? Probably not. But I chose it because I believe this is where the Holy Spirit led me. Is it perfect? Nothing is perfect but God. I have found several eSword flaws, bugs, and things that need to be fixed. This is true for all imperfect human created tools. Yet it had this advantage for myself and for those that studied the Bible with me. It was free.
Because it was given away for free, this matched my belief of spreading the Gospel. There should never be any charges for teaching God’s word according to Matthew 10:8 and 1 Corinthians 9:18. Giving away the Bible and the Gospel for free makes it available to anyone rich or poor.
My current favorite version of eSword now is the Apple version. Unfortunately it cost about twenty dollars when I purchased it. I don’t know why the change from free other than the fact Apple charges software developers to use their OS platform whereas Microsoft was free.
The Apple version of eSword is easy to use and it has easy access to an ancient Hebrew language lexicon which is not currently available on the Windows version.
As far as which Bible I study and write using, you can easily see the KJV Bible is my first and primary study version. This because of two reasons. The first is that the KJV Bible is free. The second is that it is highly accurate once you learn the old English style of language. It being free eliminates copyright conflicts for publishing.
There are other Bible versions that I use but only a couple that I will pay for. One is the NASB and the other is the Amplified. I like the free Young’s literal version also, but there are many other free Bibles available on eSword.
Studying the original languages of the written Bible is absolutely essential. Translators have made many human errors. We must understand which word was inspired by God, what it means and how it is used in the entire Bible. But also know God’s definitions of His chosen words overrule human definitions. Lexicons like Strong and Thayer can have mistakes and human traditions imbedded within them.
Here is the basic overview of things needed to find truth:
- Being born again by the Spirit of God through hearing His Word, accepting it, believing it, and confessing Jesus as your Lord. Having Faith is the key to receiving from God in every step listed here.
- Being filled with the Holy Spirit the author of the Bible who will lead us into all truth.
- Asking God to reveal His truth.
- Get a good Bible study tool like eSword on Apple.
- Having a great hunger and desire to know the truth. This should be the drive for every search.
- Having great patience when learning the truth. Like a child going to kindergarten to understand simple basics, know that there is much more that you do not know than you do know. Real deep Truth builds upon layers of other basic truth.
- Make it a habitual desire everyday to spend time with God in His word.
- In all Bible study have faith to ask God to lead you to what you need to know today that will help you prepare for tomorrow. Then open your Bible believing He is doing it.
- Listen and learn from many called, anointed teachers of the Bible. But be led by the Spirit which one and when.
- Have an open mind to receive things in the Word you never heard before. But verify what is taught using your own study and witness of peace given by the Holy Spirit.
- Know that all Bible teachers are not God and are ignorant of differing subjects.
- Know also that Bible teachers are gifted by God to know certain subjects very well. Therefore, we can learn great revelation from many of them even when we don’t agree with everything that is taught. Ask God what you need to know and then be led by Him where you need to go to find the answers.
Bible Schools
Investing money into yourself to attend a great Bible school can save you a lot of time, because of the already designed plan to learn step-by-step. However, like any individual pastor or teacher that we can learn from, understand every Bible school also carries, potential bias of extreme truths. In other words some Bible schools emphasize “Grace”, and others “Faith”, and others can teach only specific basic truths of salvation only.
Balance is the key to understanding God’s Truth. What you may need to know today, could be missed by one Bible school. Therefore, be led by the Spirit of God. He knows what you should do, where it should be done and when to do it.
Therefore, while I could recommend Bible schools, it best that I do not cause my opinion to sway your decision apart from the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
Conclusion
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Jesus gives us our final insight today on the most reliable source of “Truth”. First, notice Jesus is speaking with “Believers” in Him. This means they have heard the message about Jesus and believed it to be “True”. This fact brings about our first division to learning truth. Those that believe not in Jesus will never know the “Truth”.
Next Jesus further reduces the number that will know truth by qualifying that it will only be those that “continue” in His Word. This makes it very clear that “believers” can be deceived and not ever fully know the truth if they “DO NOT CONTINUE IN HIS WORD”. This is sounding a lot like the “Narrow” path that Jesus said led to life (Mat 7:14) and the wide path that led only to eternal damnation (Mat 7:13). Jesus made it very clear that there will only be a few that walk the way of seeking after life. But there will be many that go to their own chosen way of destruction.
Now notice how verse 31 ended. Jesus said if you continue in my word then you will be my disciples indeed. The Greek word G230 translated as “indeed” of this verse is predominately translated as “truth”. This verse could have read “If you continue in my word, then you will be my disciples truly. This would be in opposition to “be my disciples falsely”. Do you see the severe consequences for not studying the Bible? This means the Bible is the only authority of “absolute truth”. Do you see how our priority needs to change to become hungrier for the Word of God?
You should have learned today that I prefer “free” Bibles, “free” teachings, and “free” resources of truth. Paul confirms this belief in 1 Corinthians 9:18 when he said it would be an abuse of his power to charge for what he taught. This means go on the internet and search for subjects that the Holy Spirit is laying on your heart to learn. Take the time to read or listen to studies that offer an internal Spirit witness confirmation that this is someone that God has led you to learn from. Then trust that “peace” to continue to study more of their lessons and determine if they still bring you that same joy and peace. If they do this is the Holy Spirit agreeing that you are in the right place.
Remember what else Paul said about where he obtained his knowledge of the truth:
Gal 1:12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Notice that Paul who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament, claims he received almost everything directly from spending time with the Author of the Bible. Paul claims this knowledge of the truth did not come from any human, including the apostles. But obtaining this knowledge took Paul years to acquire and you can learn it much quicker by just reading the books that he wrote inspired by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. So, it is also today. God still anoints teachers, preachers, evangelists, etc.
Ask and then trust the Holy Spirit to lead you to the resources that are freely available today. There are too many available that can help save you hundreds of hours of isolated study. God has given “revelation” to so many on so many differing subjects. Many are available for free.
Thank you for taking the time to read this lesson. But also thank you for being led here first to find it. If this has been a blessing to you, share it with others. God Bless you and help you to hunger and thirst for the absolute truth of the Word of God.
Is the Rapture of the Church a Reality in the Bible – Part 8 Jesus is Coming Soon
(Ver 1.0) There are many scoffers and rebukers of this Bible truth. Satan wants every Christian to not believe and have faith in the sudden and surprising return of Jesus Christ to catch away His bride. If you are a skeptic of this soon-coming reality it would be wise for you to go and read this series from the beginning. There are too many confirmations within typology and patterns given to us in the Bible for us NOT TO BELIEVE in this blessed hope (Tit 2:13). If you have not read the entire series, please go to “Part 1” now.
Many Christians that criticize the “harpazo” catching away theological position found in the Bible. They instead accuse other Christians that believe in this reality, people who believe in “escapism” theology. Meaning we should never feel like we should be persecuted. Yes, we are guaranteed “persecution” as promised by Jesus (Jn 15:20). However, we are NOT ever promised to go through the wrath of God according to Romans 5:9. God will never punish the righteous with the wicked as Abraham so pointed out speaking to God in Genesis 18:25. Jesus addressed this escapism condemnation by speaking to believers this statement:
Luk 21:36 Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.
If you are Christ’s bride, called the church (ekklesia), then we are supposed to pray to God to be counted “worthy” to escape this world’s evils and this will happen when the “catching away” suddenly takes us up by sudden surprise a divine display of His great power.
Obtaining Faith for the Rapture
Today is Super Bowl Sunday in the USA. Wouldn’t this be a great surprise for the world to have Jesus catch away the church during the Super Bowl. Who would be looking for Him to come today? Who would go up in a rapture if they were not expecting to go? Many people believe everything happens in life automatically if it is the will of God. But is this what we are observing happening in the world today?
If 2 Peter 3:9 says “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance, does this mean everyone is guaranteed salvation? Absolutely not! There are thousands and millions of people going to hell every day and every month. If you believe rapture is not for you, and it happens, do you believe you would go? It would be shocking if this would happen according to the Bible. Jesus said very clearly “According to your faith, be it unto you.”
What we begin to learn from God in the flesh, is not everything that God desires to do is automatically becomes a reality to every human. God desires to save everyone, but everyone must receive the free gift. This logic requires us to also believe in a “rapture” event also. Think about it!
There are many people that believe in “Pre-Trib”, there are many others, that believe in “Mid-Trib”, there are others that believe in “Post-Trib” and finally, there are others that believe in in a No-Catching-Away. Could everyone be getting exactly what they believe? Could there be three catching away events? Could there be come that are not caught up at all? If you begin to view the Bible from this perspective, you might be surprised this would confirm why there are such conflicting views with each having scriptures to confirm their belief. Because everyone can view the same verses and select the one that they believe is truth ruling out all other verses.
Php 3:20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
The Greek word G553 is a word that means “To Expect Fully”. This very clearly teaches us that expectant “Faith” is our duty in awaiting our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ to appear in the clouds to take us up. Remember the angels in Acts 1, said “This Jesus that you have see go up will return in like manner”. This will be the rapture event when He stands in the clouds calling us up to meet Him as our bridegroom that calls out to His bride to bring us into the 7-year wedding feast in Heaven. This will be taking place while the wrath of God is being poured out upon the earth. Let us look at another rapture verse with the same Greek word G553:
Rom 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
This is a very interesting verse that is often overlooked as being related to rapture. However, notice the Greek word translated as “waiting”. This is the same word to fully expect. What are we fully expecting to happen? We are waiting for the “redemption” of our bodies! When does this take place? It happens when we are caught up in a nano-second of time to meet Him in the air as described in 1 Corinthians 15:52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.
Only the Lord Jesus Christ has a fully redeemed and resurrected body in heaven right now. Everyone else already in heaven is awaiting this redemption and it will occur first. But then the redemption of the living people on the earth will immediately take place after the dead in Christ bodies go up first.
However, there is a requirement to believe in this happening just as believing to be saved is also a requirement. Believing must be fully joined and persuaded in our hearts with pregnant expectations of His coming as we are seeing in scriptures. We obtain faith for the promises of God from His word (Rom 10:17). Read these rapture verses out loud and get them into your heart. This will cause you to become ready.
Conclusion
I recently witnessed someone have a heart-attack with 99% blockage. If they had not been at the right place at the right time with access to help, they would be dead right now. Are you ready to meet Jesus? Are you expecting that He could appear any second? Is your mind on Him or on football? Today could be the day of His return, and yet who is ready? Who is looking for Him while they are partying and drinking their beers? God have mercy on us all and let us begin call out to God that we be made worthy to escape this coming tribulation. God make us ready to meet you. We love you and long for your return, but we also desire all our family and friends to also be ready. Even so Lord Jesus, come quickly.
If you have never received Jesus Christ as you personal Lord and Savior there is a link at the end of this post. This will be the most important decision of you life to begin your journey of salvation. Remember God loves you so much that He sent you here to read a way to know Him forever. Jesus died to make a way out of the darkness into His marvelous Light and today is the day of salvation, now is the time to accept Him before the time for all of humanity closes the door.
We love you all, Jesus Loves you all. Thank you for reading and praying for us. God will Bless us all.
Blessing of Christmas Joy and Peace — 2023
(Ver 1.0) It is amazing to think about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. The primary focus of this entire website is “LOVE” = “AGAPE” (G26). This is not the normal human type of selfish love, but rather it describes the God kind of Love defined to us 1 Corinthians 13. Human love is a feeling of loving someone because of what they can do for me. But God says in John 3:16 that He loved the unlovely sinful world enough to come to the earth in person to give His only naturally born Son, to die for us, so that we might be saved and not perish. Praise the LORD!
That should be the kind of giving Love that we choose to display for everyone that we encounter. It has been a great blessing to provide God’s messages of LOVE for over 14 years. The LOVE of God and His Word is the sole motivation for sharing with you what He gives freely to us all (Mat 10:8). Hopefully, you feel the same way.
While this month is not the actual time of season when Jesus was born, it is the time chosen to unitedly celebrate the event. Yes, it has become devil influenced and commercialized for corporate profit. The true meaning is being slowly minimalized with an emphasis of a man in a red suit coming down a chimney. Also, instead of telling people “Merry Christmas”, the politically correct greeting has been redirected by many people to only say, “Happy Holidays”. Nevertheless, a Christian can still choose to be a light to the world by remaining bold enough to hold fast to our confession of “HAVE A MERRY & BLESSED CHRISTMAS”. Please say it in love with a smile and if someone becomes offended, you are not to blame (Jn 15:18).
Many times, we have received the most negative comments about acknowledging and celebrating Jesus, on what they call a pagan day. But we can choose to disagree without being mean and hateful to each other. Halloween is clearly demonic; Christmas is not a day where we dress as witches and goblins. No one should believe in Santa Clause or celebrate pagan traditions. But celebrating Jesus should be the number one focus for every Christian. Because God gave us the greatest gift, we are expressing His love to bless others with our gifts to them. Why does anyone have a problem with that? Do they dislike the giving, the receiving, or just the fact that it potentially costs money?
Ask God to open the door for you to share what this day is really about to someone else on this day. Share the “Gospel” that God chose to be born in a manager in Bethlehem as a male child (Mat 2:6). Tell them He was born of a virgin woman (Isa 7:14), and this will be miraculous unlike any other human entrance into the world. Tell them His Father was God in Heaven that created the heaven and the earth through Him (Eph 3:9). Tell them He died for the all-inclusive penalty for the sins of all humans by shedding His blood on a “Tav” cross (1 Jn 1:7). He did this as the greatest exchange in history. With Him becoming sin for us, so that we could become righteous to God (1 Pet 2:24). Thank you, Jesus!
What a blessing it is to have our names written in His “Lamb’s” book of Life (Luke 10:20)! What a blessing it is to have His Spirit living inside of us to help us, guide us and teach us everything that we need to know for every season of our lives (Jn 16:13). What a blessing it is to pray to Him every day and then listen to hear what He has to say back to us through His written Word and by the voice of His Spirit (Jn 10:3).
So, today you are being presented with a choice. A decision point within the short space of time of your existence in a temporary reality. You may choose to agree to celebrate with us in love because of Who He is, and What He did for us, and Everything this gift gave to us, or you may just choose to gripe, complain, about a post that is flawed with imperfect dates, and methods like you would prefer to choose. Or you could be apathetic and just do nothing.
But maybe some of you should consider another choice. Think back in time on what God has spoken to you to do in the past. Do the most significant something that He has always wanted you to do that was spoken to you many years ago when you heard but didn’t obey. Maybe it was fear that kept you from beginning the call? Maybe you believed you were not gifted, or smart enough to fulfill the call like Moses felt (Exo 4:10)? However, give God a chance and believe He will provide what you need to fulfill His plan, after you begin it by taking the first step. Wow! That is a Word for someone.
The time of the coming of Jesus is very, very short! Therefore, let us get busy in church serving others, preaching, and teaching the Word of God to anyone that will listen, going into the world to reach the lost before it is too late. Stop looking to correct everyone else because they don’t agree with you precisely to the letter of the law. Just teach what you know and believe to be the truth. Jesus did not tell you to go into all the world searching for false teachers and attack them. But rather Jesus commanded everyone to go into all the world and preach the Good News! Everyone that chooses to obey Him and give their lives, will and bodies to Him for His control, will be saved, and everyone that chooses not to believe will be damning themselves to an eternity in a lake of fire (Rev 21:8).
Here is one of our main emphases today again, Jesus Christ is coming back so much sooner than you know! What if it was in the next minute, after you finished reading this post and decided you still have time to get saved, so I’ll just wait. Maybe you are saying to yourself, I am just having too much fun right now. But suddenly when you least expected it, Jesus appears in the heavens, and millions of people vanish instantly from the face of the planet. There will be some deceivers that will tell you, they were taken by aliens to cleanse the world of all the evil people and now the true humans were left here to save the planet from the coming “climate change” destruction of the planet. But it will be too late to then be saved from the most horrific time of human history called the Great Tribulation (Mat 24:21). Now is the best time to give your live to Jesus while the Holy Spirit is still speaking to your heart (Heb 4:7). There is a link to click below about knowing how to begin the walk with Jesus. Please click this link and leave a comment on it after you prayed the prayer. Thank you! It will be the best decision of your life, and we will meet again in heaven to share this experience with each other.
Conclusion
Isa 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
We are celebrating a baby child that was God in the flesh. What a powerful display of God’s humility to make Himself one of His creations to save us! This is the ultimate display of Love that anyone could possibly do for someone. God said, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us!” (Rom 5:8). And Jesus also said, “No great Love has anyone, then He that lays down His life for His friends” (Jn 15:13).
My God has already richly blessed us all, with every spiritual blessing (Eph 1:3) and in doing this He gave to us everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3). Remember if you have anything Good it is because God was the source of the gift (James 1:17). That makes this celebration a great time to “Give Thanks to God” for all His blessings. God has been faithful to us all and He will remain faithful (Heb 13:5), until He comes and takes us up, very soon (Rev 22:12).
Leave us a blessing today or share your prayer request so that all the readers will be able to pray and agree with you and with us at Agapegeek. Jesus loves you, and we love you more than we can express in words. Someday we will meet in heaven and have a lot to talk about knowing everything that Jesus has done for each of us. Praise the LORD Jesus!
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Have a very blessed and Merry Christmas. Amen!
Understanding the Sovereignty of God – Part 3 – Balancing Love’s Sovereign Power in Action
(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 3” in one of the most essential to understand subjects found in the Bible. Our subject series is about the “sovereignty” of God. This should be one of the first studies to be taught to every new believer because it reveals one of the major qualities of God being God. Every reader so far should agree with this belief that God is Sovereign to begin our study. This means not one of us had any say in anything that was created, how it works, or why it is here. We are all simply created beings existing for God’s sovereign purpose and will. If you would like to read this series from the beginning, please go to “Part 1“.
This subject should also be important to mature believers because it has often been taught in the past embedded with many traditions of human reason and philosophy. As you should now know our subject is about God’s eternal and omnipotent “Sovereignty”. But how we define the word sovereignty and apply this word to God and His creation makes all the difference to knowing the truth. For example, look at the words of Jesus speaking indirectly about this subject:
Mat 22:29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
Apparently from this verse we learn that humans can possibly not understand the Words found in the Bible, yes, or no? Next, we can learn that any teacher of the Bible can also be in error, yes, or no? Jesus was speaking with the Jewish leaders that dramatically had two opposing views of this subject of resurrection. The subject context of this statement of Jesus concerns the resurrection of the dead and what happens to a wife that had multiple husbands.
We know from basic common sense, that the subject of “resurrection” from the dead is a sovereign choice of God. No human chose this to exist, nor can any angel contribute to cause it not to exist. No, this is a prime example of God’s will and purpose to create concepts called “death” first but then also “resurrection” from the dead second. Both were God’s design, and His, alone.
Remember that there were two major doctrines of belief in Matthew 22. One is from the Sadducees that was asking the questions, these believed there was not going to be a resurrection. However, the Pharisee’s believed in the resurrection. Therefore, we learn doctrinal division is a common tactic of Satan, to attempt the divide the beliefs of those that God intended for unity of knowing His truth.
Jesus obviously rebukes these educated trained people saying to them, you neither understand the scriptures nor the power of God. The Greek word G1411 (dunamis) literally means supernatural power and this reference is applied to God the author of the Bible. In fact, it was God in the flesh that was speaking with them. Jesus directly confirms humans are fallible, capable of being in error. This is true of every modern Bible teacher that can be heard, including Agapegeek. This is exactly why we better do a lot of study with the help of the Author to guide us into what He really meant for us to learn. Nevertheless, doctrinal differences on sovereignty exist, and thus the reason for this lesson is to help resolve or at least reduce some of the reasons for divisions. Let us quickly analyze some of these differences.
Sovereignty has been defined by some to mean “God can do anything He likes, whenever He likes, and to whoever He likes”. But that is an extreme definition that potentially violates God’s revealed character which could produce wrong beliefs and deception. This type of belief attributes all evil to be part of God’s all-knowing plan. This brings some to believe Satan does not exist and has never done anything without God’s direction or permission.
However, a truer definition of the word “sovereign” should be viewed as “God has the highest and greatest level of authority and power, and there is none that is above Him”. This definition does not mean He is able to do anything at any time, even if He has the dunamis omnipotent power to do it. We know this because God says in Hebrew 6:18 that it is impossible for Him to lie. This simply means if God said something, it is this way and it will not change. And this teaches us God can never violate His spoken or written Words which have placed certain limitation upon what God is able to legally do and speak by His own sovereign choice.
Therefore, we must not study God’s “sovereignty” in isolation of all other related verses or by simply using only selected obvious or favorite scriptures. All studies on any subject must balance every verse on the subject, and then combine these with the many other verses that reveal limitations to sovereignty like those that show the true nature and character of God as being, 1) Love, 2) Light, 3) Holy, 4) Righteous, 5) Patient, 6) Merciful, etc. We learned this principle in the first lesson of the series, but for added emphasis to its importance let us quickly review another list of God’s revealed unchanging character traits.
God is Sovereign
&
God is LOVE!
1Jn 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
1Jn 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
1 John 4:8 & 16 are very revealing verses, that identifies God to be LOVE! God declares that his truest and highest identifying characteristic is that He not only shows us love but He is LOVE! The Greek word G2076 translated as “is”, means “to be”. It is a very similar word to the Old Testament revelation spoken to Moses when God said, “say I AM sent you” (Exo 3:14). The Hebrew word H1961 translated as “I AM” is most often translated as “be”. In other words, God is declaring to “Be” LOVE, not just to choose to show love occasionally like humans do. Therefore, God is the Highest example of LOVE that exists. Wow! This sound important and this characteristic must be balanced with God’s true identity of being “sovereign”.
Within the 1 John 4 context, God states that if we desire to dwell in God (Love), and desire for God (Love) to dwell in us, then we must not only love God, but we must primarily love our fellow brothers and sisters, and this human choice qualifies us to be one with God. Wow, that is huge! It implies that if we are not walking in love with those that we can see in the flesh, how is it even possible for us to say we love God that we cannot see (1 John 4:20). Yet we see Christians today lying to each other, accusing each other, hating each other, etc. Yet they still claim to be a Christian, but we saw this contradicts God’s Word and this makes them hypocrites that are putting on an act for men but may be very surprised when Jesus returns.
The Greek word that God claims to be as “Love”, is G26 and this is the word “Agape” pronounced ag-ah’-pay meaning this is the type of God’s love. This type of love is not the human type or anywhere close to what humans call love. This is why this Agape love is infinitely higher and a superior type of “love” that dominates His every sovereign thought and action. Since God has sovereignly chosen to be Love, He must correspondingly also sovereignly choose not to do anything evil, mean, or unfair to anyone. This simply describes another sovereign characteristic called “Self-Control”. This means even though He has the power and ability to kill you immediately when you do evil, He will not do it because it would be unjust and not according to His chosen nature and character.
We could easily debate the definition of love. This is because how we view love is normally very biased and perverted compared to God’s definition of love. Humans say they love their cat or dog. Humans say they love eating types of food or drinking some drinks. Humans say they even love their friends and relatives. Most spouses claim they love their husband or wife, until things get bad and then they suddenly leave them without warning. No human love like these stated above, represents God’s kind of spiritual love. Therefore, it is very fortunate for us that God gives us His definition of His type of love in 1 Corinthians 13. Let’s analyze this and compare what you have heard from other preachers teach you about God’s love and His sovereignty.
1Co 13:4 Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance.
1Co 13:5 Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense.
1Co 13:6 Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong.
1Co 13:7 Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.
1Co 13:8 Love never stops loving. (TPT)
These verses are taken out of “The Passion Translation”. But they are comparable with the KJV, NASB, the Amplified Bible or any other literal translation based on the original Greek text. These are extremely challenging statements. But this should be used for a direct comparison to how we love each other. Are you able to do this list of items to everyone that you know no matter how they act or what they do or say to you or about you? Does this list confirm the great job of love we can see in your words and actions despite how they treated you?
How do these described features and qualities of God’s type of LOVE exemplify or balance with your definition of God’s sovereignty? Then imagine how God reacts when humans treat Him unlovingly, or even blasphemously with their words and actions. Do you believe God will react to evil done to Him, the same as you would when evil is done to you. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows His love for us, (proving it) in while we were yet sinners (not loving to him or others) He died for us”. That means God does good things even when no one deserves it. That is the God kind of Sovereignty and Love.
Let us stop and ask, can you see Jesus’ example of love shown to us, in these descriptions? Go back and reread the Gospels and notice how everything that He did was “LOVE” based. Whether he was healing sick people, raising dead people, or dying on a cross, “LOVE” dominated every action and WORD spoken. Then recall Jesus said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father”. This speaks volumes, to describe God’s sovereign acts and the motivations behind them. Whatever, God sovereignly chooses to do to you, or for you, He will base His motivations on LOVE designed for our “good” (Jer 29:11).
Do you recall how the risen from the dead Jesus reacted to the evil acts of Saul of Tarsus killing Christians? Jesus took it very personally what Saul was doing to His saved body of believers (Acts 9). These are controversial thoughts to think. God permitted Saul to do evil to His people, but met with him suddenly to do what?
Jesus’ reaction was with LOVE, instead of fierce hatred, or anger. This was clearly not the normal human reaction. What would you do to someone that killed one of your children? Jesus’ heart was not to kill him and send him to hell, but rather to save Saul and change Him to Paul who wrote 2/3 of the New Testament. Wow! That was the real God’s kind of LOVE!
Many will quickly argue and say, “what about when this evil that happened to me, or my wife, or my husband, or my child, or whoever”. Why did they die, why did they get sick, hurt, and need to suffer? But did God really do evil to any of these people? Never forget there is an evil being that is a master at getting people to blame God for what he is doing to them.
Yet, this belief that God does not commit evil, raises a new question. If God did not commit the evils, He certainly permitted it all to happen as we just saw looking at Saul of Tarsus. However, don’t forget that there are too many other reasons why God “must” allow evil to happen based upon what He has said.
The number one reason for evil on the earth came when God sovereignly gave Adam the right to make his own sovereign choice to choose between life and death (Gen 2:17). Adam did this by choosing to know evil instead of rejecting it (Gen 3). It was this single rebellious action of Adam that caused evil (Satan) to enter the world (2 Cor 4:4) and gave him the sovereign right to rule our world. This single act by Adam (Rom 5:12), set everything else negative in motion in our world.
This evil continued to grow until God sovereignly chose to begin to intervene personally to judge sin (Gen 6:7). These works of God began the process of salvation. They continued until they were fully made available at the entrance of God in the flesh in the form of a man named Jesus (Mat 1:21), who came into the world to redeem man and to reverse his curse of death and hell, and to take back their keys (Rev 1:18).
Here is a major clue to knowing God in the truest way. Did you ever see Jesus kill anyone? Did you ever see Jesus make anyone sick or give them cancer? Did you ever see Jesus kill someone’s husband or wife or child? The answer to all these questions is “no”! In fact, we see Jesus doing the opposite of all these evils, healing them, and raising them from the dead. Therefore, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, have never done this either. None of these describe a loving God that is patient and kind. This literally, means God is not pre-selecting some to go to hell either, because this violates the definition of “LOVE”. Get it?
Common Sovereignty Beliefs – Review
We are moving towards balancing two subjects: love and sovereignty. Evey unbalanced Bible study and teaching on these subjects create highly controversial beliefs and they have initiated great theological wars. Brothers and sisters in Christ that should be walking in love towards each other have suddenly become hated enemies.
Each side of the debate claim victory because each believes they have the complete understanding of the subject and all others in disagreement are deceived. That is not a Christ centered resolution based upon His “LOVE” and it is not a right way to deal with any subject disagreements. Hopefully we will find a better way to study the Bible today based upon God’s kind of “Love” (Agape) in this lesson. Let us review a few of the common beliefs on God’s sovereignty next.
There are many that believe God is in ultimate extreme control of every minor detail in the universe and nothing happens without His sovereign involvement and approval. This is an extreme form of the doctrine of “determinism”. This simply states, God determines the outcome of everything, and this is also associated with the doctrine of extreme “pre-determinism” meaning nothing has ever happened without God pre-determining the outcome of every circumstance and situation. This belief clearly implies God has determined all good events as well as planned and implemented every evil event.
It further pushes the belief that there are no other factors of influence that can affect any result or ending, much less begin anything new or even help anything to develop good or evil. In other words, God is like the ultimate puppet master and only He pulls all the strings to cause anything to happen. In other words, you had no say in what time you woke up this morning, or even what you ate today. This means humans have no freewill. However, is this really what the Bible says?
There is also another position of belief for some. This belief is called “pantheism”. “Pantheism” is a belief that the created universe “is God”. Therefore, if everything created is “God”, then whatever is happening in the “God” universe whether good or evil, is also the will of God and the plan of God.
All these positions are extremes that must ignore significant scriptures in the Bible that teach us these beliefs cannot be remotely or entirely true. Therefore, what we must stop, and state plainly is that each belief type of determinism, pre-determinism and pantheism has some individual elements of truth. But none have the complete truth. To make a single or isolated truth, the only truth, is simply the exaltation of a human standing upon “isolationism” based upon the individual choice of extremism, that must ignore all contradictory truths or the attempt to balance them together to resolve conflicts. “Determinism”, “pre-determinism” and “Pantheism” are just a sampling of a “one sided” theological debate containing a position of extremism and error.
However, the other side of human belief is the extreme position that either there is no God, or God is not controlling anything just as if He does not exist. This could be called the beliefs of “non-existence” that preaches the religion of “humanism” and “evolutional creation” of life originating from non-living substances over massive time elements. We commonly call these types of beliefs “atheism” or “agnosticism”.
Then there is the belief that God is like a clock maker that created the universe as a self-winding mechanism, and He has no need to operate it but may just check on it occasionally. These types of believers represent humans that think of a God that exists, but he is not caring enough to be involved in His creation. This is a belief of “non-intervention” in all the affairs of angelic and human beings. These thoughts are called “deism”, a belief in a god but not one that is Love. It has roots in paganism, idolatry and has transitioned through variations of many gods of Greek mythology, many Roman mythological gods, and Hinduism a belief in millions of gods, etc.
This is where we must agree, only God knows all the scriptures on every subject, what they all mean, and how they are balanced correctly. Therefore, “Agapegeek” would never claim to be the expert on any Bible subject compared to God’s infinite knowledge. Every human is learning and teaching based upon our individual ignorance. This is why we should extend to each other some mercy. You may have seen verses that others have not seen and vice versa. But “Thank God” for Him living on the inside of us to help us all understand and agree, and He will guide us into all truth as Jesus promised that He would do in John 16:13.
Today we will be exploring God’s Wisdom and human foolishness but within the context of some verses that are not normally applied to the subject of God’s “sovereignty”. We would all be amazed if we search the Bible on this subject to discover that we will find the sovereignty of God being indirectly stated almost everywhere in scripture. This is why we are going to be studying chapter 15 of the book of Acts and a lot of readers will scratch their heads at first trying to figure out why we are here to learn about a “sovereign” God and how He works with humans in salvation.
Acts 15 – The Early Church
Salvation Conflict and Resolution
By God’s Sovereign Design
We are learning a very essential Bible subject that creates great theological conflicts in the body of Christ. Some believe they were “elected” to be a saved Christian by God’s sovereign selection and they personally had nothing to do with their salvation, implying there is nothing they can ever do to lose their salvation. This is a more common belief than you may think. Too many that have this belief are easily offended if there is ever someone that offers a differing thought found in the Bible.
But guess what? This pattern of disunity happened in the early church, when there were some saved legalistic believers that said every one of the Gentiles needed to get circumcised to be saved. These legalistic Pharisee type of believers had Old Covenant scriptures written by Moses that appeared to support their belief and teachings very strongly. Remember at this time of conflict there was no major compilation of New Testament writings to review or resolve theological debates.
But it is obvious that these men believed they were saved because they were circumcised believers and this position plainly disagrees with the “once saved always saved” beliefs, as well as the sovereignly selected belief. They clearly placed human decisions and fulfillments of Old Testament “law” as their position of stance for being saved. That is very interesting!
However, there was also another group of bold men in the church that included the Apostle Peter, and the Apostle Paul both who were circumcised along with others that stood against the position for the need of circumcision to be saved. We are going to read through some of these verses about this controversy to see how it was resolved.
We will also notice in these verses that there are scriptures that are indirectly describing God’s sovereign will and His works that are being exercised in combination with the cooperative and agreeable sovereign will of humans. Remember what Amos 3:3 says about this relationship saying, “How can two, walk together, except they be agreed”. These types of verses, confirm the sovereign partnership between God and humans.
Let us just read through these verses and learn what God says about His “sovereignty” working with humans not to control us, but rather to allow us to willingly choose to work with His sovereign plan as united partners. We will soon notice that God is not forcing anyone to do anything. He is simply in His infinite characteristic of love, has offered and provided solutions for every problem of human conflict before it ever occurred. These solutions are based upon His “omniscient” foreknowledge. We will be reading from the beginning of chapter 15 of Acts about the Jerusalem Council that took place to resolve a church conflict of how to be saved:
Act 15:1 And certain men which came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved.
Notice the problem. The root of the problem occurs when saved individuals from Judaea were teaching the requirement for a “flesh” circumcision to be spiritually saved. This is based upon them following the customs found within the law of Moses, for every male to be circumcised as an 8-day old child. For these men that argued this for others to be saved, had this done to them a long time before they were a believer in Jesus.
Remember babies that are incapable of making this choice are forced by these Customs of Moses to be circumcised 8 days after being born. Jesus was circumcised this way in Luke 2:21. As you can see the baby has no voice in participating. This is identical to the fact that the child had no say whether to be naturally born into the world or not. Is this the way the new birth occurs in the New Covenant? Hopefully, you will be able to see that the New Covenant circumcision that takes place for Christians is not a forced event as we continue (Rom 2:29).
Some believe salvation is based upon the extreme doctrine of election where only some are selected to be Christians and all others have been pre-chosen to go to hell without any personal involvement in hearing the Gospel, believing the Words of Salvation, or confessing Jesus as Lord. This is a belief based upon “determinism” as stated previously. This belief, as we have seen, violates too many other verses that we cannot ignore. For example, in Acts 2:21 God says, “Whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be saved”. This clearly places human salvation within the court of human responsibility. Also remember in a previous lesson, we learned of the Parable of the Wedding Feast for the King’s Son. There was clearly an invitation given to everyone to determine who wanted to come to the wedding or not.
Act 15:2 When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.
Act 15:3 And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.
As we can read Paul and Barnabas were not supporters of the legalistic doctrine of circumcision to be saved. So far this is a good argument for the belief in “election” only salvation, where humans are saved only if God chooses them. But notice verse 3 places a challenge to those that believe in a sovereign God choice of salvation only.
Why is verse 3 a problem for election theology? It is because Paul went to everyone and everywhere so that he could “preach” the Gospel to them all. This means everyone that heard him preach was given the personal invitation to come to the wedding of Jesus. And, if they believed and turned away from their previous idol worship to come into relationship with the God that created them, they would be saved by their own personal choice.
Furthermore, notice how verse 3 ends. There are a lot of people in the church that are overjoyed to hear about more Gentiles being saved. Uh oh? This means they were previously not saved but became saved by what God who loved them all, was doing through Paul to get them saved. It is totally amazing to see how God sovereignly uses people to get other people saved. This is a great clue that this type of work to preach was God’s sovereign choice for the method to how salvation comes to people. It conforms precisely with the parable analogy of “servants” of the sovereign King being sent out to “invite” people to his son’s wedding. There was never a sovereign King mandate or command that required anyone to attend. Each had to accept the invitation, but many refused and gave excuses.
Act 15:4 And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.
Notice in verse 4 we must all acknowledge that it was God that was working through Paul and Barnabas to cause these salvations. Yet we still cannot deny they person that heard their Gospel message was still required to belief it to be saved. The same is true for Saul who became Paul. He always had the right to refuse to obey what Jesus told him to do, this too would have been a foolish decision.
Act 15:5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
Act 15:6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.
Acts 15:5-6 is a review of the problem. Again, there were certain men of the sect of Pharisees which were saved that began to teach Gentiles they must keep the law of Moses to be saved. But we now know from reading the books of Romans and Galatians, that no man can be justified by keeping the law. These books were not written at this time of meeting to deal with this matter. The church leadership during this dispute was actually a very good example of how churches today should be acting. The number one perspective to learn from in dealing with doctrinal issues, is to notice these men were attempting to be led by the Holy Spirit and were acting out of love to discuss matters in a civil and orderly manner. However, there were deep discussions with contentious times as we can read in the next verse:
Act 15:7 And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.
This is where we see the will of God and His sovereign plan already in progress. Please read this verse over again slowly and pay attention to every word. First notice, a dispute is taking place. This is no different than today between those that see “election” to mean they were selected, and others were not. This is like those that were fighting for the Gentiles to be circumcised to be saved. These were opposed to those that were present to argue a different view of scriptures, like we are doing today.
Then notice that after a time of argumentative discourse, Peter rose to speak and what He says is very significant and essential to understanding the truth solution to the dispute. Please do not forget that Peter walked with Jesus personally in the flesh for 3 ½ years. Then recall Peter was a circumcised Jewish male like the Pharisee sect. Therefore, Peter should have been on the side of circumcision like the others for it.
However, God knowing this dispute would arise in the church already spoke to Peter in a vision about clean (Jews in circumcision) and unclean (Gentiles in uncircumcision) beasts. God in this vision told Peter to kill and eat from all the animals explaining to Peter, “do not call unclean any man” (Acts 10:28). What we are seeing is Peter dealing with Old Covenant issues of the law. It was unlawful for him to go into a gentile’s house, yet God has sent him to Cornelius to get his family saved within the New Covenant and this is very significant. It confirms that keeping the law was not necessary for salvation to occur.
Peter continues to preach the Gospel to Cornelius and the Holy Ghost falls upon his house and they all received God’s Spirit the same as occurred on Pentecost to Jewish people. This utterly shocks Peter because God had sent him intentionally to an uncircumcised man’s house using supernatural events including the voice of the Holy Spirit, visions and even angels. In this light there could be no doubt what the God in heaven was teaching Peter and the church. God is very clearly saying what Paul wrote about in Galatians 5:6:
Gal 5:6 For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.
We should be able to see that it was neither keeping the law that saved anyone, nor by not keeping the law that prevented anyone from being saved. This simply meant that people are saved by “faith” alone in Jesus Christ alone. This was exactly the message being taught by God in the church to help them resolve this controversial subject and difference of opinions to what and how people are saved.
All of this applies to our lesson of the sovereignty of God. Because it is God that sovereignly chose the method of salvation through faith so that no human could glory in their flesh to how they were saved. Therefore, to even say “I was saved because God sovereignly chose me”, causes someone to look prideful that our creator God loved them more than someone else that was not chosen, and this would violate God’s law of not showing partiality to anyone. Let us continue to look at what else Peter said, and God inspired to be written:
Act 15:8 And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;
Act 15:9 And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.
Here is another quality of God being described. God is being stated to be “omniscient” meaning He knows everything that can be known. Therefore, He clearly knows the heart of every human down to each thought they think about Him and His freely offered His saving gift of the preached Gospel (Rom 1:16) which brings salvation when it is specifically chosen to be believed by humans. This clearly demonstrates it is the sovereign choice of each human to believe or not to believe to be saved.
It is this quality of “omniscience” that can be synonymously called God’s “foreknowledge” since God exists outside of the limitation of time. It is this quality of being “all knowing” that could easily be misapplied to give the appearance that God has chosen some and rejected others to be saved. After all God did nothing to stop someone from rejecting Him, right? However never forget what God did in Christ to save all of us (Jn 3:16)! God sovereignly worked and planned to save every human, by becoming one of us to personally be nailed on a cross and shed the blood that was necessary to relieve us from our sins.
Therefore, we must see that humans have been sovereignly given the “freewill” right to make their own independent daily choices. These choices must be made in their hearts and minds to walk and live by faith as believing in Jesus or reject the Incarnate Word of God and be damned. Now let us view the next verses which represent another human comparison between two sovereign choices on the way they choose to think, live, and act.
Act 15:10 Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
Act 15:11 But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.
Act 15:12 Then all the multitude kept silence, and gave audience to Barnabas and Paul, declaring what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them.
Act 15:13 And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me:
Act 15:14 Simeon hath declared how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name.
Act 15:15 And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
Act 15:16 After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:
Act 15:17 That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.
Act 15:18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.
Act 15:19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:
We are not going to go through every verse in this passage for the sake of time.
But remember God’s key subject in this chapter is about the internal church’s fight on doctrinal issues concerning how to be saved. Is human salvation:
- only God’s sovereign choice, or is it,
- man’s sovereign choice, or could it be,
- both choices working and cooperating in agreement together?
From studying the Bible attempting to balance all known verses on this subject equally, it appears searching with the help of the Holy Spirit leads us to the answer of option 3. Never forget the parable of the “Wedding Invitation for the King’s son” (Mat 22:2). All were invited to come but only those that chose to come and were prepared were “selected”. This is the same place Jesus said, “Many are called, but few chosen”. Therefore, the Gentiles choosing to “Turn” to God are exactly like those that came to the King’s feast.
In Acts 15, this is a dispute between two groups of saved Christians about their personal “salvation” as Jews being circumcised and those that were Gentiles not having been circumcised, and if either of these external choices mattered to their salvation. The basic battle came down was salvation by “faith only” or by “faith combined with external humans works to keep the law of Moses” to be saved. So, we are learning about conditional or unconditional “salvation”. Are there conditions placed by God upon humans to receive His invitation to salvation? And worse yet, some believe God has already determined who will be saved by only His sovereign choice, regardless of the human participation, cooperation, or agreement? In other words, some believe in a “forced salvation” for the lucky and for the unlucky others “forced damnation”. Clearly this should be a problematic belief based upon learning what the Bible really says.
The book of Acts chapter 15 answers the early church’s dispute about whether to circumcise or not to circumcise. And it is a key clue to resolving our modern fight on “election”. We should see this same battle pattern is taking place between those that believe in “divine sovereign election” without any human participation of belief or faith, opposing another view that believes in a “salvation” offered by God’s sovereign Grace to everyone, but salvation is only completed through the “human freewill choosing to believe and have faith in Jesus” to become saved. Both the Acts 15 debate and the modern “election” debate are very similar subjects having practically identical answers. Let us look at some of the verses that we just saw.
We can see in verse 14 of Acts 15, that Simon Peter helped them in the church to resolve their salvation conflict by reminding the elders how the sovereign work of God had sent him to Cornelius’ house a Gentile. Don’t forget that Peter was sent there to preach the Gospel so that they could hear, believe, and be saved. Also remember that Peter broke the law of Moses by entering Cornelius’ house as God had instructed him to do. Wow, God tells Peter to break the Mosaic Law to save Cornelius? Is this the right God? Or is there some Christians that are just confused?
What if Cornelius had chosen to not believe the message of Peter? The answer is plain, he would not have been saved and the Holy Spirit would not have fallen upon this Gentile house. However, God supernaturally gave the Jewish man Peter a vision to help him offer the invitation to Gentiles. But before this God had previously sent an angel to Cornelius, instructing him to send for Peter. This certainly was God extending great Grace and mercy to get the process initiated for Gentiles to take the invitation.
After God did all of this by His design, God had already simultaneously answered the questions that Gentiles were not required to get circumcised to be saved, neither was keeping all the law of Moses necessary for saved Jewish men to preach the Gospel invitation. Both acts only required obedience in “faith”.
It is highly recommended that you read the books of Romans and Galatians to see how Paul compares the Old and New Covenants. He goes into detail about Christians that are required to walk and live by Faith. He counters this New Covenant lifestyle, comparing them with people that are still trying to live by the Law. He at one point calls these people to be foolish.
Conclusion
1Co 13:13 And now belief, expectation, and love remain – these three. But the greatest of these is love.
We will end this lesson with the conclusion that LOVE plays a huge role in the salvation of everyone. God is LOVE and God is sovereign, and both must be balanced together. It is very clearly stated in John 3:16, that because God loved everyone in the world, He sent Jesus Christ to die so that if anyone believed, they would not perish. It is very obvious that the most popular verse known from the Bible reveals God’s Love and human choices to accept His invitation. I don’t know about you personally, but I am now and will always be eternally grateful to God for saving me. Thank you, Jesus!
Hope and pray that every reader has already made that personal choice to believe in Jesus and ask Him to be your LORD! But if not, please click the link below to go to a page that will help you choose to believe. God bless you all during this time of our celebration of the birth of Christ into the world. If it was not for what God’s Love sovereignly chose to do, we would all be going to hell.
Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 7 – Vav – Jesus the Nail for Heaven to Earth Connection
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 7” in the surprising and amazing Bible study series focused upon searching, finding, and learning how God became a man and how He was hidden in every letter of the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. This series has been going through each letter of the alphabet (but not in alphabetical order) and today we are focused on the 6th letter called “Vav”. This ancient Hebrew pictogram is the image of a nail or a peg. Therefore, this letter represents the act of “connecting” two separated entities.
There are debates about the pronunciation of this letter, and some call it the “Waw”. But we have chosen the “Vav” sound as our preference. If you like another sound, that is fine, please just don’t fight us and cause divisions in the body. Simply change the Vav to the Waw as your chosen way of viewing the letter and learn what this letter means from the ancient Hebrew pictographic point of view.
If your interest today is just learning about the Hebrew letter “Vav”, this lesson is standalone. But if you are new to this subject of the ancient Hebrew Alphabet, it is good to learn the basic concepts of why the Ancient Hebrew alphabet is so important to know and how each letter was revealed by Jesus personally to represent Himself as a prophetical window into who He was, and what He came to do on the earth. Therefore, if you have not read the “Introduction”, it is recommended that you go back and begin there first.
Every time I go into studying a new letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet, I become more amazed at God’s ability to teach us using a single picture. With each letter, I conclude that this must be the most amazing letter ever of all 22. Today is no exception, because I was totally amazed with what God has revealed to us in the many hours that I have spent in studying the letter “Vav”. I pray that every one of you will feel the same after you read this lesson. Here is a list of the sections that will be covered in today’s lesson on the Ancient Hebrew Letter Vav:
- Introduction to the Vav
- Genesis 1:1 – Beginning “Vav” Prophecy of the Coming End
- Jesus is God’s Sure Nail
- How God Placed Us in Christ to Vav Re-Connect Us with God
- Conclusion
If you are ready, let us get started learning God’s Word and alphabet.
1. INTRODUCTION
As you can see from the picture of the ancient Hebrew letter “Vav” the orignal ancient image looks like a nail, or a tent peg, and thus the rudimentary meaning of the letter is something or someone that connects two things together of either like or differing composition or nature. We will discover more meanings and applications of this letter as we continue to learn.
The letter “Vav” is the sixth letter in alphabetic order. The number six concerns the linear sequence as well as the gematria value. The number six is significant in Biblical numbers, because it represents “man” and especially the first man “Adam” when created in a sinless mature state of innocence before the fall. As you should know Adam was created as God’s last works of creation at the end of day 6. Therefore, the number 6 will become a very significant part of this lesson, especially because of the essential fact that God became a man to die on a cross to save us from hell (Rev 20:13-14).
The letter Vav is also used as a prefix which is added to another Hebrew word. This addition to the beginning of a Hebrew word, inserts the word “And” to the sentence. This is grammatically added to connect the previous thought, words, ideas, phrases, etc. to what is about to be said. This confirms the basic meaning of the letter “Vav” is that of “connecting” or “adding” two concepts or even entities together. This is the same idea of joining two objects of wood together by connecting them with a “nail”.
The Hebrew matching word for the letter “Vav” is H2053. This word is the two-letter sound of the single “Vav” letter, just spelled out in word form as “Vav” + “Vav”. This is the doubling of the single letter “Vav”, and this will become even more meaningful soon. However, this word only occurs 13 times in the entire Hebrew text, and it can only be found in the book of Exodus.
The Hebrew word “Vav” (H2053) has a root definition of a “peg” as in a “tent peg”. This is exactly what the picture of the letter represents. A tent peg is designed to bring stability to the tent dwelling (house and family inside). This tent peg connects the dwelling to the ground with a rope and this will keep the tent secure during a storm of strong winds. It is interesting that this is exactly what is needed for the “House and Family of God” to be firmly grounded. We are going to discover that Jesus is this ultimate grounding tent peg.
Therefore, this word “Vav” contains the idea of joining or attaching two or more things together like the tent to the ground. But how does this work? If you have ever been camping in a tent you know you better bring tent pegs and rope because you do not want your tent to blow away. The tent is made secure by hammering a peg into the ground (earth) and then attaching a loop or rope to the tent peg that is “also” tied to the tent. This causes the structure to become secure from being easily moved.
We can find in the New Testament where it says God created a new family in Jesus (Heb 3:6). Isaiah 28:16 prophesies this house that is being built by naming Jesus Christ as the coming “corner stone” of the foundation. 1 Peter 2:4-5 describes Jesus to be a “Living Stone” that was rejected of men but chosen of God. Peter further describes the church body as being connected stones to Jesus in His “household of faith” (Gal 6:10). These are all “Vav” concepts of connection being described using synonymous terms with no direct reference to a “peg”.
This Hebrew word H2053 can also mean a “nail”, or a “hook” as in an object that is used as a “connector” to “hang” or “attach” two separated objects together. This is an amazing concept if we will begin to see and learn how this applies to Jesus. The works of Jesus are described with great precision as in the concept of Him being a living “nail” that is used to rejoin sinful humans to the Holy God, and vice versa. We can read about this work of God in Jesus in Colossians 1:20 and other verses.
Let us examine the O.T. word H2053 usage briefly. In the Hebrew text of Exodus in the KJV Bible this word “Vav” is consistently translated as “hook” 13 times. When first used in the book of Exodus in chapter 26 verses 31 and 32, this word is utilized in the construction of the tabernacle by God’s instructions for the hanging of the separating veil covering to enter the most holy temple location. God’s usages of the “hooks” (Vav) was specifically for the hanging of the separating “veil” (H6532) placed upon wooden posts. This usage is certainly a hidden image and description of Jesus hanging on a cross (Tav).
For example, the O.T. veils are a typology pattern of Jesus’ human flesh. We learn this concept in Hebrews 10:20 where God writes the veil represents the “flesh” of Jesus Christ. It should be obvious that the wooden posts of the temple are a typological pattern of the “Tav” cross, and the nails (Vav) placed in the wooden posts (Tav) are what hung Jesus body (veil) up on the cross (Tav). There are other things that we could go into here, but this is just an introduction.
Today we are going to discover some of the amazing facts surrounding the letter “Vav”. Here is one of the first amazing facts that we will see about the letter “Vav”. The letter “Vav” is the 2nd most used letter written by God in the Torah. The 1st most popular occurring letter is the “Yod”. The 3rd most popular letter found in the Torah is the “Hey”. And if you have read the other lessons, you already know these are letters used to spell the name of the LORD. LORD in Hebrew is spelled “Yod” + “Hey” + “Vav” + “Hey”. Therefore, our God has chosen the three most significantly used alphabet letters for His personal covenant name. Each of these letters are important, including this letter pictured as a “nail”, which is the “third” position of His name.
The first letter of the name of God was the “Yod”, the picture of an outstretched hand. This is very symbolic of God’s love reaching out for His lost creation. The 2nd and the 4th letters are the same letter “Hey” meaning “Behold” and “Look”. This double reference to the picture of a man looking at something amazing, places a strong emphasis upon this person that is unnamed, implying created humans should search to find Him. The third letter is our “Vav” nail and all these together give us a prophetical message of God appearing before man to be seen in the flesh of Jesus.
Therefore, we have found a prophecy of Jesus being hung (nailed) on a cross encoded within the primary name of God. These letters are speaking to us “Behold the hand, Behold the nail”. This covenant name of God is clearly teaching us that God will become a man with human hands and His hands will be pierced with “Vav” nails when He will die for us on a “Tav” cross.
This brings us again to the fact that the Vav letter sequence and gematria value are both “6”. Remember this number 6 represents an upright “man”. This fact is well known because man was created at the end of day “6” of creation in Genesis 1. Since God chooses to select a “Vav” as the third letter of His name, He has foretold to us how His power will allow Him to become a flesh and blood man that will be “Vav” nailed through His “Yod” hands and humans will be able to behold “Hey” when it happens in amazement. This fact is proved correct in John 19:37 where we can see this was fulfilled the first time while hanging on a cross in Jerusalem. This will become of greater significance as we continue to study this letter and its position in the alphabet.
Now to conclude this introduction to the 6th letter of the alphabet the “Vav”, we will also need to know a little bit about the 7th letter of the alphabet called the “Zayin”. These two letters are intimately connected. You see the 6th letter “Vav” is a metal object as in the image of a nail that designed for connecting, but the 7th letter “Zayin” is also made of metal in the shape of a farming tool used for harvesting crops like wheat.
When harvesting crops, the wheat must be cut with a sharp metal tool (Zayin). Therefore, the letter “Vav” is a joining together of two things and the letter “Zayin” is the separating or cutting division of a single thing into two parts. These are antithesis letter concepts of opposition, but God chose to place them directly next to each other in the Alphabet as letters 6 and 7. Therefore, they are connected by God’s design. We will soon discover more about this connection later in the lesson. Now let us move into some Bible details that will begin to unfold all these topics.
2. Genesis 1:1 Vav Beginning Prophecy of the Coming End
There are several amazing hidden prophetical facts found in the words of Genesis 1:1; “In the Beginning”. These prophecies when they are known, reveal God’s personal coming to the earth as a man sent to die by being nailed on a cross. These “End” prophecies occur at the very “Beginning” of the Bible, and they involve our Hebrew letter “Vav”. Here is our key verse for this section to help you understand why we are searching Genesis, and it also reveals what we are looking for:
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
As we can see, Isaiah reveals that God has declared the “End” from the “Beginning”. If you recall the beginning letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the “Alef” and the ending letter is the ‘Tav”. The “Alef” is a strong ox picture representing God as a Strong Servant (Jesus). The “Tav” is the picture of a cross the instrument of crucifixion for Jesus to die. Therefore, we are searching for the declaration of an “End” by returning to the very “First” (Beginning) verse of the Bible. According to the Word of God, in Isaiah we are supposed to be able to find something significant that will bring forth an “End”.
But let us place this search for the “End” within the context of our study subject of the Hebrew alphabet. We are going to approach this search with this strategy because it is not yet fully known what “End” will occur, and who it will affect. But also, it is true that we can read the translated plain text verse and find nothing about any kind of “End”. Therefore, this message of an “End” must be found in the alphabet letters that created the words that were written and translated into English. This seems very logical and obvious, doesn’t it?
The very first letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the “Alef” and the very last letter we should know is the “Tav”. The first letter Alef represents the number 1, and the last letter Tav represents numerically the number 22 the total numbers of letters in the alphabet. Also do not forget our current study is the letter “Vav” and this is the number 6. All these facts are given to help set the foundation of our Genesis Hebrew Alphabet search.
Therefore, let us look at the seven words found in the first verse, in the first chapter, in the first book that is in question. It is first interesting to determine if these verses are related to confirm we are at the correct location. We do this by looking for the Hebrew word H7225 translated as “beginning”. It is very simple to see with a search that this word beginning is found in both Isaiah 46:10 and Genesis 1:1 confirming the same word subject is being discussed by God in both verses.
— Hidden Vav Message Foundation —
For this study we will need to examine the Words of Genesis 1:1 in both the English KJV as well as the modern Hebrew:
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Gen 1:1 בראשׁית ברא אלהים את השׁמים ואת הארץ׃
If you are new to the Hebrew language, this verse is written from right to left in a modern font type style and not the ancient Hebrew pictographic font. This may mean that if you desire, you may want to learn the connections from the ancient Hebrew to the modern transition Hebrew font. If you do not care to learn this, that is OK, because the information being covered here is not about the modern font type letter styles or shapes.
Let us notice a few key facts about Genesis 1. This verse in Hebrew consists of 28 alphabet letters in total. It has 7 different words with the Hebrew word H853 (Alef+Tav) occurring twice in two different spellings. If we read the verse as it is literally written it would say and it has both the English words that were translated from the Hebrew words given with Strong numbers. You will also notice that there are three prefix letters given, the first is the Beyt, the second is the Hey that occurs twice, and the final prefix is the Vav. Prefixes may be a totally new subject for you, but it is important for this study.
“In beginning (Beyt+H7225) created (H1254) (AT=H853) God (H430) the heaven (Hey+H8064) and (Vav+H853) the earth (Hey+H776)”.
We are about to get very deep into the Hebrew language today, but don’t be discouraged if it is a challenge at first. There are only 22 letters to learn, but there are a lot of rules to how they can be placed together and what each letter means and what they sound like depending upon location within a word and other details that will not be covered today. However, please make the effort to learn the basic concepts, because they will help you more than you know, since they have for me.
I have learned a lot by just digging much deeper in the Bible. I have found the greatest hidden truths are found in the smallest unknown details. For example, adding the 2nd letter “Beyt” to the beginning of the Hebrew word translated “beginning” (H7225) adds the word “In” to the translation. The word “the” that was placed by the translators in between these two words (In the beginning) in the KJV should not be there and it should literally only say, “In beginning”.
There are four Hebrew words found in Genesis 1:1 that use three unique prefix letters. We already saw the “Beyt” meaning the word “In” (used once). Then there is the letter “Hey” meaning the word “the” (used twice). Finally, we have our study letter “Vav” meaning the word “And” (used only once). This gives us our very literal verse in English as the translation “In beginning created (A-Z) God the heaven and (A-Z) the earth. I hope you are paying attention because this information reveals, or you could conservatively say it implies a lot of new material that we are about to uncover with our study. But first let us look at the placement of the verb in the sentence.
In the English KJV translation the verb “created”, and the noun “God” have been reversed from the way it was written in the Hebrew. Notice the English translation says, “In beginning God created” and the Hebrew says, “In beginning created God”. This was a normal translation change that was done to produce a more readable English-speaking sentence.
It is very interesting that by reversing the verb and the noun order, it sounds more like how the fictional movie character “Yoda” spoke to Luke in Star Wars. For example, English would normally say “It will consume you”, but Yoda would have said, “Consume you it will”. Or Yoda would have said, “Found someone you have” and this would be plainer in normal English as “You have found someone”. This is the writing style found in many Hebrew sentences. It is interesting that this gives the Bible the appearance of sounding like a riddle, or a puzzle book and literally it is one (Prov 25:2, Eze 17:2).
We are about to discover that there are several amazing, coded messages hidden within Genesis 1:1. Several of these will be revealed today in this section of our study subject “Vav”. But not all the coded messages are even known by any of us, except God the creator. We will only focus upon 7 amazing facts today, in the honor of the 7 days of creation in Genesis 1 and the 7 words listed in Genesis 1:1.
Our subject “Vav” letter occurs for the very first time in this verse of the Bible. By the Law of first mention, this occurrence establishes the foundational meaning for the entire rest of the Bible on the letter “Vav”.
— Amazing Fact 1 —
The First “Vav” in the Hebrew Text
If you can read the Hebrew text, you will find the first occurrence of “Vav” is located at exactly the 22nd letter position (address) in the text of Genesis 1:1, removing spaces. We are about to discover a major hidden prophecy found at this 22nd letter address. Also please notice that we cannot find any coded message in the English translation, and this causes us to understand that only the God inspired original Hebrew language is able to support hidden prophecies. Let us get started at analyzing these letters and words of Genesis 1:1.
This “First” “Vav” (6th letter) is found in the Bible at the 22nd letter position and this is the “Beginning” of the 6th Word in the verse, chapter, and book. How can the “First” occurrence of the 6th letter, a “Vav” begin the 6th Word? Was this by design?
What we have just discovered is the occurrence of two connected (Vav) numbers of 6 (Vav). Usually when God doubles any reference in the Bible, this gives the reference added emphasis and causes the reference to the letter or word to become significantly “greater”, or it simply places the God emphasis of truth upon what is being stated at this location.
There are many times in the Hebrew text that a Hebrew word is doubled. This means God states the Word and then immediately repeats the Word. If you search the English translation for when this occurs it is difficult to find. This is because many times the translators made the text to say “Surely” you will _____. Or it could be translated as something else like this. By adding the word “Surely” the translators have communicated this is what will happen “without a doubt”.
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
For example, notice in Genesis 2:17 the Hebrew word for death “H4191” occurs twice when God speaks the consequences of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was translated as “Surely Die”, but it could have been stated as “in dying you will die” or even “you will die once and then again”. This doubling of “die” implies that there are two different deaths that will be the consequence for this sin. This is God’s recorded way of saying this is “very important” to listen to me, because I know what I’m talking about. This is a warning, and it will certainly happen to you without a doubt if you disobey. Therefore, pay attention.
This double six reference connected with the first “Vav” strongly suggests that we are about to learn something worth paying attention to and that it will occur, guaranteed. For example, we should remember that 6 represents the number of a man, but because God doubled it, this man is no ordinary man. In other words, He is guaranteed to come and there is nothing you can do to stop this from happening. We are about to find that this “Sure” man is Jesus Christ (Yehoshua the Messiah).
This double six emphasis is only the first amazing fact whether you understand it fully now or not. But this single fact alone is not that amazing and almost any human author could do that, right? But we are about to find too many other combined facts of amazing circumstances that removes the human influence to cause us to only see all these facts added together can only come from God’s extreme intelligence and intelligent design and these will mathematically become impossible to occur without His participation and therefore, they cannot be a coincidence.
Let us consider a new additional fact of truth about a double reference. Take the 6th letter in English as “F”. If I wanted to create a sentence and make the 6th word begin with “F” that would be very simple, especially if we didn’t care what the sentence said.
We could write, “Let us go to south France”. Look, we just did it! We created a simple sentence with the 6th English word that begins with the 6th alphabet letter “F”, and the sentence sounds very readable. Notice that was not very difficult for anyone to do because there are nearly 30,000 words in the English language that begin with “F”. But will they each be readable? Or will the sentence be applicable and understandable? Does the double 6 have any special hidden meaning in our English example? And the truthful answer to all these questions is, No?
How many words beginning with “Vav” exist in the Strong concordance? There are only around 3 words. This significantly reduces the scope of sentences that can be constructed using the Hebrew alphabet without prefixes added. However, like Genesis 1:1 God just added the letter “Vav” to the front of another word and this added the word “and”, and this causes the addition of the 6th letter “Vav” at the beginning of the 6th Word to be simple. This is how a lot of people will explain away the first (1) fun fact of our discoveries. But we are not finished yet.
For example, in Genesis 1:1, notice how many “Alef” letters occur? There are exactly 6 and six is still the letter “Vav” sequence value meaning a man and a nail. What does the “Alef” represent in the ancient Hebrew alphabet pictographic form? It represents the strong “ox”, and this letter begins a key name of God “El” as the strong God of authority and power. Therefore, we have another key reference that our God will become a “man” by writing exactly 6 Alef’s in the first sentence.
That is interesting again, and this too could be easily accomplished by a clever author of English sentences. But notice would the created English sentence of six required occurrences of a chosen letter like “A”, being combined with the sixth letter beginning the 6th word, still answer the questions above? The answer is still no, and it is becoming even more difficult to occur even by intentional desired design with each additional fact that we find in this verse.
So far, we have found two clues concerning the number 6 with the first being a double reference of sixes joined with the sixth word that was written intentionally to begin with the 6th Hebrew alphabet letter. And the second being the inclusion of 6 Alef’s representing God becoming a man (#6). Both references certainly are pointing us to Jesus Christ who is a very Great Sure Man. Let us continue to search for additional fun and amazing facts in the first verse of the Bible.
— Amazing Fact 2 —
A Vav Man Who is Also the Alef and Tav
If you do not realize the extreme intelligence of God and His ability to weave several combined encoded messages and layers into the first 7 words, you are not very familiar with who God is, and what He is capable of doing. But add this to the fact that the first book of the Bible is a book that is called the book of “Beginnings” (Genesis) that adds new constraints and confirms the prophecy of Isaiah is being searched for in the correct location.
But also realize we are searching for this information in the first sentence, using God’s sovereignly chosen words that He also used to write a very profound and truthful top layer plain text statement (“in beginning God created the heaven and the earth”). Therefore, we are discovering several new facts within facts that add more conformations.
We will continue to learn by noticing again that this first occurrence of the 6th letter “Vav” that begins the 6th word, has been translated as “and” in the English translation. Remember “Vav” represents a connecting force between two objects, positions, places, people, etc. Therefore, we must ask and answer the question, what is God connecting with this first letter occurrence of the “Vav” meaning “and”, that also involves an emphasized Strong and Sure Alef God “man”?
We will continue our discovery by noticing that the 6th word of Genesis consists of three letters, beginning with the 6th letter of the alphabet a Vav, and these 3 individual unique letters create “one” Word. This sounds a lot like 1 John 5:7 that says, “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one”. While this does not match the three letters, it establishes a principle and a pattern. We can clearly see that God has described Himself to be three unique named individuals and these three combined can be identified singularly as One.
It is also very interesting that this “Vav” in Genesis 1:1 is the “Only” Vav in the verse. This is another sentence construction requirement/restriction, and it also represents a new clue for us to potentially use to discover the identity of this man associated with the number 6 and the letter Vav.
Who is called an “only” in the Bible? One easy answer is Jesus who is called God’s “only begotten” Son. We can find this in John 3:16 a verse that can be quoted by many Christians. We know in this verse we have the reference of “God” (Alef) in both verses of Genesis 1:1 and John 3:16. We also have a reference to a “man” (6) who is an only occurrence.
This certainly appears to be a good first start to show us that Jesus written in John 3:16 as the “only naturally born son” of God qualifies to be our answer. But this single word connection of the “only” “Vav” gives us “only” the potential for a new connection for identifying Jesus to be the true man in Genesis 1:1. This is true despite Jesus being called someone who is “great” in multiple verses (Mat 4:16, Mat 24:30).
However, the English word “only” occurs over 250 times in the KJV translation of the Bible, and therefore this alone cannot confirm the identity of what we are searching for. Consequently, we must keep searching.
We all know that the number 6 represents “man”. And God connected this number to a picture of a “nail”. What are the other two letters? We will quickly notice that the Vav is only a prefix that is “added” (connected) to another very common word spelled “Alef” + “Tav” (AT) and this word is rarely translated into English anywhere in the Bible even when it occurs over 7000 times in over 5000 verses.
We have learned that this word H853 (Alef+Tav) represent two of the names that Jesus claimed to be in Revelation 1:8 when stating “I am the Alpha and the Omega” the first and last letters of the alphabet. Here is another connection to Isaiah 46:10 “I make known the end (Tav) from the beginning (Alef). But in the book of Revelation, we are seeing how God is showing us Jesus at the end of creation revealing His personal involvement and appearance in the beginning of creation and throughout the rest of the Bible.
This is our very interesting fact number two which claims the 6th word beginning with the 6th letter is connecting these three Hebrew alphabet letters (Vav+Alef+Tav) to describe One God called the “Word” (Jn 1:1, Rev 19:13). By God combining each individual letter identity (nail, beginning, & end) into one Word, He has chosen to hide a message for us to find.
Remember Alef = God that begins the alphabet who also created the world (Eph 3:9), and this is being connected or joined to the “Tav” God/Man that will “End” the alphabet and His old/First creation (2 Cor 5:17, Rev 21:1). This has now brought forth a new beginning which was initiated by Him using the “Vav” nail as an upright man (6th letter Vav). This simply provides us insight that shows us the method of God (Alef) becoming a man (#6) that will be pierced by nails (Vav) and this will have to be done on a cross, since the third letter in this 6th word is the 22nd letter Tav, a picture of a cross.
Therefore, we have found an additional doubling of a word called the “Last”. The “Last” letter of our 6th Hebrew word is the “Last” Hebrew alphabet letter. This is just too amazing to consider how these three letters were selected by God to become the 6th Word at this single addressed location of the sentence.
Have you seen and accepted these as factual clues or are they just easily explained away as coincidence? Regardless, we have discovered how a nail represents an upright standing man that God places great emphasis upon, who has a unique name consisting of the beginning and ending of the alphabet, and this all is clearly pointing us to only one man named “Jesus”. But we are far from being finished from seeing the clues in this verse revealing Him. This is only the second (2) amazing, encoded fact that has been revealed so far.
— Amazing Fact 3 —
And the Two will Become One!
Next remember again that the letter Vav is a picture of a connecting “nail”, and it is used by God to represent the word, “and”. “And” is a designed connection (conjunction) between two words, sentences, phrases, etc. bringing the two thoughts into combined united focus together. This is the duplicate concept of a “nail” that joins two boards making them a stronger united single unit.
Therefore, our “Vav” in Genesis 1:1 is joining or reuniting two independent realities. As we know this letter “Vav” is only found once in Genesis 1:1. So we have a potentially new concept coming into the “light” that is addressed in Genesis 2:24 called “marriage” or “covenant”. In this verse God writes, “and they (two) shall be one flesh”. Wow!
Let us briefly establish what God has implemented in Genesis 2:24 using a “Vav” nail concept of connection of 2 into one, because this will become a critical part of the prophecy of the hidden great man in Genesis 1:1. In Genesis 2, God details the creation of a man named Adam, and how he places him in a sleep to open his side and remove a wife. This so far describes what happened to Jesus precisely while hanging “nailed” (Vav) to a cross (Tav).
Jesus literally died physically first and then He was pierced in His side with a Roman spear. It was this piercing that caused an outflow of blood and water (Jn 19:34). His natural body being dead, took on the appearance of sleep where He was then laid in a tomb for 3 days (Mat 12:30). Interesting how the 6th word in Genesis 1 begins with a Vav nail, Piercing the God/Man (Alef), ends with an ending letter Tav cross, and it is exactly 3 letters in length the time spent in a tomb. These parallels are very amazing to what we see happening to Jesus.
Back to Genesis 2, God then implements the heavenly concept of covenant upon the earth where the first man is joined with his wife, and they are both made from the one flesh of the first Adam. This also sounds like a parallel to what will be happening to Jesus and His spiritual bride the church. Look at this verse:
1Co 6:17 But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.
Here is the exact same “Vav” nail concept joining two objects together being applied to two separate spirits, 1) Holy Spirit, being joined to the 2) human spirit. And these two separated spirits become one new spirit and new creation (2 Cor 5:17). This is amazing and is helping us to understand the prophecy of Genesis 1:1 and the fulfillment of it in the New Covenant marriage of the Lord Jesus Christ to the church.
Now remember a female is the weaker vessel according to God’s Word (1 Pet 3:7). This only means she is normally physically not as strong as the husband. Remember this pattern because this is also true for the church and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ calls himself the bridegroom in Mathew 9:15, and the church is called His chaste virgin to be joined with Him in 2 Corinthians 11:2 and this results in the creation of one “Spirit + spirit” in 1 Corinthians 6:17 that we saw earlier. We should also know that Jesus as the male in the covenant relationship is far stronger than all Christians.
This is a quick introduction to what Genesis 1:1 can represent by showing us how a “great man” could come to the earth to bring about a new covenant which will joins Himself to a new bride which is identified in the New Testament as the church. This is the third amazing clue to consider, but we are not finished with the information that God has included in this verse.
— Amazing Fact #4 —
Who is the Vav Joining Together?
We were introduced to the Vav general meaning of joining 2 separate individuals together as in a marriage/covenant union in the amazing fact #3. And these were pointing us to Jesus and the church. Now it is time to further confirm what we were confirm the letter “Vav” using the concept of the “Vav” as being the word “and”. What is directly said to be connecting in Genesis 1:1? This should help answer a lot of questions that are remaining in the minds of many. This new information should help us to confirm the identity of the 6th word Vav man. We are going to do this, by asking the question “what two words does the “Vav” located in Genesis 1:1 connect as one thought? It is found directly between two very significant Words.
These words are 1) “heaven” (H8064) and 2) “earth” (H776). These are two disjointed locations that are being connected. One is called heaven and is a spiritual location of God’s throne, and the other is primarily the surface of the created natural realm of human inhabitants called earth. These people are called “earth dwellers” nine times in Revelation. But there are also spirits that are abiding inside this dimension that rule the kingdom of darkness.
Therefore, God appears to be revealing another very clear hidden prophecy. Because of the placement of the “Vav” between these two separated realities. There appears that there is a need for reconciliation between God in heaven and humans on the earth. It appears that our God is using a “Vav” (nailed man) named Alef+Tav to be His connector to humans on the earth. Let us observe a New Testament parallel verse concerning what we are finding in Genesis:
2Co 5:18 And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation;
It is very interesting to see what is happening to humans that choose to be joined in Jesus. Notice the subjects being named in this verse. First there is God in heaven that created all things. The next pronoun subject named is “us” representing all human earth dwellers. Finally, there is Jesus Christ. Uh oh? Could He be the connecting nail? Wasn’t He God that came down to earth and took on flesh to dwell among us (Jn 1:14), and be with us (Mat 1:23)? This appears to strongly match our 3 Word hidden prophecy found in Genesis 1:1. Do you see it?
We should begin to learn in this verse how God has “reconciled” humans back into favor with Himself by His work in Jesus Christ. This Greek word “reconciled” (G2644) indicates there is an exchange taking place. This is the “Vav” concept of God joining Himself to man so that we might be joined with His Spirit eternally. We find this concept being further described in 1 Peter:
1Pe 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
This verse says more than we can teach today but notice again the similar subjects. The verse is about Jesus, who was God in the flesh, that came down from heaven to the earth to bare our human sins providing us an exchange to give us His righteousness. This truth says the righteous God came down to take (G399=bare) our sin penalty on His body while hanging on a cross made of wood from a tree. This strongly implies the heaven to earth connection with Jesus being the literal “Vav” connector that was said to be coming in Genesis 1:1.
Since “heaven” is mentioned first in Genesis 1:1, this strongly indicates heaven is the “source” of the man (Vav=6) that follows. But the next word beyond the “Vav” is “earth”, and this implies the destination location for this “connection” work of God.
Joh 6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
Here is a verse confirmation for what we are observing in Genesis 1:1. We can very clearly read that Jesus is claiming to have come down from heaven to the earth. He also very plainly states that this was done to accomplish the works of God that sent Him. There are many other verses like this but that is enough to help us see what is being prophesied in Genesis 1:1 and fulfilled in John 6:38.
Only Jesus appears to qualify to be our coming prophecy man “Vav” who remember is also being revealed as the “end” of this present creation. We know Jesus comes from a pattern of the first man Adam (Rom 5:14) and that He is specifically called the “Last Adam”. “and” also the second “man” making Him to be identified as a type of “Vav” single man.
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
1Co 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
Do you see how Jesus is being revealed to have come from heaven again? Doesn’t this order match the Genesis 1:1 order of first mention? We can see very clearly how Jesus was God (Jn 1:1-14) that was made flesh and dwelt among us as a man for 33 ½ years.
Therefore, all these patterns and hidden messages appear to only point us to one man. These facts so far, appear to suggest very strongly that Jesus Christ is our mystery “Vav” man connection that we have been searching for, that is described to be a “nail”. All this information represents “keys” that are helping us unlock God’s beginning prophecy of the “end”. And God is giving us all this key knowledge to cause us to understand the answer to this mystery.
— Review of Facts Revealed So Far —
Up until now we have seen several clues of facts being uncovered in letters, words, and phrases Genesis 1:1. These messages indicate there is someone that can be called the “only”. This is because there is “only” one Vav in the verse. This Vav represents a man because the number 6 value of the Vav is the number representation of man.
We have also found that this only Vav is joined with two other letters that represent the beginning and the ending alphabet letters. This indicates this man was present at the beginning of creation as well as he will be present at the coming ending of this creation. Since this “Alef-Tav” represents the beginning and ending we know that there is a corresponding connection to Jesus being this identity in Revelation 1:8
This information is strongly indicating that the God that created in the “beginning” is the one that will become a man (Vav=Nail) and He will be made the “connection” between “heaven” (the spiritual) and earth (the material). Wow, if you only knew what this meant. This location implies there is a problem that needs to be resolved by an implied separation between God and man.
The informed Bible student will already know that there are two problems that God is solving by becoming a man. The first solution that needed a resolution is the elimination of Lucifer and all evil spiritual beings from heaven. And the 2nd solution that was on God’s heart was the salvation of His very loved sinful humans that resulted with the fall of the first man Adam. This occurred only 2 chapters from Genesis 1:1 in Genesis 3. It was this act of the first man Adam that required another man called the Last Adam and His name is Jesus. He had to come down from heaven to the earth and die to shed His blood to redeem us. We will talk more about this as we continue, but this is a summary of our initial four (4) amazing fact so far that were coded in the first 7 words of Genesis 1:1.
— Amazing Fact #5 —
The Nail and the Cross Intersection Point
Ok, here is our next very amazing fact that we mentioned quickly earlier at the beginning of the section. Remember that there is only one letter “Vav” directly found in Genesis 1:1, and it occurs precisely on the 22nd letter position in the verse removing any spaces. It just so happens that this 6th letter “Vav” also begins the 6th word in the verse. Therefore, we have two sixes that are intersecting and being joined together at the single letter address location “22”. Here is list of what we have found once again:
- There is “only one directly written Vav” in Genesis 1:1, and it is the 6th letter of the alphabet.
- This 6th alphabet letter Vav also begins the 6th Hebrew Word found in Genesis 1:1.
- And both intersect at the exact 22nd letter address position of the sentence.
Do you see anything important in this information? If you do, is this a coincidence? Or do you believe like many that these are signs of God’s infinite intelligent design?
We know that one six represents man (either the first Adam before the fall, or man in general) and we found a double 6 appears to represent an emphasized “Sure and True Man”, who we have learned can point us to the “Last Adam” also known as the “second man”. Now we are talking about the “Last Adam”. Don’t forget that Isaiah said, “declaring” the “end” from the “beginning”, and anything that is called “last” is certainly the “end” of God creating any more “humans” named “Adam”.
These facts appear to cause us to make Jesus the great man that has been encoded as the “Vav” at the 22nd letter position in the verse. Why did God place this Vav nail exactly on position 22? Many people might think it just occurred by chance, but God does everything by intentional purposed intelligent design. There is NOT one letter in the Word of God that has not been pre-planned and well thought out on where exactly to place it.
In fact, God goes to such extreme detail of design, that it would probably be impossible to find every meaning of every single letter’s placement. Therefore, let us consider why He places the Vav nail on top of the 22nd position of the verse.
Perhaps you already can see where God is taking us? How many letters are there in the original Hebrew Alphabet? Yes, there are exactly 22. This too is not a coincidence. God purposefully connects the 6th letter and the beginning of the 6th word to the exact position of where the “Last” alphabet letter in Hebrew should occur. Wow! This appears to be another clue to the identity of the single “Vav” man confirming this man is the “Last” of something. Hopefully, you already know what the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet is. The 22nd letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is “Tav”.
What is the picture and meaning of the “Tav”, the last 22nd letter of the Hebrew Alphabet? Hopefully, you have learned this answer from other lessons like the introduction. But let us ask again, what is the picture of the “Tav”? Once you have seen it, it becomes unforgettable. The “Tav” is the formation of two crossed wooden sticks that produce the picture of the wooden “cross” that Messiah was slain upon. Wow!
Let’s place these new puzzle pieces together.
- 6+6 = “a Sure True Man” who is also called the “Nail” represented by the letter “Vav” and He is the connector joining heaven “and” earth
- He will be hung (nailed) on top of a wooden tree forming a cross and this is symbolized by placing a “Vav” (6) on top of the 22nd letter position in the verse the address of an implied cross.
These are truly amazing facts that could not have occurred by accident. All these clues together are organized in such a fashion that would have taken an ancient human writer a lifetime to create without supernatural help. But because the Bible is written by 40 authors over hundreds of years, how could all the facts that can be found exist without separate supernatural coordination? This is just too amazing for all the rest of the Bible to also fit together to reveal this man Jesus Christ. But we are not finished yet with this verse, let us go to the next new revelation that we can find to help confirm what we are observing so far.
— Amazing Fact #6 —
Jesus
The First and the Last
The End from the Beginning
We have already found a lot of very amazing information that was hidden in just 12 of the 28 letters found in the last 3 words of Genesis 1:1. Remember in the previous amazing fact we found an implied “Tav” because this was the position of the 22nd letter. Remember a “Tav” is the “Last” letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and it occurs as the 22nd letter. Therefore, the 22nd letter position of Genesis 1:1 would be the implied location if we just placed every alphabet letter in order from the beginning. Right?
Therefore, God has created at this implied 22nd letter “Tav” position a mystery, by sovereignly choosing to overlay this position with the Hebrew letter “Vav” (the #6 letter). This choice of the divine author has placed a man and a nail (Vav) on a cross (Tav). That was an amazing prophetical choice for God to hide this using only 2 letters. But the Bible says in the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word of Truth be established.
Therefore, go back to the “Beginning” of the Hebrew text and search for the “First” occurrence of a “literal” 22nd letter “Tav”. Guess what? The “First” time that the letter “Tav” occurs in the text it is found in the very “First” word of the Bible. It is also very significant that the “Last” letter (Tav) of the alphabet is also the “Last” letter of the “First” word.
Have we seen a pattern like this before? Uh oh? We have just found the “Last” letter in the “First” word is a “Tav”. This causes the “First” connection between the words “First” and “Last”. Hopefully you can begin to see where we are going in this amazing fact. Guess what else? This Hebrew word is translated as “In Beginning” also meaning “First”. The number of the occurrences of the words “First”, “Last”, “Beginning” and “End” may become overwhelming to some.
It is amazing how God places a picture of the “Last” letter “Tav” a “cross”, in the “first” Hebrew word that is translated “Beginning” (the chapter recording God’s “First” works). Doesn’t all this sound like the Isaiah 46:10 prophecy about God making known the “End” from the “Beginning”? Also isn’t this amazing that Jesus said He was all these in Revelation 1:8 and Revelation 1:11? Do you remember what He said,
- I am the Alpha (Alef) the “First” alphabet letter,
- and the Omega (Tav) the “Last” alphabet letter,
- the “Beginning”,
- and the “End”,
- the “First”,
- and the “Last”.
Did you just notice the number of claimed names Jesus identified Himself as? Yes, there are exactly 6 names, the same number representing the “Vav”. Is this an accident? We shouldn’t think it is.
These six claims represent the number of the letter “Vav”, and they parallel what God said to us in Isaiah 46:10 saying, “I make known the end from the beginning”. Since Jesus claims to be the end and the beginning and the first and the last, including the “Tav” ending alphabet letter, we will be finding Jesus over and over.
We have found the following facts and pay close attention to how many times there is a mention of “First”, “Beginning”, “Last”, or “End” occurs, which are the names that Jesus claimed to be:
- The Bible “Begins” with the “First” word phrase “In Beginning”, which we are now learning can be understood to say, “In Christ” because Jesus has claimed to be the “Beginning”.
- The “First” Word of the Bible is H7225 and it is translated as “Beginning” confirming Isaiah 46:10 has directed us to come and search here for the “End”.
- We have also confirmed that the Hebrew word H7225 which is translated as “Beginning” in Isaiah 46:10 is the same word “Beginning” found in Genesis 1:1.
- We searched for the “Last” letter Tav by “Beginning” our search from the “Beginning” of the Bible and we found its “First” occurrence in the “First” word, of the “First” verse, in the “First” chapter, in the “first” book called “Beginnings” (Genesis in Greek).
- We have further discovered that the “Last” letter “Tav” (#22) was placed by God as the “Last” letter of the “First” Hebrew word which is translated as “Beginning” H7225.
Do you believe God is trying to get a message across using all these repetitive occurrences of “First”, “Last”, “Beginning” and “End” that are occurring with the Last Letter of the Alphabet in the First beginning word of the Bible? Perhaps it will help us to see a verse in Revelation:
Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This reference to the “Lamb” is a direct symbol for our Savior the slain Jesus (Jn 1:36) and is referring to His death on a “Tav” cross. The Greek word G2602 is the word translated as “foundation”. But it can also literally mean “conception” as in a thought, idea, or concept (plan) from God or even in reference to a “pregnancy” conceived by the Word of God that will bring forth a birth. Conception is clearly indicating an event that causes a new “Beginning”. This undoubtedly describes Genesis 1:1 accurately.
We can certainly confirm there is an important “cross” found in the “First” and “Beginning” word of the Bible. This cross “Tav” is the “Last” and “Ending” letter of the “First” word. Therefore, this placement is strongly suggesting that this original “Beginning” will bring about and “End” utilizing a “Tav” cross which also must involve Jesus, since He claims to be this Alphabet Letter directly. Wow!
Now for some new additional hidden facts which can be found in this “Beginning” and “First” Word’s hidden message. Where in the 1st word of the 1st verse does the “Tav” occur? In other words, what is the “Tav” letter’s number location (address)?
If you look at the “First” Hebrew sentence and count the letters, the “First” “Tav” is found exactly at the 6th letter position. Therefore, the letter “Tav” (#22) overlays the 6th position for a letter to occur. Isn’t this the home address location of a “Vav” nail? Does this sound familiar? Do you think this is another coincidence?
Didn’t we find that the “First” occurrence of a letter “Vav” (#6), occurred laying on top of the 22nd open letter position? So, we have learned the “First” Vav has an “address” number of 22 the home of Tav. We have just found two super amazing combinations of either a 22 or a 6, overlaying the other, and it just so happens that one is a “nail” and the other is a “cross”. It is highly improbable based upon all the other amazing facts that this is a chance occurrence.
In fact, it is certainly mathematically impossible for all these to happen by chance because they all are communicating a common prophetical message about something that is not going to occur for almost four thousand years from when the first man Adam will be created on “Day 6” of the Genesis 1 beginning of creation account.
As we know we found the 6th letter of the alphabet laid on top of the 22nd position of all the beginning letters of the verse. This was our “First” direct nail to a cross relationship. And we have now just found the “Tav” 22nd letter on top of the 6th letter position an implied reference to the letter “Vav”. Why would God place a cross on top of the 6th position in the sentence? Therefore, both references of the “First” “Tav” and the “First” “Vav” indicate there is a “man” that will come from heaven to the earth to be nailed to a cross. Is God amazing or what? Now to help us confirm this with other verses let us check this verse out:
Joh 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
Ok, this verse sounds a lot like what we have been reading about hidden in Genesis 1:1. Here in this verse of John, God has written about when Jesus was hanging nailed (Vav=#6) on a “cross” (Tav=#22). While hanging on this cross (Tav) using nails (Vav) they had pierced His body both 2 hands and His 2 feet with these nails (Vav). Therefore, Jesus a man (Vav=6) is being literally “connected” (“Vav”) to the cross (“Tav”) using nails (“Vav”) and this appears to be the exact prophecy fulfillment of Genesis 1:1, God’s description from the letters and positions found in the “Beginning”.
Then notice what Jesus says, “It is finished”. This Greek word G5055 translated as “finished” can be defined as “to end” and “to complete” as in the fulfillment of a maximum limit that has been reached. Doesn’t this sound like an “End” as in Jesus fulfilling and reaching the “Last” letter prophecy of the alphabet “Tav” cross?
Is it just another coincidence that Jesus is making a reference to the “End” of something while hanging on the “Last” letter of the Hebrew alphabet? I really do not think this could have been an accident. Therefore, we must ask our self, what has just concluded or has reached the “Last” position of fulfilled limit when Jesus died? Here is the short list answer:
- Jesus’ natural mortal life and ministry “on” the earth has just “concluded” by His physical “death” hanging by nails (Vav) on a cross (Tav).
- Since the “Tav” cross was the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet as it was written in the beginning and has been fulfilled, and this implies that a new beginning is required.
Now recall that the Bible calls Jesus the “Firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18). This same verse further gives us the reason for becoming the “Firstborn” of the dead is so that He could have preeminence over all the old creation. This strongly indicates that God’s significant problem with Lucifer and evil in heaven has been solved with the death of Jesus on the cross. Could this be the reason God writes in 1 Corinthians 2:8, that Satan would not have crucified Jesus, if he had known the consequences? This appears to be at least one major thing that God is revealing to us. But let us move to another amazing fact of Genesis 1:1.
— Amazing Fact #7 —
Genesis 1:1 7 Words and
the 7 Days of Creation Parallels
While there certainly could be many other hidden treasures yet to be found in this single verse, in the honor of the 7 words in Genesis 1:1 and the number 7 as being the completion of God’s work in creation, we will end this section with a “final” amazing fact #7 that is potentially revealing another hidden prophecy. This hidden prophecy also deals with the letter “Vav”, but this time it will be connected directly with the letters “Alef” + “Tav” that we also saw briefly before as two names for Jesus Christ.
The first occurrence of the “Alef” + “Tav” is found in the verse as the 4th word. Then the second occurrence of the “Alef” + “Tav” occurs as the 6th word of the verse. But remember the 6th word occurrence has the added “Vav” nail connector. This is very amazing since this 3-letter word occurs around 3000 times in scriptures. What does all this mean? There is probably more than one explanation for the existence of these two “Alef + Tav” joined letters.
Many modern Hebrew seminary scholars try to say these two letter untranslated words (H853 7000+ times, H854 1200+ times), were added for the purpose of representing “a direct object pointer”. This means its purpose was to show the part of the Hebrew sentence that receives an action.
But how do we explain the selectivity of why only certain verses contain this Alef+Tav pointer? Out of over 31,000 verses why are there are only 9000 occurrences of these two letters and in some verse sentences like Genesis 1:1 there is more than one occurrence? Do the verses that have no “Alef Tav” word need no object pointer, or do these have no direct noun object that is receiving any verb action? And do the verses that have two or more “Alef”+“Tav” words have multiple primary objects that need to be emphasized. These types of inconsistencies appear to add a great level of new complexities.
While this direct object pointer using an “Alef”+“Tav” is possible, it appears to mostly deny what Jesus said to us about the first and last letters being His identity. Plus, Jesus personally told the Hebrew people to search their scriptures because these words were about Him (Jn 5:39). Finally, as of today we should be learning God’s superior intelligence reveals His ability to teach us multiple things using a single letter, word, sentence, etc. Therefore, all these facts could be true simultaneously.
The simplest explanation for these word occurrences is my approach to understanding what they represent and why they are there. This explanation is based upon allowing the Bible to interpret itself and ignoring human reasoning (2 Pet 1:20). With this Biblical approach we have greater assurance and alignment to truth that the fact that Jesus claims to be the first and last letters of the Alphabet 4 times in the book of Revelation means He must be these letters in the Hebrew. This is clearly written in a book that begins “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”.
Therefore, if this book of Revelation is primarily about Jesus and it says this is the “Uncovering” and “revealing” (G602=Revelation) of Him, this indicates that we are being given new information in this book that reveals things that were hidden from us since the beginning. Therefore, if Jesus personally claims to be these two letters 4 times, that is good enough for me. You are allowed to do with it as you please.
Do you know why people never see Jesus in the Old Testament? This is mainly because they are not looking for Him. I guarantee that He can be found in some form in every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and it is these Letters that make up every word that is written down. Let us get back to our Genesis 1:1 2 Alef+Tav words.
Remember there are 7 Hebrew words in total in Genesis 1:1. I believe these 7 words are a parallel to the “7 days” of God’s work in creation. I also believe these “7 days” represent 7000 years of total human history on the earth. According to God writing through Peter again, we read in 2 Peter 3:8 that 1 day to the Lord represents 1000 years.
Applying this revelation of 1 day = 1000 years and the proposal that each of the 7 words in the first verse is a parallel to potentially represent something happening on that day of creation, this would help us to see the following about these two Alef+Tav untranslated words:
- The first Alef+Tav appearance occurs as the 4th word of Genesis 1:1. This appears to be prophetical to imply the “First” physical appearance of the man Jesus occurs on the earth at the “Beginning” of the 4000th year (4th Day). (First Alef+Tav)
- Because the “Last” occurrence of the “Alef”+“Tav” in Genesis 1:1 occurs as the 6th Word, this appears to teach us that the next time Jesus will appear on earth is at the “End” of the 6th day, year 6000 from the beginning of creation (Last Alef+Tav).
But remember the 2nd appearance of Jesus is attached with the letter “Vav” nail. This can simply mean this appearance will be the fulfilment of the Zecheriah 12:10 prophecy:
Zec 12:10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
We can clearly read in this verse that Jesus will be returning to the earth as a man with “Vav nail impressions in His flesh”. These nails pierced His body completely through his flesh to attach Him to a wooden cross (Tav). Therefore, the second time Jesus comes to the earth He is prophesied to return on the “Last” of day 6 as a man that has been pierced.
It is also very interesting that the word “me” that was translated in Zecheriah 12:10 is our H853 “Alef+Tav” word. This literally means Jesus is being defined again as the Alef+Tav. But not like the beginning of His 4000-year “first” public appearance, here in Zechariah 12:10, He is now returning as the man that has been marked by “Vav” nails in which He has become this prophecy of a pierced man. This is too amazing to not be true.
Also do not forget who this man is! He is Jehovah (YHWH) the God whose name means “Behold the hand, Behold the nail”. Let us move to a new revelation about Jesus being called “the nail”.
3. Jesus is God’s Sure Nail
We are about to go over a prophecy written down by the prophet Isaiah about Jesus Christ. In this prophecy God is directly prophesying about the coming Messiah. But these verses point us to Jesus directly claiming He is to be a type of a “Vav” nail. Let us read two key verses from the book of Isaiah:
Isa 22:22 And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.
Isa 22:23 And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house.
Here is another amazing coincidence, or not? Did you notice what chapter we are in? It is just too amazing that these verses are found in chapter 22 the same number as the letter “Tav” cross. It is also further amazing that these verses begin with verse 22 of chapter 22, a double reference to the “Tav” cross. Just out of curiosity how many chapters are in Isiah? There are 66 chapters which is 22 x 3. Now all of this cannot be a coincidence. God must be guiding this information and helping us to find the exact verses that we need to learn and study about a Vav nail.
As we can clearly read in verse 23 God is saying “I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place”. This is seriously too amazing to ignore. Can we apply what we learned in the previous section to this prophecy? Did we not just find a sure man “Vav” nailed to a “Tav” cross using the first reference of the Hebrew letter Vav a nail in Genesis 1:1? Isaiah was written a long time after Genesis 1:1, how could he have known and understood what he was writing without the Holy Spirit to help?
Now pay attention that this verse in Isaiah is written about a man that is referred to as “Him”. Who is HIM? We could debate who this is for a long time. But God answers this question for us, and this man identifies Himself in Revelation 3:7 in a letter written to the churches. In this verse Jesus is personally speaking and claims to have the “Key of David that no man can open or close”.
Therefore, if Verse 22 is clearly identified to be Jesus, there is no question that the next verse 23 is also. This literally teaches us that God is directly calling His sent Son named Jesus to be His designed and purposed “Nail” connection to humanity. Let us now examine and confirm this fact using the Works of Jesus described in the New Covenant.
However, there is another amazing clue to help us identify the identity of these verses in Isaiah. In verse 23, there is a translated phrase “and He shall be” that needs to be clearly understood. This word is “H1961”, and it is spelled “Hey” + “Yod” + “Hey”, which are three of the letters of the name of God (Jehovah/YHWH). But wait, this word is prefixed with the letter “Vav”, meaning “And”. Interesting how this is our key study subject today. Adding the letter “Vav” to the word as a prefix has now completed all the letters that are needed to complete the name of God. This word is now spelled “Vav” + “Hey” + “Yod” + “Hey”. These are the exact same letters as Jehovah, but the letters “Vav” and “Yod” have been switched. Using the ancient Hebrew pictographic letter meanings this word now says, “Behold the Nail, Behold the Hand”. There appears to be a shift of emphasis by leading with the Vav “Nail” first.
But wait, there is more, the word “H1961” is translated as “I AM” in Exodus 3:14. This powerful name is the identity that God chose to give to Moses to tell His people who had sent him to them. Therefore, Hey + Yod + Hey is “I AM” and now add the “Vav” to the front we get the name the “Nailed I AM”. Who is this? This can only be Jesus. We know in John 8:58 Jesus said, “Before Abraham was, I AM”. This is spoken shortly before Jesus is about to be nailed (VAV) to the “TAV” cross. Don’t you think God knew this when He wrote Isaiah?
These are all too amazing facts to ignore. Jesus claimed to be every alphabet letter from the beginning to the end, from the first to the last, and He fulfilled them all and we are learning today about how the “Vav” was displayed and revealed in Yehoshua (Jesus). Now let us shift our focus to the application of the “Vav” Jesus works for the church.
4. How God Placed Us in Christ
To Vav Re-Connect Us with God
The scriptural prophesied work of God that was fulfilled in Jesus is so limitless that it is a great challenge to know, understand, and write about everything that was accomplished. It is truly amazing what God did for us by becoming a human man named “Jesus” (Yehoshua) (Mat 1:23-25). God sovereignly chose to manifest as flesh (Rom 8:3) and become a part of His “First” creation (Gen 1:1).
God accomplishes this work for more than one reason. The first reason that must be known was for the purpose to righteously separate Himself from Lucifer also known as Satan (adversary) and the devil (slanderer, false accuser) (Rev 20:10). Many preachers believe God sovereignly eliminated Satan from heaven the moment he sinned in heaven. But that belief does not align with scripture as we will soon see.
We are about to discover that this defeat of Satan took place by the death of Jesus while hanging on a “Tav” cross nailed by “Vav” nails (Heb 2:14, 1 Cor 2:8). It was His death that began the ending phase of God’s final plan to be initiated for the complete elimination of Satan. This “wicked one” is not cast down from heaven until Revelation 12:9. And Satan’s final elimination from influencing people that inhabit the face of the earth is not completed until Revelation 20:10. These final judgments will be happening very soon.
But the next primary dual purpose of sending Jesus into our world was to save His valuable humans from an everlasting separation from experiencing His sovereign Love for us (Mat 1:27, John 3:16). It was the “sin” of Adam that initiated this departure from the righteous and Holy God, and we required a connector to be re-joined in full righteous fellowship. Jesus became this “Vav” nail re-connection as we will read about in this section.
God accomplished this sovereign work as well as many other things that were performed in Christ as a display of His fulfillment of the letter “Vav” reconnecting with humans. This plan was carried out as a clear exhibit of the omnipotent force of His great power (Eph 1:19-20). God’s work to become a manifested part of His “First” and “Beginning” creation (Genesis 1:1) to die on a “Tav” cross hanging with “Vav” nails was a very humbling, merciful, kind, loving wise choice and it was clearly a major part of His plan of a “Zayin” separation from Satan by implementing a brand-New Creation (Isa 43:9, 2 Cor 5:17, Gal 6:15) which never existed before. God is doing all these prophesied Hebrew Alphabet letter works in Christ for the following reasons:
- To initiate and bring to fruition His New Creation and a New Beginning (2 Cor 5:17, Gal 6:15, Rev 21:1).
- To phase out and eliminate the cursed old creation (Gen 3:17, Rev 21:1)
- To save all humans that choose to believe in Jesus from an eternal separation by providing the ability to know God’s Love (Jn 17:3, Jn 3:16).
- To divide Himself from all unrighteousness and evil in both heaven and earth of the present creation (Eph 3:15, 2 Pet 3:13, Rev 21:8).
These works of God in Jesus are all actions of either joining (as a Vav) or cutting and dividing (as a Zayin). Both divine sovereign works are occurring simultaneously every day, even as you are reading. For example, as your mind is being renewed with these new Bible concepts that you may have never seen before, you are being invited to become joined to think a new way about Jesus and God’s work in you. These new concepts are either filling new space in your mind’s belief system like a “Vav” adjoining addition or they are cutting away with a “Zayin” type of hoe or sword the old contradictory beliefs that need to be uprooted and replaced with God’s new written Words of Truth Seed (Nun).
God’s plan in Christ was to produce a way of transitioning out of His First Creation and the present world’s “Old Creation” corrupted systems of governments (Rev 21:1) in heaven and on the earth. God accomplished this transition by Jesus’ death on the “Tav” cross. It was this death that began the separation from the old creation, and it was Jesus’ resurrection that initiated the New Creation making Him the head of every principality, power, might and dominion (Eph 1:20-22).
Both the original heavenly and earthly realms became “Vav” joined with knowing (in covenant) both good (God) and evil (Satan) simultaneously (Gen 3:5, Gen 3:22). However, Satan was the common part of the old creation that brought sin and wickedness into covenant relationship with both realms of the natural and the spiritual after Adam had sinned.
Satan now has a kingdom of rule (Lk 11:18), that is him currently governing the unsaved people of the world (Eph 2:2) as well as 1/3 of the angelic beings that were joined with him (Rev 12;4). This satanic kingdom is called “darkness” (Col 1:15). God is accomplishing this exit from darkness by providing a “Dalet” door named “Jesus” to make available and entrance into His Newly Created Son’s Kingdom of Light (Col 1:13).
This “Dalet” door transition was first made available after the death of Jesus on the “Tav” cross at the transition point of the end of Day 4 and the beginning of Day 5 of God’s Genesis 1 creation days prophecy (~4033 years after Adam). It is interesting to know the “Dalet” is the 4th letter of the Hebrew alphabet and this also appears to prophesy and show us what will be made available to us at the ending years of the 4th millennium.
The “Dalet” Door of salvation is entered by a human choosing to believe and act on the preached Gospel (Good News) message of salvation in Jesus by Faith. Our faith belief in Jesus being raised from the dead and declaring Him to be our LORD (Rom 10:9-10) causes a spiritual “New Birth” (Jn 3:3) which is a personal human “New Beginning” and a “Vav” connection with God through Faith (Eph 2:8, 1 Pet 1:23). This never seen before “new spiritual birth” results in a completely “New Creation” system of existence (2 Cor 5:17). By joining this New Kingdom, we are living in Jesus Christ the Son of God’s realm of power and authority, that had never existed before in time past, and the result is His Holy Spirit living in us and removal from Satan’s darkness.
Jesus is the cutting Sword instrument of the “Zayin” that divides and cuts Himself and us away from the authority of evil (Satan), while concurrently driving a “Vav” nail to re-connect Himself back to all of those that choose the gift of His “Righteousness”. This work of God will be completed during a phase of work identified by the Hebrew letter “Chet” which is a picture of a wall without doors that separates God and His New Covenant Family from Satan’s evil darkness permanently.
The “Chet” is the 8th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and the number 8 signifies a “New Beginning” as in the first day of a brand-new Week. This simply teaches us it is at the beginning of the 8th day that a “brand-new” creation will be completely transitioned into, and the old creation ended after the final completion of Day 7 of the present old creation (7000 years of human history). This will be taking place after Day 7 of creation representing a 1000-year millennium rule of Christ with a 1000-year period of temporary interruption of Satan’s evil influence upon humans on the earth. This is described to occur in Revelation 20:2-3.
And we may know the “Zayin” is the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet that signifies it is on this day that the final “cutting” of God’s Zayin sword will be taking place. It is at the beginning of this day 7 of creation when Satan is bound and cast into hell for 1000 years. This will temporarily eliminate Satan’s rule from the face of the planet. But at the end of the 1000 years, he must be released to attempt to deceive any of the people that were born during this time that had never had the choice to choose between good and evil.
Therefore, Satan will be released to deceive natural people again at the end of the 1000-year reign of Christ and the church (those Vav connected with God). Then God’s last phased plan of the “Zayin” division and removal of Satan (the root source of evil, sin, and temptation) will be initiated (Rev 20:10). Subsequently the plan of separation will be finalized with the permanent removal of all evil, including anyone that chose to sin by submitting to Satan’s deceptions and temptations. These all will be cast into the lake of fire with him (Rev 21:8). These are all the ending completions of the “Zayin” cutting away types of prophecies found in the Old and New Testaments.
Finally, God’s New Heaven and New Earth will come into being, with a total “Chet” wall of separation from all Evil (Rev 21:1-2). No, you may not have studied these letters “Zayin” or “Chet” yet, but this was a quick introduction of the concepts. This was added because these letters “Vav”, “Zayin” and “Chet”, can’t be totally understood without including them together in a single lesson to explain how God prophesied the order of events in the arrangement of the letters.
These decisions to enter the Door of salvation or stand on the outside in opposition to the Kingdom of Light, can be made at any moment of time by the sovereign choice of every human by selecting to believe or not to believe. But this choice is only available if you have breath on this planet to speak. People are either “Vav” uniting in harmony with Christ through right beliefs and confessions, or they have chosen to remain in disharmony with Christ by default or through wrong beliefs.
And by not making a choice or choosing incorrectly, they are becoming permanently “Zayin” separated by death from God by their own willful decisions. This is because when Adam sinned, he became “Vav” joined with Satan (Isa 28:15), and now every human that is born from the first Adam must die (1 Cor 15:22). However, all this is occurring for God’s single common good and purpose to separate God and His infinite good, from Satan and his never-ending evil.
For example, when a man marries a woman, the two become united and joined (Vav) as a completely new family and this is good. But simultaneously they have now been separated (Zayin) from all other families on the earth that now exist as independent units. Also, on an individual level the man and the woman have now become separated from all other individual males and females, to only be in intimate relationship which each other. These two joined intimate people have simply excluded (divided) themselves from intimacy with all other humans. This was exactly a description of the plan of God for a New Covenant in Jesus Christ.
Hopefully, you can begin to see how these two concepts of 1) a joining together like a “Vav” nail can occur simultaneously with 2) a separating and dividing of a “Zayin” sword. It is essential to understand how these two opposites must be present to work together for God’s single design purpose and His greater plan. If you do not see it yet, please be patient and continue to learn, it will become clearer soon.
Perhaps this might help you embrace this topic more quickly. We know a marriage is supposed to be monogamous meaning they are not intimate with their old boyfriends, girlfriends, or anyone else they should meet after the union occurs. This is God’s primary created example of the foundation of a successful covenant marriage (Gen 2:24). Notice in Genesis 2:24 both the joining together and the dividing separation is stated. This is a God created and designed Law. But these concepts were also a necessary requirement for God in His Old Covenant marriage with natural Israel (Jer 31:32) and these will further be expanded to include Jesus and His covenant spiritual bride in the New Covenant (Eph 5:31-32).
God informed natural Israel that He was a jealous God in Exodus 20:5. God says very clearly that they were not supposed to be unfaithful to Him, to go and worship other gods (Exo 20:3). If they do this, they will make Him jealous, and this would bring about consequences for their evils (Exo 12:12, Exo 23:33). Therefore, Israel was supposed to be “Vav” joined with the LORD God only, and forsake, sever, and divide (Zayin) themselves from all other false gods and idols and nations that worship them. Remember the false gods and idols were parts of Satanic worship of the devil’s demons, sorceries, and witchcrafts. These were all traps of Satan used to defeat the people of God.
This seems very easy to comprehend for anyone of a divine moral character that knows God personally and intimately. For God is more than capable of being faithful to us, but for many people it has not been that easy for them to be faithful to Him as was displayed in natural Israel (Isa 1:21, Jer 3:8). This is a key reason why God sent Jesus into the world to become His human “Vav” connector.
Remember Jesus Christ is the eternal fulfilment of the Old Covenant pattern of a man standing in the office of the high priest (Heb 2:17). Remember in the Old covenant the high priest acted as a “Vav” connection between God and natural Israel, by entering God’s presence with animal blood for the sins of natural Israel. He did this with sacrificed blood when entering behind the veil into the Holy of Holies. This also was what Jesus Christ performed once with His blood entering into the real temple in heaven. Praise the LORD! Jesus will continue this role between God and man forever. All these High Priest actions fulfilled in Jesus as our “Vav” reconnection to God can be studied in Hebrews chapters 2 through 13. Please go and read them and see what He did for us.
However, God still expects this quality of faithfulness in our decision to be “Vav” joined with Jesus Christ. This faithfulness must include the commitment to be “Zayin” divided from evil. As God said to natural Israel in Leviticus 11:44 “be holy for I am holy”, He says the same to the church in 1 Peter 1:16. Repeatedly in the New Covenant God commands us after we are united with Him, to not be “Vav” joined with evil and unrighteousness (2 Cor 6:14-17). Therefore, God is expecting us to learn from natural Israel and not make the same mistakes to become unfaithful (1 Cor 10:11).
Today we have been studying the concepts hidden in the ancient Hebrew letter “Vav” and how they apply to what Jesus fulfilled for us in the prophecy of this unique letter. This letter “Vav’s” primary picture represents a “peg” and/or a “nail”. We can understand from this picture that this letter symbolically represents a connector plan, process, object, or person that performs a work like a nail that can be driven into two individual objects to “connect” or “reconnect” them as if they were one. It is very much like the modern day “super glue” concept of joining together broken pieces of a vase so that they can be made bonded together again.
It is absolutely essential to understand this “Vav” joining together concept, in the manifestation of the Son of God, Jesus. God’s Holy Spirit intentionally chose to be joined with His favored woman named Mary (Miriam) (Lk 1:30). God’s spoken Word produced a natural seed that was “joined” with Mary’s human “egg” and these two God created elements 1) human egg (Mat 1:20), and 2) divine Word “seed” (Lk 8:11) produced a natural human body (Heb 10:5) that could contain and carry both the blood of God plus the Spirit of God (Heb 9:14). Then this new human body type was the “beginning” of God’s intentional design, creating a prototype for His new creation. This would make Jesus the “First” human temple pattern of the Living Spirit of God (Jn 2:21) and give God the ability to take up residence in future believers’ human bodies (Act 17:24). Now with this foundation built, let us move to other scriptures in the New Testament that teach what was accomplished in Jesus using the “Vav” nail concepts.
Please take note that just because scriptures do not say they are about a nail or a peg, does not mean they are not directly connected to our subject of joining. Rather than look for the obvious “nail” mention, search for the applications for what a “Vav” represents. Think of all the synonymous ways to say “join” and this will help your search. It will amaze us how often we can find these concepts when we are looking for them. This is what we will be doing in the remaining part of this section.
We have already been introduced to the prophecy of this nail connecting God in heaven back to created humans on earth and we will easily find how this was fulfilled in God’s work “In Christ” by reading several great examples of verses in the New Covenant. Let us begin with Ephesians.
Eph 5:31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Eph 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
This is a direct quotation of Genesis 2:24 that we briefly saw earlier in the lesson. Do not forget that this is God’s law of covenant union and connection with the simultaneous separation and division affecting two individuals. These are a husband and wife that are being joined to form a new family with them also being removed from their parent’s families and any other external temptations.
Remember we were connecting Adam and Eve to be a type and pattern of Christ (Last Adam) and the church (Bride). In that section we confirmed the function of a “nail” was to join two separated things to be like a marriage covenant union of a man and a woman. Concurrently both of these two “newly joined” individuals have also further committed and agreed to separate themselves from all others and this is called commitment and faithfulness. This is exactly what is happening in Jesus Christ and His bride, the church.
These natural marriage concepts suddenly become so much greater when viewed in the spiritual realm in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:31-32 reveals God’s hidden intention for creating the union of two becoming one in natural marriage was designed for His future purpose of the marriage covenant between Christ and His wife, the church. This is clearly a “Vav” type of spiritual connection taking place between the church and Jesus, with the simultaneous separation of them both by a spiritual “Zayin” cutting away from all sin, evil and Satan.
Consider that the first woman in Genesis 2 was taken out of the First man Adam. Therefore, God made one man first and called both of their name “Adam” (Gen 5:2). Then He took out (a Zayin division) called a woman to create two separate and unique individuals from a single “flesh” (Gen 2:21-23). Then God rejoined the two (male and female) back together by the reunion of two becoming one again in covenant marriage (Gen 2:24). This amazingly describes God’s natural pattern of what is happening in the greater spiritual dimension between Himself and His New Creation (2 Cor 5:17), the church.
Next, we need to understand the spiritual problem of sin that entered the earth in Genesis 3 through the participation of the author of sin Satan coming down to earth from heaven. When this rebellion occurred, God needed a solution for sin in both heaven and earth. But before this sin had occurred on earth, God already had a plan to send another Adam, named Jesus to earth to save humans (Rev 13:8). We must begin to understand God’s purposes for His Works to reconnect (Vav) humans back to Himself. We will find one of the key reasons for Jesus as a uniting “Vav” connector for heaven and earth in 2 Peter:
2Pe 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
If you have not yet seen the great significance of what God has accomplished in Jesus’ death on a “Tav” Cross pierced with “Vav” nails, this verse reveals His entire purpose was to make a new creation wherein only “righteousness” dwelled. What does this mean?
Doesn’t this sound like the “Zayin” sword concept of cutting and dividing by stating God is eliminating “evil” from the “righteous”? This “separation” must then also require that there be a simultaneous opposite of a “Vav” joining. To fulfill the verse this implied joining must represent the New Covenant (Heb 12:24). This New Covenant union that is implied to be taking place, must be between two previously separated individuals (God and the church using Jesus as their mediating connection).
Plainly this spiritual reunion must be a willing unification based upon agreement with each other to be simultaneously “Vav” joined together. Therefore, the church is choosing to be joined with God, His righteousness, His Holiness, and His goodness, while at the same time choosing to be “Zayin” divided apart from Satan, unrighteousness, and all evil.
As we can read in 2 Peter 3:13, there is certainly a God plan for a “New Creation”, which includes a “New heaven” and a “New earth”. This also means that God is 1) dividing and separating all His Old Creation, specifically the sinful evil portion from the righteous forever. We can confirm this reason of division (Zayin) for Jesus’ personal appearance on earth in Matthew 10:34-36 and Luke 12:51-53 which is based upon a prophecy from Micah 7:6.
Most of the natural descriptions in the Old Covenant have parallel and dual occurring spiritual applications that are based upon God’s chosen written natural symbolism. We are not going to be able to teach all these concepts of division today. There are other lessons on this website that speak in more detail about “Understanding Division” and “Understanding the Spiritual Family of God” to name two major sources for understanding what God is doing in Jesus to divide Himself from Lucifer and to join Himself to humans that were separated. Here is this significant prophecy declaring this division will be occurring in the future:
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.
We can only give a rapid overview of one part of the prophecy about God’s division to introduce the subject to new readers. We know this prophecy is about Jesus, by Him personally quoting this verse. With this claim, He is clearly describing the dividing of God’s spiritual family was one of the key reasons why He was sent to the earth as a human. He claims in Matthew 10:34 that He did not come to bring peace but rather a “sword” (implying a Zayin cutting division is taking place). Then in Luke 12:51, Jesus is more plain speaking that His coming to the earth was directly to “divide”, and not to bring peace. This is obviously a hidden reference to God dividing Himself from Satan and the “unrighteousness” that is inferred in 2 Peter 3:13.
It is important to see that this prophecy is about dividing a family. First know that God has a family that is named both in heaven and on the earth (Eph 3:15). Second understand that before Adam, this God family only consisted of angelic beings in heaven (Heb 12:22). Please begin to understand that the first Adam was created to be a separated new part of God’s spiritual family that was not connected to the heavenly angels and especially Satan’s evil. This was God’ first “division” of His spiritual family. And this division symbolically occurs on Day 1 of creation where God creates “light” and divides the light from the darkness calling light “day” and darkness “night”. However, this Day 1 of creation was a prophecy for what was about to occur within this first 1000 years of human history.
It is most revealing when studying the Word of God to view what is written and spoken by God from His perspective of dividing Himself from Satan and evil in heaven. God is implementing a Genesis 1 re-creation of the planet earth to accomplish this. We can clearly see the first earth was destroyed in Genesis 1:2. God confirms this in 2 Peter 3:6. This creation has included many new things that never existed before as we are beginning to see. Of course, this work of God peaked with the creation of humans, a law, and a death consequence for disobedience. Hopefully you are seeing how all of this is working together to eliminate Satan with a “Zayin” type of division.
Then we know that we do not get very far past Genesis 1, until we find God’s kingdom purpose continuing to develop to separate Himself from Satan. As we should know Satan existed before Adam’s creation (Job 38:4-7). Since there is never a mention of Satan or anyone else on planet earth when Adam was created, we can logically deduce that Satan’s residence was in heaven. We must recall that Satan’s home in heaven will remain until after the War take place between Michael and his angels who will overcome Satan and his angels in Revelation 12:7-8. It is at this point during the tribulation that Satan and his angels are permanently cast out of heaven, and this takes place over 6000 years after Adam was created.
However, in Genesis 3, it appears that Satan’s interests have suddenly shifted from ruling in heaven and has move down to rule the earth. It further appears that Satan’s desires and purposes have been re-focused upon the corruption (Rom 8:21) of God’s sinless re-created good earth and its inhabitants (Gen 1:31). This intention clearly included his desires to “Vav” join himself to humans so that he could fill the earth with his evil and sin (Gen 6:5) that was then only found present in heaven (Eze 28:15).
Therefore, in Genesis 3:1, Satan suddenly appears in the garden on earth, to craftily tempt God’s newly created separated Adam’s family. However, please do not get confused, by the mention of Adam being called “separated” from God. This separation is plainly stated in Genesis 2:24 where God says the man shall leave his father’s house. Who is the created man’s father? We know from reading Luke 3:38 that Adam’s life came from God making God his father.
But this implied separation of God from Adam, does not mean that God could not visit and talk with His creation as we can clearly read occurs in Genesis 2 and 3. This only meant that Adam was not a part of God’s heavenly spiritual family or kingdom and that he had been given by God a separated from heaven, earth domain. This domain included a new wife and family of his own, with his own God given authority to rule and manage the re-created earth (Gen 1:26).
This concept of a father to son separation has been passed from generation to generation. It is entirely true in the present earthly realm today, exactly as it was in God’s to His created first man Adam. For example, my son is the husband and father of his own house. He has been joined with his wife and they two are one flesh in the eyes of God. When they were married, they both left their parent’s house. This meant they both gained the independent sovereign abilities to make their own choices and rules apart from their parents’ homes. They are free to ask for their fathers or mothers’ advice, but the decisions are ultimately all in their power to make.
Therefore, this temptation to revolt against God that was brought down from heaven by Satan, was Adam’s sovereign choice to make. Satan directed this temptation intentionally at God’s separated newly created human family to join with them together in rebellion against God. It appears that in Satan’s mind this was an opportunity for him to gain greater power and control of all of God’s creation to exalt himself to be like God (Isa 14:13). But we will notice that this decision to come to the earth has moved him to also be in covenant with humans that must now “die” because of their sins. Uh oh. It is highly likely that Satan did not fully understand what this “Vav” joining with humans could include.
There appears to be a plan of God for moving Satan’s eternal domain found in the heavenly, down to the temporary earth’s surface domain (2 Cor 4:18). We could call this a part of the beginning steps of God’s transition for the separation from all evil from the righteous. This is where we are now and this temporary earthly rule (2 Cor 4:4) appears to be a part of the transitioning steps of God’s plan to eventually move Satan out of the spiritual eternal realm of God’s heavenly Kingdom into the eventual transition of being thrown down into hell finally and permanently separated forever from God and all the righteous.
Remember, it is the heavenly spiritual realm where there is no time, no death, no law, no sin consequences, and God plans for Satan to be brought down into the newly created world of Adam which will begin with a newly implemented concept of time, followed by a law with death consequences for committing sin.
Adam had been created and lived by God’s plan within a temporary separated natural realm of existence, involving the law of stewardship (Mar 12:1-11, Luke 12:42, Luke 16:1-13). This temporary creation involved a timed leased rulership of the earth. Therefore, it was never intended to last forever. The timed lease of the earth that was given to the first man, was to last for 6000 years of human work (Gen 2:5, Mat 17:1), and a 1000-year day of rest (Heb 4:3-11, Rev 20:6).
But after sin enters the world, Adam becomes “Vav” joined with Satan, and falls under the rulership of death (Rom 5:17) which was now within Satan’s power (Heb 2:14). Wow, do you see what has just happened after Adan sinned? Satan has become the temporary “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), which is the temporary government systems that were given to Adam (Gen 1:26) but have now been transitioned to Satan’s rule according to Matthew 4:8-9.
This is a major shift from Satan only living within the freedoms of heaven where there are no laws (Gal 4:26). Please read the context of Galatians 4:26 to help confirm the heavenly Jerusalem above is called “free”, meaning there are no “laws” of bondage. This is very important to help us understand why Satan was never dealt consequences for his rebellion against God and why God is implementing a plan to transition Satan from out of heaven.
This rebellion of Adam then places him into covenant with Satan and this meant whatever was Satan’s is now Adam’s, and whatever was Adam’s, was now also Satan’s. This meant both Adam and Lucifer are bound by a limitation within a supernatural bondage to God’s newly created realm of time and laws. Remember Adam’s domain of earth’s stewardship was on a time limit that was set to expire in 7000 years. All this information is found based upon the Genesis 1 prophecies where God declared “I make known the end from the beginning”. But this will not be covered in this lesson due to an excessive increase in lesson length.
Remember that Adam and Eve, only knew God (light) and everything “good” that God had created, including themselves. There was no wicked or evil presence upon the earth after the 6 days of Genesis 1. It was not until Satan (God’s adversary) shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:1, that evil had entered God’s newly re-created world. Remember from Genesis 1:26 we know that Adam had the authority to cast Satan out but chose rather to disobey God’s single commandment (Gen 2:17).
We can read about this temptation and rebellion occurring in chapter 3 of Genesis. As we know from scripture Satan implements his plans of death and destruction by primarily deception (Gen 3:1, Rev 12:9). In Genesis 3:1 we find how subtle Satan was above all of God’s newly made animal creation. Then Satan begins to speak to the woman and was able to deceive her in her mind to get her to disobey God’s only rule with the consequences of death (2 Cor 11:3). It is clear by Satan’s temptation that he nor Eve believed that a spirit being could die (Gen 3:4).
God then informs us in 1 Timothy 2:14 that Adam was not deceived during chapter 3 of the fall of man. Therefore, Adam’s sin appears to have been a willful and intentional rebellion (Zayin division) against God and an intentional joining (Vav) with Lucifer. Did you notice this was the “Vav” and “Zayin” concepts occurring in reverse from Jesus the Last Adam’s choices and works?
Nevertheless, Adam turned over his God given dominion of the earth (Gen 1:26) completely to Satan (Lk 4:5-6). And Satan became the “god of this world” until God’s appointed time has been fulfilled (Mat 8:29). Also, during this time of Satan’s dominion, “death” was passed upon all humans because we were all “in Adam” when he sinned (Rom 5:12). Now notice what else happened to Adam’s family on the earth:
Pro 25:5 Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.
If the first Adam would have cast Satan out from the earth, wickedness would not have entered God’s created good world, and we would be living in the original creation state of only knowing “good” (Gen 1:31). But since Adam chose to “Vav” join Satan’s rebellion, darkness and wickedness has taken hold of the planet and according to Proverbs 25:5, righteousness departed from humans by the law of antithesis truth. If you are not familiar with this Biblical law, it simply states, that whatever is truthfully stated in any verse, the opposite unstated truth is equally true.
Therefore, Proverbs 25:5 also confirms that the state of God’s Kingdom of Heaven before Satan came to the earth to tempt man was not fully righteous either. This simply meant the state of heaven was a mixture of both good and evil, and unrighteous and righteous.
Too many people believe Satan was just cast out of heaven the moment he sinned. But because God is a righteous judge, He was not able to legally do this. Therefore, one reason for our current world’s creation was for us to learn that there is a “righteous”, “fair”, and “good” process that is being worked by God to eliminate finally and completely all evil.
God had purposefully created a “new” concept called “death” within His current world’s creation containing sinful humans. This concept brought about a separation for all that reject righteousness and God’s gifts of salvation. This part of God’s family by their own choices will be called “dead” to God as was the prodigal son in the parable found in Luke 15. God planned to use this newly created concept of “death” to separate Himself from Lucifer and all his wicked angels.
Therefore, we will say this is the beginning of the many steps of God’s “Zayin” plan of separation from evil began using the creation of our present world so that God in Jesus Christ could manifest to die on a “Tav” cross hanging with “Vav” nails. We know “death” was a major part of God’s plan by reading Revelation 13
Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This is an essential verse of truth that exemplifies the overview of the plan of God for eliminating evil. The end of the verse describes the beginning of the plan. Notice God had planned for the death of Jesus (called the Lamb) before our world was founded. Therefore, death is the key part of eliminating Satan and all evil.
This verse in context is about Satan’s manifestation as a man on the earth that will be worshiped by a lot of humans. In this chapter they will take his mark, and this will eliminate their names from the Lamb’s “book of life”. As we can see the Lamb’s purpose for death is two-fold. These are the two unified concepts of joining and dividing that will occur from God’s participation in Christ to die.
To all those that will join the faith in Christ their names are recorded in His book to remain, and this will give them life to know God personally forever. But all those that reject God’s free-gift of life through belief, will be “Vav” joined with Satan taking his mark, and “Zayin” cut away from God’s never-ending life.
For time’s sake we are going to jump forward past the cross to find and learn the ending phased strategies of God to permanently eliminate Satan and all evil from their union with the righteous. For example, notice these verses:
Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
Rev 12:8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 12:10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
These verses of scripture in the book of Revelation describe a war that will take place during the soon coming but future 7-year tribulation. This war will be fought between God’s faithful angels led by Michael, and they will be fighting against Satan and his rebellious angels. It is during this final heavenly spiritual war that Satan is finally cast down to the earth as we can read in verse 9. This verse confirms the future and final “casting down out of heaven” event of Satan and all his angels. This also amazingly teaches us that Satan still has access to heaven even today as we can clearly confirm in the following verses of the Bible:
- Genesis 28:12
- Job 1:6
- Job 2:1-2
- Luke 22:11
- John 1:51
Twice in these five references, angels are directly stated to be “ascending” and then “descending” between earth to heaven and vice versa. God does not say that these were just the “good” angels. It implies these are “all” angels whether good or evil. In Luke we find an implied reference of Satan going before God demanding to sift Peter like wheat. But in Job we find the direct mention of both good and evil angels presenting themselves before God in heaven twice in a very short time span.
This would imply they were going often and in Job 2:2 God directly asks Satan where he has come from. This question was not for God to gain knowledge that He did not already know, but rather it was for our benefit to teach us Satan goes back and forth from the earth to heaven. Satan’s answer was “I am coming from walking to and fro throughout the earth and walking up and down in it”. This sounds like a paraphrase from 1 Peter 5:8. “Your adversary the devil as a roaring lion walks about seeking whom he may devour”.
What we are discovering is the clear fact that all angels have access to heaven today even as you are reading this lesson. And we can visibly confirm this statement by observing what we have just read in Revelation chapter 12.
Notice what Revelation 12:8 said. God says very plainly that before Satan and his angels were cast down, they had a place in heaven. The Greek word G5117 translated as “place” is an essential word to understand. This word literally states Satan, and his rebellious angels had dwelling places with implied addresses of ownership, as well as positions within the government including roles and titles. This is also confirmed in the book of Jude 1:6 where it also describes angels’ dwellings in heaven.
But after this final war in heaven, in Revelation 12, their access and living rights have been finally revoked and their places and positions of authority have been ended in heaven. Wow, this is a view of God’s final prophetic heavenly “Zayin” sword “cutting” plan of division, removing all heavenly evil from those that are called righteous in His heavenly Kingdom.
Next notice in Revelation 12:9 we find the heavenly war results and who it affected. In this verse God identifies the defeated beings as Satan called the dragon as well as the symbolic ancient serpent in the Garden of Eden. But don’t let it pass you by, that Satan is stated to have deceived the entire world and this also includes Christians at some time of human existence. Hopefully, only when they were not saved.
Now notice Revelation 12:10. This verse is amazing because it also confirms Satan’s future removal from heaven will occur during this soon coming heavenly war. Pay close attention to the words “Now has come salvation in heaven, because the accuser of our brethren has been cast down”. This is clearly stating a permanent Satan exit will be taking place and he will finally not be able to “accuse” Christian/righteous people anymore before God. This literally means this is what he has been doing for thousands of years.
We do not have the time to go into all the steps that have taken place to get us here. We can learn God’s major accomplishment to eliminate Satan was to come to the earth in the flesh to die on a cross being hung by “Vav” nails. We could call this the central part of God’s phased multistep plan for the elimination of “evil”. It was at this point that Satan literally believed he had prevailed over God. But Satan was not aware of the next step of God’s plan called the “Resurrection from the dead”. Here is a quick list of the major steps of God’s plan for the final elimination of evil:
- God foresaw the need to eliminate evil and decides to create a world with laws (Gen 2:16) and consequences of death for disobedience (Gen 2:17).
- God speaks to create this new world in Genesis 1:3-31.
- God then created one new man to rule this world (Gen 1:26, Gen 2).
- God knowing Satan’s ambitions, understood his desires to rule God’s new separated world and this would drive Satan down to the earth. God allowed Satan to temporarily “Zayin” separate himself from heaven to descend to the earth and become “Vav” joined to God’s new world containing laws, time limits and death consequences.
- After the sin and rebellion of Adam, Satan, sin, and death ruled over all humans (2 Cor 4:4, Eph 2:2, Rom 5:17-21).
- Now during the 6000-year time of man’s work on the earth, God and humans both were now joined simultaneously with good and evil (Satan). This meant Satan had rights to both the spiritual domain of God and the natural dominion of humans (Gen 3:5, 3:22). This is clearly a transitional plan of God to catch Satan with one foot in the spiritual and the other in the natural.
- The sin of Adam left God on the outside looking into His earth creation and Satan can practically destroy this creation by the time of Genesis 6.
- This brough God’s judgments upon the earth where only 8 righteous could be saved by an “ark” living through a global “flood” (1 Pet 3:8).
- This judgment places a fear of God upon the earth, and they begin to build a tower in Babel to save themselves from anymore judgements (Gen 11:5-8).
- This is when further judgments occur, and many new languages are implemented by God to divide the people on the earth. From these divided people come all the nations of the earth.
- In the course of time, God chooses one man from all the people of the earth, to create one new physical nation and one forthcoming planned coming new spiritual nation (1 Pet 2:9). This man named Abraham will bring forth “one” promised combined natural and spiritual seed named Jesus Christ (Gal 3:16). This man Abraham is now the spiritual father of everyone that has been and will be saved in Christ (Rom 4:16).
- During the next 2000 years of human time, God implements a significant marriage covenant (Vav joining) with the natural children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Jer 31:32).
- Further in the Old Covenant process these children of natural Israel are brought under the bondage of captivity in Egypt and God selects a man named Moses to deliver them.
- They are delivered by God implementing a final 10th plague on Egypt called the death of the “firstborn” and bypassed by the substitutionary “death” of an innocent sacrificial lamb (Exo 12). Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
- Next God implements more “laws” in natural Israel for humans to follow. This is done to establish a High Priest system of mediation between God and man using blood sacrifices. This is done because God desired to personally live on the earth in a temporary tabernacle with them. This is now a pattern of God’s coming New Covenant with Christ living inside of temporary human bodies (1 Cor 6:19).
- At the end of 4000 years of human history, God comes personally into the earth being birthed in Bethlehem (Mat 1:23). This birth places God under His given LAW (Gal 4:4). God does this to fulfill all the “Law”, but also to “die” a spotless lamb’s death to pay the penalty for all human sins redeeming humans from Satan using a Zayin cutaway. Finally, this death on the cross also performed another “Zayin” divide, separating God, Himself from all evil at another set future time.
- It was after 3 days in hell that God was righteously satisfied for the death of Jesus as payment for “All” human sins, that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.
- It was this resurrection that began God’s “New Creation” with Jesus becoming the “Firstborn from the dead”. This new birth brought about a creation type that had never existed at any time in the past. And this gave Jesus preeminence over all other creations in the past, the present and the future.
It was Jesus being raised from the dead that sealed Satan’s future destiny in hell. This is why 1 Corinthians 2:8 claims that if Satan would have known what was planned, he would not have crucified the LORD God on a cross. What happened that Satan did not expect?
God’s surprise is called the first “New Birth” of a spiritual being (Rev 1:5). Jesus reveals this mystery in John 3:3 when He said, “Except a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”. Wow, that is a major statement. It is also the exact same “Vav” joining heaven to some deemed righteous, while simultaneously performing a “Zayin” cutting away of others named unrighteous and evil that is taking place.
Was Jesus a man? Yes, He was! Therefore, this statement first applied to Him. If we can read in Colossians 1:18 Jesus is called “the beginning”. What is He the beginning of? It comes in the next connecting statement, “the firstborn from the dead”. Wow, again! A growing number of Bible teachers are beginning to teach what was accomplished in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. However, there are still too many that are leaving out that He became the “firstborn from the dead” while being resurrected. It was this powerful act of God that made Him preeminent (the FIRST, the HEAD, the alphabet letter “Resh”) in God’s never existing before, new creation.
This spiritually imminent New Birth is what Satan was oblivious to. It implemented a “New Creation” (2 Cor 5:17) that also brought about a “Vav” reconnecting “New Covenant” (Heb 12:24) with humans, which is resulting in a New Jerusalem (Rev 21:2), a “New Heaven”, and a “New Earth” (Rev 21:1), and all these new things will exclude (Zayin divide) Satan and all other evil completely. This New Creation is our current phase of existence in God’s plan of removal of evil and Satan. It will last for 2 days, or 2000 years called the church days of Divine Grace.
However, the church age will climax with implementing God’s next steps of His plan. This begins with the church being victorious over God’s enemy Satan. This will be the conclusion to Christ’s works on the cross that laid the foundation of Satan’s defeat and our Victory. This victory will result in the church standing upon Satan’s head with our feet (Rom 16:20). The church is the prophesied woman that will bruise Satan’s head under our feet in Genesis 3:15. Can you hear the screams of blasphemy that just happened? Please patiently put down your stones.
Yes, most teach Genesis 3:15 is about the “Seed” and not the “woman” crushing the serpent’s head. But both are true. Remember where the church came from and who the church is today. The church is called the bride of Christ and Christ is called the bridegroom. But the church is also called the “Body of Christ” like we can read in Colossians 1:18. We also know that Christ is called the “Head” of the corporate church “body” that is “Vav” united with Him to being in Him and Him being in our spirit. Therefore, we know that God says, “As He is, so are we!” (1 Jn 4:17). This appears to say whatever He does through us, is what He does. This would mean if we crush the head of the serpent under our feet, it is the same as if Christ Jesus in us has done it.
Therefore, where are the feet in the body of Christ? They must be in the church that is on the earth today. This is exactly why God writes to the church in Romans 16:20, “the God of Peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly”. This clearly is a statement of prophecy about a soon coming victory over God’s enemy. It is God’s sovereign choice to show Satan that it will be a newly created spiritual woman that will be the one that will crush his head, and not the Almighty God that created him. This appears to lower Satan’s pride significantly to not think that he is so high and mighty above all else. This is powerful if you will accept it.
Quickly, let us wrap this section of the lesson about the simultaneous “Vav” joining with God, and “Zayin” cutting away of Satan and all evil with observing the last steps of the plan of God for Satan’s permanent removal.
Rev 20:3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
This verse in Revelation 20 is when Satan and all his evil spirit servants are cast into the pit for 1000 years. This is the last 7th day of the creation account found in the Genesis 1 prophecy of man’s complete history on the earth during this present creation. This is called God’s Sabath day of rest, and this is very interesting. What we learn from this coming 1000-year day of “rest”, is that it is a time where all humans on the earth that there will be no “evil influences” for humans to be tempted with.
This information clearly implies by the law of antithesis truth, the preceding 6 days or 6000 years of man will be a time when they will be working for God and against evil influences or working with the evil to be against God. These 1000 years of rest from fighting Satan, will bring down the Kingdom of God from heaven which will be ruled with a rod of iron by the resurrected from the dead LORD Jesus, and the resurrected and raptured church overcomers (Rev 2:26-27, Rev 5:10, Rev 20:4).
There will be physical tribulation survivors that did not take the mark of the beast and were not killed by the antichrist, that will be left on the earth. These people would have survived miraculously throughout the entire 7 years of God’s judgments upon the earth, and Satan’s wrath. Now these people will be able to repopulate the earth for the period lasting 1000 years. But after these 1000 years have ended, we can clearly read in Revelation 20:3 that Satan must be loosed for a short time from his pit captivity (Rev 20:7) to deceive, tempt and test people again (Rev 20:8). None of these natural newly born people on the earth have ever experienced any direct temptations. Therefore, it appears God is allowing them to be tested by evil to choose between “Vav” joining with Satan or remaining in “Vav” union with God through Jesus. Let us look now at the final “Zayin” division of Satan and all evil from the righteous:
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
We can clearly read in this verse that there is coming after the 1000-year reign of Christ, the never-ending separation of God from all evil. This is the last time that a “Zayin” cutting away will become final and the “Chet” wall of permanent division fully encloses all evil away from the righteous.
The “Great White Throne” Judgment will take place next after Satan’s elimination, and the unrighteous will be judged and whoever is not found written in the “book of life” will be cast into hell with Satan (Rev 10:15). This is the second death called the spiritual separation from knowing God and all His grace, goodness, mercy, love and forgiveness. This will truly be sad for these people since they could have accepted Jesus their entire life on the earth. Finally, God is completing the “Zayin” separation from evil and His “Vav” union with the “righteous” by ending His first creation after fully transitioning all righteous into His New Creation:
Rev 21:1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Rev 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
Rev 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Rev 21:5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
Rev 21:6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
Rev 21:7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
Rev 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
These are amazing prophetical promises that will be occurring much sooner than you may imagine. Hopefully, these verses make a lot more sense to you now. We can clearly see the culmination of God’s plan being fully realized that was planned from the very foundation of the world. God has spoken this entire plan in outline form in Genesis 1.
Go back and see how the 7-day creation of our current world was an overview for His plan of eliminating evil and “Vav” joining with only righteousness. Five or six times “Zayin” divisions take place. The first three chapters of Genesis have significant amounts of dual meanings attached to them. They contain natural descriptions of what is happening in our world during creation, and these are also symbolic revealing spiritual things that are prophesied to happen in the spiritual world of God’s plan of man’s salvation and Satan’s elimination. However, this will not be covered in this lesson.
5. Conclusion
There are numerous verses in the New Covenant as well as prophetical verses in the Old Covenant that could have been included in this lesson today. Hopefully, you have learned enough to spend your personal time studying this subject on your own. For example, to conclude this lesson, we will only review a few examples of what we have learned that Jesus fulfilled as the “Vav” ancient Hebrew alphabet letter:
1Co 15:24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
Here is another confirming verse that helps unlock the mystery of Jesus as the “Vav”. Notice it begins with then comes the “end” and this connects us to the end being made known from the beginning we learned in the Genesis 1:1 prophecy. Next notice Paul writes “when ‘he’ shall deliver up the kingdom to God the Father. The “he” here in this verse is Jesus the Son of God that was raised up from the dead to “begin” a brand-new creation (2 Cor 5:17) and He in this process has “been highly exalted far above all principality, power, might and dominion” (Eph 1:21). This is a direct reference to Satan and all his kingdom evil angels. Let us include this verse of Ephesians in our conclusion.
Eph 1:21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
It is essential to notice that the Greek word G746 translated as “principality” in Ephesians 1:21, is also translated as “beginning(s)” approximately 40 times. It is also the same exact Greek word that was translated as “rule” in 1 Corinthians 15:24.
Therefore, we have discovered that there was a “powerful” ruler that existed at the time of God’s beginning of His first creation (Gen 1:1) that needed to be put down and placed permanently underfoot. This spiritual ruler was “Lucifer” and God has been working His plan to remove Lucifer’s evil influence both in heaven and in earth through “Jesus’ death” being nailed (Vav) on a cross (Tav) (1 Cor 2:8) for the last 6000 years.
1Co 15:25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
As we can confirm from this verse, God is implementing a progressive transfer of power and authority that began in God’s heavenly kingdom that was then transitioned to rule in the current temporary earth realm. Remember God personally came down in the form of a human baby in the middle of this process to “Vav” join Himself with His creation and to place Himself under His law (Gal 4:4).
It should be becoming obvious that this shift of power was a process and not just a one-time single event. We can see a major part of this transition was accomplished after Jesus was resurrected from the dead by reading Matthew 28:18. In this verse, Jesus the risen Son of God proclaims, “All authority in heaven and earth, has been given to me”. Clearly this is a profound statement of a shift in power and delegated authority.
It strongly confirms God’s need to eliminate Lucifer’s authority in heaven and then on the earth and it was accomplished when Jesus became the “First born from the dead”. It was through this “New First Spiritual Re-Birth of Jesus” that initiated God’s “New Creation”, including a “New Kingdom”, a “New Covenant”, etc. as we have learned.
God is amazing and we could have written many more volumes of information about this subject of a “Zayin” certain “Division” of Satan and evil from God and man, a “Vav” destined “re-connection” of all righteousness back to God, and a “Chet” final and permanent “wall of separation” being “built” between all good and all evil.
Thank you for reading and studying the Bible with us. We love you more than you may know. Hopefully this potentially new information did not overwhelm you. Please, be an Acts 17:11 more noble type of Christian and learn to study everything learned here for yourself, looking up every verse reference given and confirm what is taught is what God is saying to the church today. There is too much deception taking place in the world today, and God’s Word is the only source of TRUTH for the sound knowledge of what He has done for us and given to us. Praise the LORD!
Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin Tav – Alef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)
Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Language – Ayin – The Eyes of God Are Upon Us
(Ver 1.0) This is “Part 17” in the amazing Bible study series focused upon learning how God became a man named “Yehoshua” (Jesus=Jehovah Saves) and how He was hidden in every letter of the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. We have been going through each letter of the alphabet (but not in alphabetical order) and today we are focused on the 16th letter called “Ayin”. This ancient Hebrew pictogram is the image of an open human eye as in looking, seeing and sight. Therefore, we will be studying about primarily the Eyes of God, and Jesus, and the application of the letter “Ayin” to human sight (natural and spiritual) in this Bible lesson.
The Ayin is another one of the most essential letters representing the very significant participation and involvement of God’s Eyes looking upon the lives of humans on the earth (2 Chr 16:9). Therefore, we will be learning the subject of “eyes” from two views, one is the eternal spiritual application, and the other is God’s created natural application. God sees us from a much higher spiritual vision and viewpoint, than most people see Him or observes other humans. The ways of God are so much greater than human ways of seeing and making decisions and judgments (Isa 55:9).
Therefore, be forewarned that this lesson is an advanced spiritual subject that can potentially be offensive to naturally thinking humans and Christians. Also, it may not take the direction that many readers expect. We are about to discover how the Lord has shifted our focus from just verses about “eyes”, to some of the key applications of spiritual eyesight. This may not seem obvious at first, but these potential new perspectives on eyes will become more alive after being understood.
If you have not read this series from the introduction, it is highly recommended that you go and build upon the foundational subject introduction, before selecting individual letters to study. To do this select “Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew – Introduction”.
Since this lesson is about the “Eyes” of God and man, both in the eternal spiritual and naturally created realms, it is suggested that we begin by asking God to open our spiritual eyes to see whatever He wants us to see about this subject from His higher heavenly perspective. This is a great prayer to pray for every lesson in this series on this website and every lesson subject that you desire to learn taught by anyone. Pray and ask God in faith for Him to do the following as you continue to study:
Eph 1:17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you (me) the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
Eph 1:18 The eyes of your (my) understanding being enlightened; that ye (I) may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
If you prayed this prayer and meant it, God will be faithful to open your “eyes” to “see” exactly what you need to learn today. Let us begin to study this subject of Ayin eyes with our basic introduction to the letter Ayin. Here is a quick list of the subject topics that will be covered today:
- Introduction to the Ayin = Eyes
- Introduction to Spiritual Eyes
- What Did Jesus Teach About Eyes?
- Eyes in Creation – Separating the Light (Seeing Eyes), from the Darkness (Blind Eyes)
- Ayin Application to the Believer
- Conclusion
1. Introduction to the Ayin = Eyes
This is another very interesting an amazingly essential letter picture pointing us to the plan of God to bring Jesus into the world. It is also a picture representation of hidden things that God will accomplish in Jesus. As you can see in the image that was drawn above, it is the simple picture of an “eye”. But it is not just any kind of “eyes”, it is the picture of the eyes that have been “opened” so that they can “see”, and this is very significant to what God will teach us today. Notice this letter is very prophetical, with God desiring His created man to seek and search for Him (Deu 4:29, 1 Chr 16:11). But it is also a picture of our God like a Good shepherd that is watching over His flock with loving care:
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. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.
Here is a key verse written about God’s eyes looking down upon humans. This verse claims that God’s eyes are constantly scanning the face of the earth’s surface, and He is looking for a human to show Himself strong to. This verse then states that there are people that have done foolishly that were seen by God, and this will be the cause of their coming wars. Let us look at another verse about the Eyes of the Lord:
Pro 15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.
There are numerous verses found in the Bible that reveal God has eyes and that He is seeing everything that is going on in the world. There are a lot of humans that do not believe this, including people that call themselves Christians. This information should awaken some today, to consider what they are doing and saying about God and others in the world.
The Ayin picture represents the image of a natural open eye which also has direct application of figurative meanings to the unseen spiritual realm. This is one of the primary reasons why we prayed the prayer in Ephesians 1, asking God to “open our eyes” (Ayin) to see and know Him. We can also find in 2 Kings 2:16-17 where Elisha prayed and ask God to open the eyes of his servant to see that there were more in the unseen spiritual realm that were with them, than were against them in the natural realm. It is very clear that everyone has the potential to see the greater spiritual realities around us with the opening of our spiritual eyes by God, and this will cause the lesser physical realities to become insignificant.
Therefore, the primary meaning of the ancient letter design, is the open or seeing “eye” or more precisely “eyes”, because humans were created with two natural eyes. But the letter picture has several other functional applications in the natural visual realm. For example, the Ayin letter has the following applications:
- An eye, or eyes as in “open”
- to see,
- to perceive,
- to look,
- to behold,
- to observe,
- to recognize,
- to search and/or find,
- to watch,
- to witness
- a color related to the eyes.
- the face connected with the eyes.
- to stand before and in the presence of the one looking on
Now let us go through a few of the spiritual applications of the “ayin” eye image:
- to learn,
- to know,
- to understand,
- to comprehend,
- to have a thought,
- to think,
- to perceive,
- to experience,
- to be enlightened
- to be alive
- to visualize or have a vision,
- to be open minded,
- to not be closed minded,
- to not be unaware, or asleep
- to not be dead
As we can see the “Ayin” pictogram of an open eye, also has multiple figurative applications to the hidden human heart representing the combined human soul and spirit. But wait, there are also a couple other natural application of the eye symbol within God’s designed creation. Here is a short list of them:
- A well in the ground containing water looks like an eye and God refers to the earth as a face (Exo 10:5) which is a container for these waters (Gen 24:12, Exo 15:27).
- A fountain and a pool of water on the earth can look like a shimmering eye (Neh 2:14).
- A fountain of water can resemble a weeping eye (Gen 16:7, Num 33:9).
- The human eye can also resemble “furrows” (slits) in the face of the earth representing ground that has been plowed (Hosea 10:10).
These are some of the basic concepts found in the ancient Hebrew letter Ayin and its corresponding Hebrew word H5869. Please note that this was not a complete list and none of these concepts can be covered fully in this lesson today.
But when the Ayin letter is combined with other letters to form new words the application of the open eye becomes immensely greater. For example, “Ayin” + “Nun” can mean the “Eyes Continue” as in a shepherd “Keeps Watch” over his flock, clearly an image of God and Jesus as found in Psalm 23.
The “Ayin” + “Mem” combined letters form the Hebrew word H5971 that is translated as “people”. Remember the Ayin represents the “Eye” or “See”, and the “Mem” represents moving “water” and “blood”. Therefore, combining these meanings we can easily see that these two letters mean “See the Blood” and “See the Water”. The number one ingredient in any living human body is water and if you recall Adam’s name means “God’s Blood”. Therefore, God is calling His people those that have been bought with the blood of God (Jesus).
The alphabet letters Ayin + Dalet + Nun spells the Hebrew word H5731 transliterated as “Eden” which is the name of the garden of God. The Ayin is the Eye. The Dalet is the “door” of entrance or exit to God’s house and this is Jesus. The Nun is the picture of the “seed” representing continuing life, another image of Jesus giving us eternal life. These letter meanings when combined can say “Search (Find and See) the Door to Eternal Life” (Jesus).
Another amazing Ayin word is “AD” (H5703) that can be translated as “everlasting” or “evermore” as in eternity. Recall these were the first two Hebrew letters of “Eden”. God is clearly teaching us that His plan was for man to live forever. But because of Adam’s sin, Jesus was sent to the earth to make a new way to eternal life, and He is definitely the completing Nun seed of God sent to accomplish this (Jn 12:24) to give us eternal life.
The next Hebrew word in the introduction will be “AhTH” (H6258) and this word is translated predominately as “Now” as in the present time. This word is spelled “Ayin” + “Tav” + “Hey”. These three letters have the meaning, Ayin=“look”, Tav=“the cross”, and Hey=“behold” and placing these together we get two directions of view on a single most critical point event of human history called the crucifixion of the Messiah. God called this single event the “fulness or the fulfillment of time” in Galatians 4:4.
We can get the hidden message for AhTH, no matter where “now” is to any human. If now occurred before the cross, God was saying for those to look (Ayin) forward to the cross to come. But if it was after the cross occurred, then God is saying for us to look back in time, to become an amazed believer beholding (Hey) what God has done.
But this Hebrew word H6258 “now” also comes from the root “AhT”, that literally means “time”. This word is spelled “Ayin” (Eyes) + “Tav” (Cross). This appears to teach us that God’s entire reason for creating this thing called “time” was for the coming event of a cross that needed to be eagerly looked for.
Most of the Jewish people were looking for Messiah to come, but completely missed Him and did not realize what happened to save them on a cross in plain sight. These were just some of the amazing hidden coded messages using the “Ayin” letter and there are many others. We may get into a few more of these special words later if the Holy Spirit permits.
Let us move quickly into the letter Ayin numbers. The letter Ayin is the 16th letter of the alphabet. It has a gematria value of seventy. Seventy is the number achieved by multiplying 10 a perfecting factor with the number 7 that represents the perfection of God. Here is a short list of significant 70 occurrences in the Word of God:
- Lamech will be avenged 70 x 7 times in Genesis 4:24
- All the souls of Jacob that came into Egypt was 70 in Genesis 46:27.
- Moses brought the children of Israel to Elim where there was 12 wells and 70 palm trees to camp in Exodus 16:24.
- Children of Israel died in the wilderness at the maximum age of 70 or if some were stronger at 80 according to Psalm 90:10.
- God tells Moses to bring Aaron, his 2 sons, and Seventy elders of the 12 tribes of Israel to Mt Sinai to receive and accept God’s Law (Torah) (Exo 24:1). The Jewish Sanhedrin was formed and consisted of 70 elder men.
- 70 weeks are determined for natural Israel in Daniel 9:24. Seventy times seven is a total of 490 years.
- Israel exiled into Babylon 70 years (Jer 25:12).
- Jesus tells Peter to forgive people 70 x 7 times in 1 day (Mat 18:22).
- Jesus chose 12 disciples and appointed 70 others to go out to heal the sick and preach the Kingdom of God is come near to them (Luke 10:1-9).
These are just a very few of the examples found in the Bible of significant occurrences of the number 70. Each of these would take multiple lessons alone to cover. Therefore, they are only mentioned today for your personal Bible studies.
Every Hebrew letter has a corresponding Hebrew word. This word is the spelled-out form of the sound of the letter. The Hebrew word H5869 is the Hebrew word equivalent for the letter Ayin. This word is spelled “Ayin” + “Yod” + “Nun”. This Hebrew word occurs over 800 times in the Old Testament with it being translated over 400 times as “eyes”, over 200 times as “sight”, over 70 times as “eye” and several other interesting words applying to the eyes, and some were mentioned earlier.
Remember the Ayin Hebrew word H5869 was spelled “Ayin” + “Yod” + “Nun” and this is also very significant. Also remember the letter “Ayin” means “eyes” that “see” or “look”. The “Yod” means the “right hand” of “power”. The “Nun” represents a “seed”. This is profound because this says, “what we see with our eyes has the power to plant a seed (in our heart). This is radical and many humans don’t realize what they are watching could kill them or save them.
This introduces us to the ancient Hebrew cultural concept of the “evil” eye versus the “good” eye. The terms “evil” and “eye” occurs multiple times in the Bible, and they are easy to find by searching the words in your Bible software program or app. An evil eye in many Hebrew minds was a person that was stingy or not kind to give to others, a man focusing upon the consumption of wealth (Prov 28:22). This is very much like the rich man that died in Luke 16 with a beggar that lived outside his gate hoping to eat his crumbs from his tables. This rich man went to hell, implying in the eyes of God this man had an evil eye towards his fellow humans.
Let us go through a few of the other basic concepts and components of seeing “eyes”. We all know that “eyes” are essential for “sight”. This means they are like windows of the body that allow “light” to enter an image into our minds. We just saw this concept about a “seed” that can be planted in our mind by visual images.
But this is only possible because of the presence of the “light” that is shining upon the object being observed. This entrance of light reflected off the object causes the image to enter the body’s interior and the unseen human mind (soul), and this is an essential part for human learning. But all this learning is only possible for eyes that are open, and willing minds that desire to learn.
1Jn 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Here is a major God connection to the human spirit and our spiritual eyesight. God is called light as we can read in 1 John 1:5 and we know that light is the essential element for natural sight. This verse also informs us that in Him is no darkness and we know darkness is one description for blindness and the inability to see natural light. But remember that John 4:24 says God is a Spirit and not our natural light, so this verse is primarily applicable to spiritual concepts like God’s Words (Jn 6:63, PS 119:130).
God’s Words are just ink on a page and without natural light nobody could see and read them. But the same is true in the spirit realm. Without God’s light to illuminate His Words to our mind and spirit so that we will be able to comprehend what He has written for us to know about Him, we can receive nothing from them. Therefore, let us move to Part 2 of the introduction revealing the reality of spiritual eyes.
2. Introduction to Spiritual Eyes
We are now coming into the light, about the concept of two types of human eye doors (Dalet) that can be opened and shut. In the natural realm this occurs from blindness (Jn 9:1), the shutting of the eyes (Ps 132:4), or the placing of a blindfold upon the natural eyes (Luke 22:64) that shut out the light. But these same principles can also apply to the greater parallel reality of 1) spiritual seeing eyes as being eyes that perceive and are opened, or 2) spiritual eyes being shut, closed, or blinded, which is a human that is not understanding what is being taught from the Word of God.
Perhaps you did not realize spiritual eyes do exist. We know the spirit realm of eyes is true because God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and He has eyes (Gen 6:8), but also know that His eyes never close to sleep (Psa 121:4). But there is another concept of the eyes of God that teach us that He may turn His eyes away from people when they are living in sin (Eze 7:22). Sin is a problem for God to look upon, this is why Jesus hanging on the cross cried, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1, Mat 27:46). Remember that the cross of Christ for the last 3 hours was in a manifestation of “darkness” (Mat 27:45). It was during this time that Jesus was made sin for us, so that we could be made the righteousness of God (1 Pet 2:24).
Spirit beings called angels must also have eyes, since the Church is reminded to entertain strangers, because some have encountered angels in the natural realm unaware (Hebrews 13:2). Therefore, at least some of the created angels can appear to be identical, as in feature to feature to humans and must have eyes.
We can further confirm this truth by reading about Lot entertaining 2 angels sent to Sodom to destroy these wicked places. The men of that city wanted Lot to bring the visiting men (not knowing they were angels), out of the house so that they could have sex with them. But these angelic beings had supernatural power and they “blinded” the eyes (Ayin) of the humans so that they were not able to see and that ended the wicked men’s desires immediately, since they could not find the door anymore (Gen 19:11). Therefore, some angels look almost exactly like humans. But we can also find where other angels have wings and can use their wings to cover their face in Isaiah 6:2.
We all know that humans have natural eyes to see in the created physical world. But today some are learning that humans also have spiritual eyes as we can read in Luke 16:23. In this verse Jesus informs us of a rich man’s spirit that was in hell, with his body buried on the earth, that could still see Abraham and Lazarus afar off. Therefore, we know spirits of humans apart from their bodies can see in the spirit realm, with their spiritual eyes.
Remember again that we prayed an essential prayer from Ephesians 1 at the beginning of the lesson asking God to “open” the spiritual eyes of our understanding while we are still alive in our human flesh. Therefore, we learn that the spiritual human eyes can also be fully opened (alert and aware), or be in varying degrees of participation, progressing all the way to being fully closed, while we are alive in the flesh. This inner alertness is not dependent upon whether our natural eyes are open or closed. This means the closing of human spiritual eyes in a living human body, has a deeper attachment to perceiving and knowing truth (open), or not seeing it (closed).
2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
Remember the story of Lot and two of God’s angels that blinded the natural eyes of evil humans. This ability appears to also be true for evil angels that can blind the spiritual eyes of certain humans. As we can see in 2 Corinthians 4:4, there is a “god of this world” (Satan) that is able to “blind” the spiritual eyes/mind of unspecified humans. God calls this inability to see spiritual light a spiritual “blindness”. This spiritual eye problem was described as the inability to perceive light. But this light that was unable to be seen, is being illuminated from the “glorious gospel” (Word of God). It then informs that this blindness is causing that spiritually blind person the inability to be saved. This is a new radical concept to many.
What we are learning is that there are spirit beings that can keep the Word of God from the hearts and the “mind” of qualifying people. While we are not informed of the basis of this truth and why it is permitted in this verse, we know that God is just and if He must allow this type of blindness to occur it is because of something that the human has done that granted this to happen (Eph 4:27).
Nevertheless, whatever the reason for this access, these evil angels are clearly able to do this to keep some people from being saved. As we observe the world around us, it is obvious that there are a lot of people in this condition. There is no doubt that there are potentially many reasons why this has become so prevalent in these times that we are living. We will not be able to cover all of them today.
There is one key reason why this blindness occurs. This reason was given to us by Jesus in the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 and Mark 4. In this explanation of the parable Jesus teaches us that the “Seed” of the Word of God can be easily stolen by Satan because the one, that was listening to the Gospel did not “understand” the words being spoken. This is clearly a direct relationship to the human mind’s inability to “see” and “comprehend” a message. This lack of understanding a message that should be easily understood is what Jesus is speaking of.
One of the key reasons this blindness is occurring in the modern world, has been the removal of the Word of God from all public schools. This was designed intentionally by Satan to keep the truth far away from young impressionable minds. This continues into many colleges and universities through indoctrination of Satanic agenda items of persuadable smooth words to explain that there is no God.
These types of indoctrinations and brain washing schemes and techniques are being introduced even into elementary schools. The darkness of this world is attempting to sweep everyone away from the truth. But the Word of God is Light and Truth and it will always triumph over the lies of the darkness if Christians will get involved to fight for its return and the removal of the binding of the evil dark agenda.
This brings us to the concepts concerning our study subject of eyes (Ayin) called day and night, and light and darkness. People normally sleep in “darkness” and are “awake” and at “work” during the daylight. Therefore, light is the essential requirement for sight by God’s design. Paul writes to Christians in Romans 13:11 and Ephesians 5:14 informing them to “awake” out of their spiritual sleep. This informs us that even Christians being initially saved, can still be living in a state of partial or full darkness.
This sleeping in the darkness, is also like a partial blindness or the shutting of the spiritual eyes causing the inability to understand the Light of the Word of God. But this can be viewed as passiveness or tolerance for evil, like someone that is asleep during the robbery of their neighbor’s house. In the natural realm, this is more like a human that sees evil taking place and does not go to help someone being mugged.
This is a major problem in these days before Jesus returns, for too much of the church. Therefore, there needs to be a renewed Christian desire to move back into His Light to know Him more and understand His Word. This is a lot like the church written about in Revelation 2:4 when they are rebuked for leaving their first love (passion).
This sleep in the darkness, is analogous to Christians spiritual realities of not knowing God who calls Himself “Light” in 1 John 1:5 and it also includes us not fully knowing the Words of God that are called “Spiritual Light” (Ps 119:130). Therefore, without allowing God’s involvement in revealing Himself and His Word, no one living in the absence of God, which is the condition of darkness, would be able to “see” or “understand” anything in His Word of truth. These are all essential concepts to grasp, concerning spiritual awareness (sight), and blindness realities.
If you have ever descended into a large cave, and traveled very deep, and they have turned the lights off to demonstrate the effect of the absence of light, you know the nonexistence of all light is an amazing effect not normally experienced especially in the modern world of electronic devices that light up on demand. Again, this is analogous to God’s light participation and presence that enlightens our eyes to be able to perceive the truth.
We have only been introduced to some of the basic concepts and applications of eyes (Ayin). We have just learned the fact that there are at least two kinds of eyes that are in existence. These were the 1) natural physical created eyes and the 2) supernatural eyes of spirits.
This introduction has also brought us to understand that there are multiple kinds of spiritual beings with eyes, including 1) God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), 2) angels, and 3) humans. So far, we know God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24) and that God has spiritual eyes that can observe both the spiritual and the physical realities simultaneously (Genesis 6:5). But we know from 1 Samuel 16:7 that His foremost focus is upon the internal spiritual heart of man.
The real focus of God in this lesson is the Son of God named Jesus. This was a unique one-of-a-kind Son of Man and Son of God combination. Therefore, Jesus had to possess God’s spiritual eyesight as well as human natural eyesight. We are going to be primarily focused upon God the Son and His human interactions and purposes for appearing on earth, in the rest of this lesson.
But we must not forget that there remains the participation of evil spiritual influences of Satan, fallen angels, and demons in our world that are attempting to take away our abilities to see God’s “Light”. We will get to more of this soon. Let us move to the subject of the teachings of Jesus on “eyes” next to better understand the perspective of the Son of God purpose for being born in Bethlehem.
3. What Did Jesus Teach About Eyes?
This teaching on the “eyes” (Ayin) of God and man is a huge subject. It is impossible to cover everything in this single lesson about “eyes” that were taught by Jesus. Jesus was God, and still is God in the form of created flesh, and it was Him that created the “eyes” (Ayin) (Prov 20:12). Therefore, He knows and understands this subject better than anyone (Eph 3:9). Because we are learning how every alphabet letter is pointing us to Jesus, let us analyze a few key statements that He taught us about “eyes”.
Luk 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Early in the ministry of Jesus, He begins to teach the Jewish people from the Word of God. Therefore, in this verse He had just walked into a synagogue and the scroll of Isaiah is brought to Him to read. He searches (with His Ayin Eyes) the scroll and finds this verse specifically. He reads it boldly with the natural eyes (Ayin) of everyone in the temple being fixed upon Him. He then goes and sits down in a chair reserved for the coming Messiah. He tells everyone that “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears”. This got their attention like nothing else could have. They had been awaiting their Messiah for centuries.
As part of this verse, we will only focus our attention on a single statement. This occurred when He said, “I am sent to bring the recovering of sight to the blind”. Certainly, this ministry to human eyes was a key part of His divinely appointed earth mission. According to prophecy and his own mouth, God had appeared on the earth in the flesh, “to open blind eyes”.
As we have learned in the introduction, blind “eyes” are those that do not have vision either fully or partially, and either naturally or spiritually, or both. They typify eyes shrouded in “darkness” denying the ability to perceive the “light” clearly. We can see Jesus opening physical blind eyes in Matthew 9:27-30, Matthew 12:22-23, Matthew 15:30-31, Matthew 20:30, Matthew 12:14, to only name a few in one book of the Gospels. Therefore, physical blindness being healed was certainly a key part of the ministry of the Messiah.
But there was also Jesus’ working in the realm of the spirit to remove spiritual blindness that was a significant part of His revealed purpose for coming into the world. This was revealed when He read from the scroll of Isaiah. This spiritual blindness is the inability to find, perceive, know, or understand God’s truth. We still encounter vast numbers of readers on this website like this. This is revealed when they do not leave a comment that they saw anything that blessed them spiritually, or they write about things that are so carnally distracting that it is clear they have no spiritual sight. Jesus spoke of people in this condition:
Mat 15:14 Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.
Reading the context that went before in verses 1 to 13, we will find Jesus speaking about religious leaders that understood very little of what they were teaching the people from the written Words of God’s Law. These were people that were supposed to be shepherds in a role that were there to care for God’s sheep (people). These men were adding their own carnal traditions and customs to be above the written words of God and in doing so they made the Word of God ineffectual (Mat 15:6). Jesus called this the “blind” (of spirit) that were leading their “spiritually blind” followers into a pit of destruction.
This was a very strong statement against those that were being spoken of, but it had vast implications of antithesis positives attached to it. The first and foremost unstated reference was that Jesus was implied not to be spiritually blind because He was the speaker. This made Him a spiritually sighted man able to see and understand the Word of God and this was observed by many people that heard Him speak on the Kingdom of God (Luke 2:47, Luke 4:22, Mark 6:2, John 7:46).
There are other examples of spiritually blind leaders of God’s people. Another one that is found in the Gospels is the statements made by Jesus to scribes and pharisees in Matthew 23:15-36. These words appear to be a rebuke to these leaders combined with a warning to repent and change. Repent means to change their ways of thinking and this is a spiritually mind/soul reversal of thought. This clearly indicates they were in a condition of being spiritually blind not able to understand God or His Word clearly. God prophesied about these leaders in Ezekiel 34:1-10 and other places.
Therefore, we have learned and confirmed the following from the mouth of Jesus about eyes:
- God came to the earth to open blind eyes.
- One kind of blind eyes that are in darkness is natural.
- A second kind of blind eyes are spiritual because they understand not what is written in God’s Word.
- Being spiritually blind is the condition of not understanding what is learned or taught from the Word of God.
- Spiritually blind people can be people that fully see clearly with their natural eyes.
- Therefore, spiritual blindness represents the lack of human ability to perceive the Word.
Let us look at a new set of verses that Jesus spoke of about “eyes” (Ayin) revealing His Ayin mission on earth. We will read four verses in John 12.
Joh 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
Joh 12:45 And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.
Joh 12:46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
Joh 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
Here in these verses, Jesus is physically present on the earth teaching the natural people some key spiritual concepts about one of His significant purposes for coming into the world. There is a direct mention of “eyes” that “see” in verse 45 connecting us to the study subject of “Ayin”. But notice Jesus said that He came into the world to be a “light”. This was not a physical light that glowed in the night’s natural darkness. No Jesus is speaking spiritually as He did in His normal types of conversations with humans.
This literally means Jesus is calling Himself the Spirit Light source of knowledge and this simply means He knew and understood the Word of God. Therefore, this indicates His purpose was to open the blinded (darkened) spiritual eyes (minds) that we were just reading about in the beginning of this section. This also further connects us to Jesus being called symbols of the sun, such as the Day Star (2 Peter 1:19), Morning Star (Rev 22:16) and the Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2).
We already know that Jesus is speaking about two types of eyes here by additionally stating that one of His highest goals for His personal appearance was to “save the world”. Therefore, we can easily connect that our “salvation” is from this present lost world, and this was related to the opening of our blind spiritual eyes. This is amazing when you see it, no pun intended.
Notice in verse 44, Jesus is speaking of “believing”. We know from Romans 10:9-10, that believing in our hearts that God raised Jesus from the dead, and confessing with our mouths He is our Lord Jesus, we are on the path to be saved. Therefore, we are experiencing and confirming the reality of two sets of eyes (Ayin), these are:
- Spiritual Heart Eyes, and
- Physical Natural Eyes.
We find this revelation in verse 45, when Jesus said, “when you have seen me (with your natural eyes), you have been given the opportunity of seeing my Father with your spiritual eyes. In other words, it takes believing faith for a human to experience and internally see God in the spirit realm of the “heart”. Here is an overview of some of the essential concepts that Jesus just taught us.
- Jesus came to be and bring the “Light” of salvation to everyone in the world (John 9:5). Jesus is speaking of Him being a physical example to show us the true nature of God as a spiritual Light (1 Jn 1:5).
- Jesus fulfilled being the Light of the world by teaching the Word of God (Psalm 119:130).
- Therefore, Jesus is not of the darkness, nor does He blind the eyes/mind of anyone, since He is the Light source that causes sight (Jn 9:5).
- Those people that did not understand what was being taught remained in their darkness of spiritual blindness (Mat 13:19).
- Those people that heard and understood His Words were enlightened with their spirit eyes and could believe in their hearts (Eph 1:17-18).
- Believing in things not seen is called walking by “faith” (spiritual enlightenment) and not by “sight” (natural) (2 Cor 5:7).
Our foundational Ayin verse of this lesson is Ephesians 1:18. We have seen this verse more than once and in it we will find Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus. Paul specifically mentions to ask God to open their spiritual eyes of their understanding to be enlightened (light to shine). These were all people that could see physically, and they were saved initially in their spirit, yet they still required a prayer to further open their spiritual eyes.
This further confirms that the removal of spiritual blindness is key to continued salvation and spiritual maturity. All these people that are being prayed for, have already received Christ as Lord and Savior. Yet Paul understands they are still very blinded in many areas of receiving, learning, and knowing God’s fullest truth.
If you look up the Greek word G5461 that was translated as “enlightened”, it is amazing how it fits with our discussion of “eyes”, “sight”, and “light”. This Greek word literally means to bring light to someone to cause them to see. But since God writing through Paul connected this to the word “understanding”, we find the meaning is changing from an external natural type of sight to an internal heart and soul illumination. Let us move to a new Ayin lesson from Jesus next:
Mat 6:20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
Mat 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Mat 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
Mat 6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Mat 6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
This is one of the deepest spiritual thoughts that we could possibly try to understand in a short description. Yet, we will touch on it because Jesus is speaking about our subject of “eyes” in this chapter context in verses 22 and 23. We should quickly realize that Jesus is speaking of the subject that we were introduced to earlier concerning a good eye (Ayin) and an evil eye (Ayin).
Also, what we will quickly discover is that these verses are crossing into two human realities simultaneously, in practically every verse. These two realities are spiritual sight and physical sight as well as natural light and spiritual light. For example, in verse 20 we see Jesus speaking of storing up “treasure” in heaven.
Heaven is clearly the unseen spiritual location of the throne of the Father (Ps 11:4) and is the place now where the Son is also seated (Heb 8:1). But these words are being spoken from the natural realm of our human choices and works. Jesus specifically declares that when we store our treasures in heaven (the spirit reality), the natural corrupted evils found in the physical world cannot devour or steal them from us. This is amazing because it teaches us that Heaven is a “securely” ruled location, and earth has a different “cursed” system of combined “good” and “evil” that can destroy them on the earth. Therefore, we have new facts of major truth:
- There are two realms of existence and access for humans, and these are a). the spiritual and b). the natural, and these occur simultaneously.
- The spiritual in heaven is where God’s throne is located.
- The earth natural realm is where humans live.
Now combining verses 20 and 21 we confirm these two realms of existence can be manifested or accessed here upon the earth by humans. Jesus makes the clear statement “wherever” we focus our heart that is where our treasure is located. Wow, this is good for us to know. Humans can “see into”, “participate in”, and “focus upon” either of these two realms of existence while on the physical earth. What does this teach us?
- Jesus says there are human spiritual eyes and natural eyes, and we can choose to point our human focused desires and priorities towards either.
- Jesus is also very clearly confirming the fact that an evil eye is a greedy stingy person only focused upon gaining more physical wealth to bring themselves more money, influence, power, praise, prestige, glory, honor.
- But those with the good eye, is focused upon bringing people into the kingdom of God for the Glory of God only (Prov 22:9).
How does a Christian change their eye focus? Jesus enlightened us to the answer in verses 22 and 23. Jesus is teaching us that it is a daily human choice what we focus upon as our priority. In these verses Jesus says, “If our eye is…” and the choices are for us to make our eye “wholly” focused upon the implied good Light like us choosing to be kind, loving, generous, etc. The other choice is for us to change our mental eye focus from doing evil like choosing to see others instead of ourselves only.
An evil eye is also one like Lucifer, that was described to us in Isaiah 14:12-14. In these verses Lucifer says at least 5 times what “He will do and become”. He was clearly focused upon himself, by saying, “I will be like the most high”, “I will exalt my throne above the stars”, etc. This shows self-promotion and greed, and the clear quality of pride. These are character traits of a lot of rich people in the world today, but God will judge everyone, and it will be like Jesus said in Matthew 19:33, “hardly will a rich man enter into the kingdom of heaven”.
In other words, we can choose to focus upon what we are observing all around us in the natural world to our own selfish greed, and we can let those thoughts dominate us, or we can replace that darkness with the “light” of the Word of God to allow it to come into our hearts and minds. God’s words, thoughts and ways filling our minds, will consume our carnal thoughts, and Satan’s evil thoughts of temptation.
Let us end this section with verse 23. In this verse Jesus is describing the “evil eye”. But this verse also has a new revelation to teach us a new concept about light. Reread this verse again:
Mat 6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
Did you see the contradiction? How can an evil eyed human that Jesus says is full of darkness, also have light? Uh oh? Jesus just opened our eyes to two kinds of light. We know the Word of God brings us “Good” light and this represents Truth. Therefore, evil light must represent lies.
As we should know from 2 Corinthians 11:14, Paul wrote to us, “Satan himself transforms into an angel of light”. We also know that Jesus said in John 8:44, “the devil… for he is a liar, and a father of it.”. Therefore, gaining spiritual “light” appears to be defined more clearly and precisely as the concept of a human obtaining “knowledge”. Doesn’t this make sense?
Weren’t our human minds born as vessels empty of “knowledge”? Are they not being filled and enlightened with new things never seen before every day? But this is where Jesus warns us that there is potentially a lot of “light” / knowledge that is not “good” to know of fill your mind with.
In fact, this is the concept found in Genesis 2. This is where God commands the man not to “eat” from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating from a tree of evil appears to represent symbolically “looking” at, and “receiving” the enlightenment of the types of knowledge that are of the darkness. Therefore, this is evil, this information is always based upon the devil’s “lies”. Did you learn anything new? Here is an overview of the basic concepts:
- Gaining knowledge is receiving spiritual enlightenment.
- There are two kinds of spiritual “light”. 1) Good, and 2) Evil.
- Evil enlightenment fills the spirit/mind/body with darkness and lies.
- Good enlightenment fills the spirit/mind/body with Light and Truth and this is always Words from the mouth of God.
Now let us take all this new information back to creation written in Genesis 1 to be enlightened further with confirming truths.
4. Eyes in Creation
Separating the Light (Sight),
From the Darkness (Blind)
We are learning that there are multiple types of eyes and created entities that possess them. We know God created birds, fish, mammals, insects, etc., that all had natural eyesight. Finally, there was created man as the ending climax, that we also are learning was given created natural eyes and spiritual eyes that can either see or be blinded. All these eye types were created by the Eyes of the Creator God.
But in this section, we will discuss what took place in God’s Genesis 1 account of His creation about eyes. In this chapter we can find several direct and implied participations of eyes. We will also discover and confirm that there are other concepts concerning eyes like light and darkness that allow or hinder us from sight.
In the previous section it was revealed that viewing objects illuminated with “light” is gaining new “knowledge”. We could also say gaining new “knowledge” comes from “seeing” new “light”. This is why I love the Bible. There is a never-ending supply of “new light” and “new truth” in this book. The more you learn, the more you see, to learn.
All these new eye concepts are essential to understanding why God created the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet to be a picture of a “eye” (Ayin). We will start with the very first verse of the Bible in the book of “Beginnings”.
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created (Alef-Tav) the heaven and the earth.
The very first indirect mention of God’s eyes is found in the first verse of the Bible. The eyes of God are strongly implied to be present in Genesis 1:1. But we can easily discover through study, that God’s unstated eyes and unstated mouth in the creation of verse 1, are very strong participants in the beginning creation of the entire heaven and the earth. In fact, notice that seven times in Genesis 1 God wrote “God saw” a clear reference to the eyes of God participating in creating our present world. These verses are:
- Genesis 1:4 “And God saw the light, that it was good”…
- Genesis 1:10 “And God saw it was good”.
- Genesis 1:12 “And God saw it was good”.
- Genesis 1:18 “And God saw it was good”.
- Genesis 1:21 “And God saw it was good”.
- Genesis 1:25 “And God saw it was good”.
- Genesis 1:31 “And God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good”.
We have 7 direct references to the eyes of God at work in creation. Now let us discover the mouth of God at work which represents His spoken Word, which we know is Jesus (John 1:1-14).
- Genesis 1:3 “And God said Let there be Light”.
- Genesis 1:6 “And God said Let there be a Firmament”.
- Genesis 1:9 “And God said Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together”.
- Genesis 1:11 “And God said Let the earth bring forth grass”.
- Genesis 1:14 “And God said Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven”.
- Genesis 1:20 “And God said Let the waters bring forth moving creatures with life”.
- Genesis 1:24 “And God said Let the earth bring forth living creatures after his kind”.
- Genesis 1:26 “And God said Let us make man in our image after our likeness”.
- Genesis 1:28 “Ang God blessed them and said…”
- Genesis 1:29 “And God said I have given you…”
In each of these verses it is written, “God said”. This is clearly the working of the Words of God coming from His mouth, but we will further verify this for those that like more details.
We can learn from Psalm 102:5 that the heavens were the “works” of God’s hands (Yod). And the letter Yod (hand) symbolically means that it was God’s “power” that created the heaven and the earth. But where is God’s power? We answer this by reading Hebrews 1:3.
Heb 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
This verse is also about Jesus called by the name “The Word of God” in Revelation 19:13. In this verse we discover that the world is held together by the “Word of His Power”. Therefore, All of God’s Power to not only create but to cause everything to remain created, is found in His spoken mouth “Word Power”. Then in Psalm 33:6 we confirm all of this by reading, “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all of the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth”.
God was said to be at work creating our present world, for 6 days in Genesis 1 and we should also understand that any good work is usually performed with the participation of eyes (Ayin) as we have observed directly in 7 verses. We learned that God’s hand (power) created the heavens (Ps 102:5). We have all heard of the concept for the necessity of “eye-hand or hand-eye” coordination in human works. This would be like a tennis player that finds the ball coming at them using their eyes, and then calculates and coordinates the desired location to swing their racket to meet the tennis ball to return the volley. Man was made in the image and likeness of the creator God. Therefore, God must do the same kind of eye to hand coordination to create. This will become more real as we continue to study Genesis 1.
We have already confirmed that creation was accomplished through God’s mouth (Peh) speaking creative Words (Ps 33:6) of Power (Yod = Hand) (Ps 102:25). God’s written word further confirms to us that God is “His Word” that created everything that was created by reading John 1:1-3 to name only one reference. In verse 1 of John 1 God says, “In the Beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Next in verse 2 of John 1 we find God is claiming to be at work in the beginning through “Words” and these spoken Words came from the same creator God. But then in verse 3, we find a very direct reference to creation that everything that was made was made by Words of God.
Then we find in John 1:14 that the Word (God) chose to become flesh and that He dwelt among us personally by Him being made the man named Jesus (Mat 1:21). Therefore, Jesus was God in the flesh, and He was the Word of God (Rev 19:13). And He was God with us in human form (Mat 1:23). But what are God creative Words built upon? The correct answer is God’s chosen “Alphabet”.
If you have ever done any serious deep Bible study, you have already discovered that the Bible is a giant puzzle containing many scattered word pictures in random placements of the scriptures that must be aligned and joined correctly to all the other scattered related puzzle pieces to find Jesus Christ fittingly. Everything in the Bible (scriptures, words, letters) points us to Jesus in some form. This is the most important way to find Jesus, knowing we must search for Him on purpose everywhere.
What we are discovering is the existence of connected Hebrew alphabet letters to other letters (Ayin, Peh, Yod) that were purposefully designed by the intelligence of God. We have found that there is a major connection between the eyes of God to the mouth of God and the hand of God in creation at the beginning of all matter, space, and time, and Jesus the spoken Word of God was present and involved in all of it.
In our initial analysis of creation, we find where God has implied eyes, and we are going to confirm this using several other scriptures in this lesson. But what we are about to discover that at first creation of the heaven and the earth, there were also other eyes (Ayin) besides the eyes (Ayin) of God that immediately observed how God accomplished it. These observing created beings were the angels who after witnessing such wonders, shouted for joy. We can read about this in the book of Job and chapter 38 where Jehovah (YHVH) is speaking to the man Job:
Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
Job 38:2 Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Job 38:3 Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Job 38:4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Job 38:5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Job 38:6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
Job 38:7 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
As we can see, God is asking Job some questions and demanding him to answer. But God’s questions are designed to reveal Job’s ignorance, and this applies to any human that believes they know completely about anything to how He created the universe. This is because no human was present to observe us being created or this single beginning event of Genesis 1:1.
But we are told in Job 38:7, that the creation event was observed by the “morning star” (Lucifer, Isa 14:12) and the sons of God (angels) and they literally all sang for joy in seeing how this creation was performed. Therefore, we have just seen more eyewitness observers of creation called “angels”. Hence, this further establishes that angels have “eyes” that see, and mouths that can speak. Let us look at the next verse in Genesis:
Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The first occurrence of God’s usage of the letter Ayin is found twice in Genesis 1:2. Here God says, “darkness was upon the face of the earth” and “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”. The Hebrew word H5921 (‘al) was translated as “upon” twice and it means “to be above”.
God spelled this Hebrew word H5921 beginning it with our letter “Ayin” which is joined with the letter “Lamed” to form the word ‘al and it occurs significantly over five thousand times in the original Hebrew text. This word H5921 is translated as the English words “on”, “upon”, “above”, “over”, “against” (with a downward aspect), and others.
But the word H5921 individual ancient Hebrew letter meanings “Ayin” (eyes) + “Lamed” (shepherd staff authority) combined say “See, Watch, Observe the Authority” (of God’s power released through spoken words). This strongly implies again that God’s Eyes, Hands, and Mouth of Authority were all sovereignly at Work to create our world in Genesis 1.
What we are continuing to see in Genesis 1:2, is another implied involvement of the “Eyes of God” to describe what God was seeing concerning His creation and how He had observed a state of darkness that had covered the earth to make it formless and void. But we know from studying Isaiah that God did not create the world in Genesis 1 as formless and void.
Isa 45:18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
This is God’s amazing commentary on Genesis 1:1-2. God very clearly writes to us that the earth was never created as “vain.” This Hebrew word is the same one that was translated as “formless” in Genesis 1:2. God says here in Isaiah, the earth was created in a form that was inhabitable originally. Therefore, we know the words describing the earth as “formless”, “void”, and “covered in darkness” and “water” were not the original ways that it was created. Therefore, something, or more accurately someone, destroyed the earth to place it in this state of confused chaotic darkness. We will show who this was soon.
Now let us notice the first mention of God’s direct acts of His work during what appears to be Day 1 of earth’s re-creation.
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Here in Genesis 1:3, we find the first explicitly stated method to “how” God worked in “all” of His creation. Here we find where God uses His mouth (Peh) to speak the words “Light Be” (or more literal the command “Exist Light”). It was these spoken words from the mouth of God that caused “light” to begin to manifest on the earth to counter the darkness that had previously consumed it. But simultaneously this command began a natural and a spiritual “Light” solution to be initiated to achieve “physical and spiritual eyesight”. Therefore, the first work that God deemed necessary was the re-introduction of light again on the earth. Let us continue to the next verse Genesis 1:4:
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
The “eyes” (Ayin) of God, being first directly spoken of in creation are found in Genesis 1:4. In this verse Moses inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote, “And God saw light causing good, God divided light from darkness”. That was one very literal translation of the original Hebrew words that teach us “light is related to be only Good” and “darkness is the implied antithesis to the good Light, being only evil”. Hopefully, you are beginning to see some things that you have never seen before in these verses.
We should have been observing that the “good light” was not only being re-introduced back onto the earth, but it was also being separated and divided from the evil darkness. To help us better understand what is happening, let us read another clue that God gives us in the book of Isaiah about His creative works:
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Learn a potentially new concept given to us from Isaiah 46:10 about how the omniscient God already knows the end before He ever begins to create or recreate anything. Please realize that our God who is living outside of the dimension of time has pre-planned the ending of our created world by foreseeing and declaring it with His spiritual eyes (Ayin) and causing it to become through His spoken words from His mouth (Peh).
This literally teaches us that God’s Eyes (Ayin) see His “good” end results long before He speaks it to come to pass. Do you see how the “eyes” (Ayin) of God are working throughout creation in conjunction with His mouth (Peh)? This is very profound and prophetic for how man is supposed to operate also. Perhaps you will remember that the order of the 16th letter of the Alphabet is Ayin eyes and it is immediately followed by the 17th letter the Peh Mouth. Therefore, God has placed a design connection introducing us to the concept of “seeing” first before “speaking”.
In this God designed process He intelligently thought out a plan to accomplish His purpose of eliminating darkness before He creates the world that we are living within. He does this even by allowing for all the oppositions that Satan, fallen angels, and humans used by the darkness would fight against Him to try to stop it from happening.
Therefore, we must know that Genesis 1 reveals the entire outlined God desired ending of His creation before a human was ever created (Rev 13:8). This designed layout of Genesis 1 has encoded within it some incredibly significant points, which cannot be fully expanded today. There are other lessons found here that teach some of these hidden concepts in more detail. We will only go over some quick few points in relationship with the study subject of “eyes”. But we must know this fact before we move forward.
There are 6 days of work in chapter one, followed by a day of rest at the beginning of chapter 2. This is a total of 7 days, or one week of creation days. What has God hidden in these 7 days? We find the answer by reading Psalm 90:4:
Psa 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
God defines one day to be exactly 1000 years in this verse. We know this is God’s definition because it says, “in thy sight” and this is the Hebrew word H5869 that we have learned is “Ayin” representing “eyes”. Therefore, in God’s eyes He is trying to get us to “see” the days of creation represent 1000 years of human history. This is confirmed in 2 Peter 3:8 saying, “one day is with the Lord as 1000 years”. This is simply teaching us that the 7 total days of creation are a hidden overview of the entire human history within our current world.
This knowledge works out very well when we begin to understand day 1 of creation represents the first 1000 years, and this was the beginning of humans on God’s viewpoint of a time clock. The other significant occurrence that directly happens at the end of days 6 is the creation of man in a sinless mature state of existence. This is a prophecy of how God intends the church to end at the completion of 6000 years. We are currently living within this part of the prophetic calendar now. But let us go back to the beginning of Genesis to discover more about this concept of light being separated from darkness.
We should notice that there was no direct mention of eyes until after God “spoke” in Genesis 1:3. In this verse we saw that He declared spoken words to bring forth His planned light solution into the world to overcome the darkness that had fully consumed earth. And we notice that this “good” work on day one was accomplished with the intention of dividing the good light from the evil darkness. Therefore, we are learning God’s primary “eye” focus was upon His desired “end results” and He was not mentioning His eyes being concerned on the current problem of darkness and evil. This confirms what we read about in Isaiah where God is declaring the planned “ending” from the beginning of creation and we are discovering this plan intimately involves a new creation called “man”.
God is emphasizing a previously introduced subject of “eyes” called “focus” in Genesis 1:1-4. God has hidden an example of how He is “not” focused upon (to see clearly and be concerned about) any current problems caused by darkness. Rather, His focus is to observe and visualize the desired future ending result in His mind first. Then after He has fully analyzed and thought out all the possible solutions in conjunction with all the possible hinderances, He makes the wisest decision and speaks His solution.
After that is accomplished and is manifest, God observes His solution with His eyes and names the light “day” and the “darkness” He called “night”. This represents “categorization”, and “division”, of now two separated identities. Finally, God says this was “Day 1 of creation and it was Good”. Therefore, we are observing the first 1000 years of human history summarized in symbolic language in a short couple of verses.
Remember, we read in verse 2, God said there was only “darkness” (implied evil) that covered the entire face of the deep. This information implied that God has seen the works of the evil darkness, and it caused Him to bring the ending solution of light back into the world. And this light would be used to eliminate the current situation of the earth’s dominance by darkness. Let us go to the end of the Bible to see the future goal of no darkness will be achieved:
Rev 21:23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
Notice this verse is written after the completion of a total of 7000 years of human history (7 days in God’s eyes). Do you see how the problem of darkness and its division are being completely solved in the next to the last chapter of the Bible? God is prophesying through John, that He will be the Light of the World and He accomplishes this through His manifested Son named Jesus Christ.
Please never forget that God calls Himself to be “Light” in 1 John 1:5 and light is the essential element for all “eyes” to see, whether spiritual or natural. Therefore, separating light from darkness in Genesis 1 takes on a completely new realm of spiritual meaning and application when applied to the “True Light” representing Jesus (John 1:9, 1 John 2:8). Also, we know who represents the ruler of darkness from reading and combining several verses.
1Co 2:6 Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:
1Co 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:
1Co 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
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.
We will begin with 1 Corinthians 2:6-9 to find these verses are related to our study subject. We find the mention of “eyes” in verse nine confirming the connection to the “Ayin”. We also find the mention of the creation of the world in verse seven. Notice that we see a “ruling prince” in verse six of an implied kingdom in our world who will come to nothing. This spiritual ruler coming to nothing is again mentioned in verse eight as a ruling “prince” who is not the omniscient God called “Light”. This implies this ruling prince is of the opposite realm called “darkness”.
But we also find in verse eight, that the ruler of this world in his incredible ignorance, crucified the Lord Jesus and appears to wish he had never caused this to happen. Why is this? This is because the “death”, “burial” and “resurrection” of Jesus was the major pivotal point in the course of time to fulfill the plan of God to separate light from darkness.
Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
This verse written to the church in Ephesians 6 describes God’s and our spiritual enemies using ranking orders. We immediately can seethat this current world ruler is the “ruler of everyone in the darkness of this world”. However, in this same verse we additionally learn that this spiritual kingdom authority of darkness are supernatural beings not of the class of created human flesh and blood (natural) existence.
It is also very revealing to know that the Greek word translated as “principalities” is G746. This Greek word occurs around 59 times and 40 times it was translated as “beginning(s)”. Wow, this is amazing since we read about the angels were the created beings that were present at the beginning of creation. This is a very strong display of who these supernatural dark rulers are.
But we also learn that this kingdom of darkness is still a point of opposition for all Christians who are wrestling against them in the spirit realm by putting on and wearing the armor of God that is subsequently listed in this chapter. Therefore, we have confirmed there is a “kingdom called darkness” who has a royal spiritual ruler with authority. Let us dive deeper into this by moving to Colossians:
Col 1:12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
We also find in Colossians 1:13 that, “God has delivered us (the saved church) from the authority of darkness, translating us into the Kingdom of His dear Son” (Jesus). We additionally notice in Colossians 1:12 that Christians are called the “saints in Light”. Therefore, the Kingdom of Light belongs to God and is ruled by His Son Christ Jesus. Remember Genesis 1:3, God says, “Let there be Light” and then He called this division of time “Day”. The opposite “darkness”, God calls “night” and we are observing 2 spiritual kingdoms being separated as we are reading about in the New Testament. But we still have the need to find which “prince” is the ruler of this night kingdom of darkness? We find the major revealed clue to the identity of this ruling prince of darkness in Acts:
Act 26:18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.
Notice the direct mention of our subject of “eyes” to begin the verse. Wow, we are still on target to understand how God wrote words to point us to Jesus as the letter Ayin (eyes) source of sight. It is now much clearer that Satan is the ruler of the kingdom of darkness (no light, no God, and no Jesus), and he has chosen to become the enemy of God and His Son who are Light.
We are discovering in Genesis 1, how these described creative works of God reveal to us how it was His intention to separate Himself (Light) from Satan (the ruler of darkness). In Acts 26:18 we found that Christians who have chosen to turn (repent) and follow God’s salvation in Jesus are no longer in Satan’s darkness (the spiritual realm of no God existence).
But as we saw in Colossians 1:13 His plan was for us to enter the Kingdom of Light and Day by being translated out of our previous darkened state of existence having our “eyes” (Ayin) opened. But guess what, God is referring to spiritual blindness and not natural inability to see light. Therefore, spiritual eyes that have been opened is the God designed process to begin salvation. Let us confirm these realities with these two verses:
1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
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.
The Apostle Paul makes it very clear that Jesus came into the world to take us out of our former life in the darkness by being born-again into the Day as “children of Light (God)”. Do you see the amazing parallels to what was stated in Genesis 1:2-4? We can find parallel subjects of “darkness and light”, “night and day” in both Genesis 1 and all these verses that we are reading in the New Covenant. Therefore, the Genesis 1 verses are God’s prophecies using symbolic terms for the rise of two opposing spiritual kingdoms that were divided by His design.
When did this work begin and when will it end? We know this work of God was initially happening on Day 1 of creation in Genesis 1:3 when God commanded “Light to be”, after the darkness had previously destroyed the world in Genesis 1:2. God confirms this connection was His designed intention by reading this verse in Corinthians:
2Co 4:6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Wow, again! Paul is quoting from Genesis 1:3 where God commanded “Light to Exist”. Paul is confirming that Genesis 1:3 was a prophecy about a coming of God (Light) as a personal appearance into the darkened controlled world. We also learn that that Light that was commanded to shine also applies to spiritual eyesight simultaneously with the realization of the natural light that took place nearly 6000 years ago.
We can now begin to learn that without this dual purposed commanded natural and spiritual “light” of Genesis 1:3, we would be unable to have the necessary light of “knowing” the glory of God in the face of Jesus (2 Cor 4:6)! Wow, again! Where are the eyes of Jesus located? We all know they are on the face of Jesus. Did you know the “eyes” of Jesus are described as “flames of fire” in Revelation 1:14? Do you understand flames of fire produce “Lights”? Do you believe any of this is a coincidence? Certainly, it is NOT!
But when did the rulership of these two opposing kingdoms (Light vs. darkness) officially begin? Was it happening 6000 years ago when God spoke “Light Be”? We should know that this does not work, since Jesus (God=Light) only came to the earth approximately 2000 years ago. Therefore, we have a difference of 4000 years to resolve.
What we discover from reading further in Genesis 1 is that this key rulership division occurs as another prophecy on Day 4 of creation. If a thousand years is as one day to the Lord (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8), we find the secret that Jesus was scheduled to be born as the “Light of the World” exactly 4000 years after Adam sinned. Uh oh, that appears to match and potentially solve our previous difference. What happened on Day 4 of creation?
Gen 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Gen 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
In our knowledge that has been acquired about studying light and darkness in Day 1 of creation, what we find on day 4 of creation is very amazing parallels to the same night and day division. We know this represents two kingdoms called light and darkness. But here in these verses we also find two “rulers” of these separated kingdoms. God very clearly states that there are two great lights, one called the “greater light”, and one called the “lesser light”. Hopefully you know by reading the other lessons on this website, these are synonymous and symbolic terms for the sun and the moon. God clarifies this Genesis 1 terminology in Psalms:
Psa 136:8 The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
Psa 136:9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.
As we can now plainly see, the Spirit of God defines the greater light to be the sun that rules the day/light, and He defines the lesser light to be the moon that rules the night/darkness. Does this mean that the symbol of the sun represents Jesus, and the symbol of the moon represents “Satan”. Absolutely it does. There are many verses that confirm this reality, but we will only focus upon a few in this lesson. For example, here is a very key verse:
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.
Here is a major application of our natural “sun” that becomes a symbol for the “Son of God” named Jesus. It is Jesus who is our righteousness (Rom 3:22). God very specifically chooses the Hebrew word H8121 that is widely translated as “sun” to suddenly be a symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ. This Hebrew word can refer to the “sun’s brilliance” or it’s “rays” also. But wait, there are other verses that speak of Jesus as the Sun. For example, look at Matthew:
Mat 4:16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
Here in this verse, we find the parallels of Genesis 1 resurfacing to refer to light versus darkness and God’s separation plan prophesied in His creation works. This is amazingly describing a very major part of this “Ayin” spiritual “eyes” Bible lesson. God has designed a “great light”, named Jesus to be born into Israel. These people will be the ones that are seeing a great light rise.
Pay very close attention that Jesus is called the “Great Light” in this verse like He was prophesied from Genesis 1:16. This verse of Matthew is a quotation of Isaiah 9:2. Isaiah 9:2 uses the exact same Hebrew word H1419 being translated as “great”, that was translated in Genesis 1:16 as “greater”. Therefore, we understand there is a direct connection between Matthew 4:16, Isaiah 9:2 and Genesis 1:16 as they are all speaking of the same “great light”. God has moved in Matthew to identify this Great Light” to be Jesus Christ that was first mentioned to us in creation. This is amazing! But wait, there are more direct connections.
Notice in Matthew that this “Great Light” is being described as a light that has “sprung up”. This Greek word G393 that was translated as “sprung up” is most often translated as “rise”, “arise”, “risen” and “rising” all being descriptive terms of the human point of view of our daily perception of the natural “sun” appearance on the earth’s horizon in the east.
We all know that the “sun” rises in the east and sets in the west as designed by God. This single earth rotation is called a “day” in Genesis 1:5 being described as evening and morning the first day. Notice “darkness” was first, like God observed before He spoke “Light Be” and then light was. Are we seeing the parallels that are directly related to Jesus as the rising Light of the World?
This “rising” terminology describes the morning transition from the state of darkness in the night that is turned into the light of the day. These are all well-known natural acts that occur every single 24-hour day of our lives.
But in Matthew, God is teaching us that this natural phenomenon of a rising sun is a parallel to the “Greater” spiritual reality found in Jesus Christ. The “rising” spiritual Light (Jesus) is the key to understanding God’s plan of salvation for humans to have their eyes (Ayin) opened to “see” and understand His ultimate and superior truth.
As we can read in Matthew 4:16, there were only people that sat in darkness until Jesus Christ was born into the world and began to minister at the age of 30 to teach the Kingdom of God is come near (Mat 4;17). All those that “sat” in darkness were those that could read the Word of God but could not understand much of what was prophesied to come or happen to them. But Jesus the Sun of Righteousness was God’s ultimate solution to overcome this state of gross darkness (ignorance). Peter describes this again for us:
2Pe 1:19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:
Pay very close attention to what was just described using naturally created terminologies and synonyms. For example, “day dawn” means a “sun rise” is taking place. The “day star” is another name for our “sun”. Everyone must understand our “sun” is nothing but the closest “star” to our planet. This describes us living in a solar system, where planets revolve around the sun. All these naturally created facts describe the man Jesus Christ the bright morning star in Revelation 22:16, and our “Sun of Righteousness” in Malachi 4:2.
It is also very important to know that the translated word “arise” in 2 Peter 1:19 is the exact word that was translated as “sprung up” in Matthew 4:16 referring to the people that sat in darkness that Jesus came to bring “Light” to. But understand Matthew when speaking of the “Great Light”, He is describing the “physical” presence of Jesus with Him teaching spiritual Words of light (Psa 119:105, John 6:63).
But Peter is describing Jesus after the resurrection and ascension of physical Jesus and now being on the earth in His spiritual presence of the Holy Spirit that abides in us. His Spirit is working presently in each of us simultaneously as an internal unseen rising “Day Star”. This “Day Star” is the representation of the increasing light (Word) and work of the Holy Spirit inside of the human body in the unseen heart (soul and spirit). It is this internal working of God/Jesus that causes the external transformations of the human thoughts and behaviors.
Wow, humans can now overcome their existence in darkness (lack of knowing God who is Light) by believing and placing our total faith in the “Day Star”. If you have never let Jesus, come into your heart, now is a great time to invite Him inside. But, whenever this occurs, this begins the process of the “Day Star” to arise in our hearts (2 Peter 1:19). This allows Him to grow brighter and brighter bringing us ever increasing potential knowledge of God’s Word every day we read the Bible if we choose to cooperate.
Notice the connection to us believing the Word of God to releasing the increasing Light into our hearts. This has just brought us back to the concept of “spiritual eyesight” based upon our faith in the Word of God (Jesus). Remember what we are studying in this series? We are studying the ancient Hebrew Alphabet that was used by God to create words and sentences, to write a book about Jesus. This is why everything in the Bible points us to Jesus. Let us go back to Genesis to learn more about this essential “Light” of God to help our “eyes” to “see”.
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Remember our New Covenant spiritual Kingdom of Light ruler was named the “Day Star” (Jesus) that arises in our hearts in 2 Peter 1:19. We have already seen in Genesis 1:16 how the greater light is this same “Day Star” of the New Covenant. Now let us go back to the opposite side of Day called Night.
What else does this verse of Genesis 1:16 reveal about the “darkness”? We can all see that the Day will be ruled by the “Greater Light” referring to Jesus, who will be opposed and separated from the “lesser light” (moon) who now rules in the “kingdom of night and darkness”. As we discovered in Acts 26:18 it is the ruler Satan that has dominion over the spiritual kingdom of darkness. Thank God we have been saved out of this deception to now enjoy living in the Kingdom of Light in Christ Jesus.
Praying that everyone’s spiritual eyes have been enlightened to understand how the Ayin “eyes” of God were intimately involved in the Planned Works, and Words releasing the Power of God in creation. Also, how the subject of “Light” that occurs on Day 1 and Day 4 of creation is essentially connected to how people are saved out of the darkness to be brought into the kingdom of Light. God spent nearly 2000 years of human history giving us His written words that came from the breath of His mouth. This was a plan of God to enlighten us within our spirits. It is only by the Light of Jesus Christ that causes our spiritual eyesight to see.
5. Ayin Application to the Believer
There is a personal application to the believer in Christ Jesus found in every letter. The Ayin is no exception. You have probably already learned the primary application is God’s involvement in bringing us “Light” = “Knowledge” & “Truth” to save us. We certainly saw this in the teachings of Jesus clearly being stated. Jesus made it very plain that He was the source of God’s “Light” while He was physically ministering to the physical people on the earth and especially to the Hebrews.
But Jesus is not physically present now. What then are we supposed to be doing since we cannot see physical Jesus right now on the earth? Almost everyone would love to walk and talk with physical Jesus today. Yet Jesus said it was better for Him to go away, because if He did not leave the earth, the Holy Spirit could not come and abide with us and in us. Jesus further explains in John 14, that He would come be with us in Spirit form living on the inside of the physical body of believers. Jesus also claimed that He would personally lead us into all truth because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (Light). Therefore, we have the God of infinite Light (Knowledge of all Truth) abiding in us, and He is present 365 days a year, and 24 hours of every day of the week. This is far better than any shorter talk with physical Jesus. That is very awesome when you are awakened out of the darkness to fellowship with Him.
But there is also the human problem of “focus” and “priorities”. Christians in this modern age can be so consumed with the problems of this world, that they are ignoring who they are looking to or at and focusing upon. We see a Bible example of this in Matthew 14.
In Matthew 14, Jesus is walking on the water during a storm and the disciples “see” Him, and believe it is a spirit and they begin to fear greatly. Suddenly Jesus says to them “fear not, it is I”. Then Peter says, “Lord if it be you, bid me to come” and Jesus says “Come”. Peter gets out of the boat and begins to walk to Jesus. This strongly implies that the “eyes” of Peter are fixated upon Jesus.
But then it says in Matthew 14:30 that Peter’s eyes begin to “focus” upon the effects of the “wind”. Had Peter ever walked on water before this day? I seriously doubt it, if Peter had tried he would have hit the water and sunk so fast that there would have been no time to say “help”. What is changing when Peter removes His focus from Jesus and begins to consider the storm?
Our spiritual eye focus is the determining factor for success or failure. What we are focusing upon will determine if we obtain a continuing supernatural miracle or a sinking defeat in the need to be saved from drowning. Peter’s spiritual attitude of beginning to become “fearful” caused his downfall. And this opposite force of faith in Jesus to fear the circumstances caused him to begin to sink. If Peter’s failure had been an instant drop, it would have been so fast that there would not have been any opportunity for his salvation. This appears to teach us that we can evaluate our focus and make minor adjustments to help us to continue into complete victory over the circumstances being presented to us by the devil.
Where is your spiritual focus today? The devil has been trying to introduce fear driven plans to get your eyes departed from thinking on Jesus and the Word of God. This is your application for today, because the evil of the world will be trying more things very soon, some are new, and others are the same plans as before. How you react to them will determine your success. Make a commitment to stay out of “fear” and to get into the Spirit of God to keep Him as your focus by feeding your spirit with His Word. Peter could have simply remembered Jesus told Him to “Come” and this single Word had enough power in it to provide him “faith” to keep him above the water.
6. Conclusion
We have only touched a short time on the study of “Ayin” Eyes. There are so many verses on this subject that it would require volumes of books to try to understand them all. This lesson was only a shortened introduction to the key subjects of “Ayin” eyes and the various types of applications. We have learned of natural eyes and spiritual eyes. But only briefly seen what they teach us. We know one foundational scripture is from Proverbs 15:3. This verse says, “the Eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good”. Therefore, there is nothing that is not seen by God and He will judge.
We were unable to cover the part of the lesson about when Jesus heals a blind man in John 9. But this story demonstrates Jesus’ extreme purpose to bring God’s “light” of knowledge to both the physical and the spiritual realms. This man’s physical blindness that was present from his birth was healed first by placing mud on his eyes and being told to wash in a pool of water. But later Jesus found the man again, to remove his spiritual blindness so that he could believe on the Lord Jesus as the Son of God. This real story demonstrates the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1 which Jesus read in the temple “I have been anointed, to preach the Gospel, and bring the recovering of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18).
Joh 9:5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
It is within the context of Jesus fixing the problem of one man’s eyesight of two kinds of eyes (natural and spiritual), that Jesus personally claims to be the “Light of the World”. Now Jesus is seated in heaven at the right hand of majesty. He has placed His loving Holy Spirit inside of us if we have let Him come in to abide. Then Jesus proclaimed that we will be the light of the world (Mat 5:14) to help open the eyes (Ayin) of others that have not yet seen the wonders of His amazing mercies.
This lesson should have taught you an introduction about who Jesus is and why He made the 16th letter of the Hebrew alphabet the essential picture of an “eye”. This is so amazing, that He can’t be praised enough for His Great Words and Works of His Spirit! Praise the LORD!
If you liked this lesson let us know and share it with your friends and relatives. If you have any prayer requests, please share those also. If you need to know Jesus, please click on the link below to help you get started on the path to receiving eternal life to Know the True and Living God named Yehoshua (Hebrew) / Jesus (Greek). May God continue to richly bless you. Thank you for your prayers as we continue to pray for you in this very trying time before Jesus returns. Jesus is coming back to get us sooner than you think, please be ready.
Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin Tav – Alef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)
Understanding the Sovereignty of God – Part 2 – Who is the Sovereign Elect of God

(Ver 1.0) This is Part 2 in the series of lessons teaching us about the amazingly revealed subject of the “sovereignty of God”. If you have not read “Part 1“, it is highly recommended that you go back and start with this introduction. Too many Christians have manmade traditions or reduced doctrinal views of what “sovereignty” represents when teaching about the application of this word to God. Some of the popular mindsets that have been dominating a lot of these religious thoughts on sovereignty, align with the following types of Christian beliefs and confessions:
- You just never know what God will do next?
- Sometimes God heals some of us and other times He makes us sick to humble us, teach us, or to get some glory for Himself to help save others.
- God can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, to whoever He wants because He is God.
- God will open the doors to what I should do, be, or go into, and shut the doors that I should not do, be, or go, into.
- If God wants me to have it, He will give it to me!
- If God wants me saved, He will save me!
- If God wants me healed, He will heal me!
- If God wants to bless me, He will bless me!
- Lord, if it be your will for my friend, my family, my child, etc., to be healed, delivered, or saved, we ask for your will to be done.
- God loves me so much; He won’t let anything bad happen to me…
- If God made me this way (poor, sick, gay, crippled, blind, lame, etc.), therefore He loves me and wants me this way.
- If God allowed evil to happen to me, He has a purpose for it.
- God took my child to heaven because he wanted another angel.
These are just some of the examples of wrong ways people think about God and His sovereignty trying to explain why bad things happened to them. People take a part of the total known or unknown sound doctrine of balanced sovereignty and then only magnify a small section of it to an extreme position that leaves everything that happens to us in the world totally up to God’s will and power. When this happens, God can easily be held responsible for every evil work that anyone, including Satan or any evil person does or makes happen.
In other words, people believe that God causes, commits, or permits all the liars of the world, in politics and of governments to happen, and they must all be doing their evils by the will and purpose of God. This would include mass murderers and genocide in the world blaming it all on God’s will. This would include all the starvation occurring in the world is also God’s will. This would include all terrorism is God’s will, and we could fill up a book with other examples of evil to blame them all on a loving God? This just does not match the revealed character and nature of God in the Bible.
Today, we will only address one part of the subject of sovereignty that is taught in a lot of Christian churches. We are delivering this specific topic only because we believe the Lord desires us to respond to a comment that was received asking a question from the previous lesson. This questioned sovereign position holds the belief of Sovereign Election of certain chosen individuals to receive salvation by His Divine selection only.
This belief of course, strongly implies that all others not selected by God were “chosen” to live on earth, die and go to hell by God’s sovereign design and right of choice. This extreme belief disqualifies the view of any human freedoms to choose whether to be saved or to be lost. This position places all responsibility for salvation only upon God who they claim has sovereignly chosen them. There are also other variations of this belief, but all of these must attempt to explain the other Bible verses that appear to conflict or contradict with this doctrine. We will see several of these conflicting verses in this lesson, and then attempt to balance them all together equally.
If you are aware of another variation of your belief to how this God choice of being Elect is defined, feel free to share it in a comment. But please only comment after reading the entire lesson first, so that we can compare all your Bible verses with the Word of God that will be shared here today. Also, if you are unable to leave a comment containing a belief with Bible verses, please do not bother sharing any personal opinions, they will not be given any value or time to be responded to.
For those readers that have the Holy Spirit living on the inside of your spirit to be saved, what does the Spirit of God say inside to you about this belief so far? Does the Spirit of God inside you give you any witnessed assurance that this belief is correct? Or does He cause you to feel that there is just something not right about God electing to make your choice for you, without your participation to go to hell? The Holy Spirit is the only guide to all truth that we can depend upon. Therefore, stop here and now and ask Him these questions, and let us see what He says to you and then let the Spirit inside’s judgement be your guide with what will be taught today to see if there is any agreement.
There will be no disagreement from Agapegeek, that there are certainly scriptures in the New and Old Testament that seem to imply this belief of “Election” is on the surface accurate. But with deeper study, it just might change our opinions and views to show us that it can be understood to mean something completely different and even to an opposite position. This does not mean anyone ignores the verses taught on election or disagrees with their inclusion in the Bible. It only means once balanced correctly, the interpretations of these verses can be shifted to see something amazingly missed before.
Our primary goal today is to find the truth! We are only desiring to see God’s view on this subject of sovereignty. Therefore, we promise the Holy Spirit to approach the subject with an open-minded position of rest, to be led by the Spirit of God, to go wherever He desires to go and show us whatever He sovereignly chooses to teach us, and we will choose to receive it with a thankful heart and mind.
Could this position of God sovereignly choosing some for salvation and other for hell’s separation, be another example of someone taking a partial truth and exalting it beyond its scope of application to be the only truth, excluding all other truths? Remember this practice of one truth independence can usually lead us into error. This is too often caused when we do not balance all scriptures equally together. Let us dig into this subject to discover if there is something that we may have omitted or missed. Here is a list of the sections that will be covered in our lesson:
- Election Confirmed
- God’s Wedding Invitation
- Jesus the Only One Chosen?
- How and When was the Church Chosen?
- Resolving Scripture Conflicts for Being Called “Elect”
- Conclusion
Election Confirmed!
Let us quickly go over a few of the key verses on the doctrine of “election”. We will begin with the red-letter words of Jesus speaking in prophetical terms about the end of the world that is beginning to happen now.
Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
It is obvious that Jesus is calling a potential person or a group or “set” of “like people” by qualifying and defining them using the term “elect”. This Greek word translated as “elect” is G1588, and it is defined by Strong as “select”, “favorite”, or “elect”. But it is also important to know that this single Greek word is translated as “elect” 16 times and “chosen” 7 times. Therefore, if we are only looking for verses that were translated as “elect” we will miss those that were translated as “chosen”.
This verse and God’s usage of the Greek word becomes our initial confirmation with the potential for somethings we could call “sovereign election”. It is important to note that the Greek word G1588 translated as “elect”, occurs 3 times in chapter 24 of Matthew. Therefore, this chapter seems to have an especially important emphasis on this subject. Here are the other verses in Matthew 24:
Mat 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.
Mat 24:31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
What we are observing is a new challenge to define being called “elect”. Most “elect” doctrines of being chosen for salvation, claim they were chosen by God and there is nothing they or anyone else could do, or anything that could happen on earth to not be saved. This means God’s sovereign election stands strong and unchanging, because He is God and He gets His way.
But notice verse 22 of Matthew 24. There is a timing of significant events that occur on the earth, where God describes the time must be shortened, or no one in the flesh was going to be saved. Therefore, God is speaking of elect people as those being saved, with the exception that it is not guaranteed salvation based upon something we are not told yet.
Now let us go back to verse 22, to see something that the translators may have missed in their KJV interpretation. The KJV translators must have believed in a form of the doctrine of guaranteed election, because of the way the verse was translated, and because they added specific italicized words that appear to support guaranteed election. But these italicized words do not occur in the verse. Here is what Dr Robert Young translated the verse to say in his very literal translation:
Mat 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. (KJV)
Mat 24:24 for there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and they shall give great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, also the chosen. (YLT)
There are three major differences between these two translations. First, the omission of the italicized words; “it were”, before the word “possible” in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. The changing of the word “very” to “also” as it should be in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. The revision of the word “elect”, to the word “chosen” in the “Young’s Literal Translation”. All these changes help us to see some things much more clearly.
For example, what we are observing is how in these verses of Matthew, whoever these elect ones are, they could possibly be deceived as others were “also” deceived in verse 24 by the false Christ. And in verse 22 these “elect” ones, may not be saved unless God shortens the time of tribulation. What we are observing is a major discrepancy to viewing these “elect” to have a guaranteed salvation.
Therefore, many Christians must be assuming from these three verses in Matthew that these are speaking about the guaranteed pre-selected Christian church as being called the “elect” by Jesus. Yet that belief is even contradicted by what Jesus said in the entre statement, so which is it? Are they guaranteed saved or are they potentially saved based upon not being deceived by the false Christ and time being shorten for their sake to be saved?
What should be cautionary is that many times in the Bible, God uses the exact same word to refer to multiple like related beings. If you did not know yet, these “Elect” could be angels (1 Timothy 5:21), Israel (Isaiah 45:4), the church (1 Peter 2:9), or Jesus Christ (Luke 23:35, 1 Peter 2:6). Therefore, to be a wise Acts 17:11 type of Berean Bible student, we better do a lot more homework to study what is God really talking about.
As you can see this topic of study has suddenly become more complicated than most have thought. We have just been introduced to the potential of multiple identities as a condition to be determined for being called the “Elect”. Also, we have just observed two qualifying conditions that must be met to be in this group called the “elect”. Therefore, to assume each verse is about any single group or identity, is an assumption and must rather be proven with facts of scripture truth to reveal their identity.
However, we have identified and confirmed that Jesus spoke of someone as being the “Elect” that “if possible” could be deceived. And in another verse, He said “those days should be shortened, or no flesh would be saved, but for the elect’s sake, those days will be shortened”. Nevertheless, in the last verse with this Greek word we find the angels gathering the elect (chosen) ones off the earth. Therefore, there is someone that is called by this title.
Let us move to the next section to help us narrow down what this calling of someone as “Elect” means. Because God’s definition of the word will overrule man’s definitions 100% of the time.
God’s Wedding Invitation
Jesus teaches us a parable that could radically shift our focus on what being called “Elect” could be defined as. This parable is an amazing part of our study subject “sovereignty” even if you do not see it automatically at first. Let us please read carefully the story given by Jesus (God’s Son).
Mat 22:2 The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son,
Mat 22:3 And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.
Mat 22:4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come unto the marriage.
Mat 22:5 But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise:
Mat 22:6 And the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them.
Mat 22:7 But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.
Mat 22:8 Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
Mat 22:9 Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage.
Mat 22:10 So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.
Mat 22:11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment:
Mat 22:12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
Mat 22:13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.
We will notice in verse 2 that Jesus is speaking about the “Kingdom of heaven”. This simply means these coming statements are about God’s sovereign government within the spiritual realm of existence apart from the earth. But then Jesus reveals this hidden spiritual reality is said to be “like” a normal story of a king that could have lived upon the natural earth. Parables always use natural parallels to teach unseen spiritual concepts so we can understand it.
Then Jesus gets started revealing the spiritual kingdom is like a “certain king” and this is a reference to God the Father in heaven that sits on His sovereign Kingdom throne. Therefore, we have the “Most High” as the Sovereign ruler that chooses to have a Son, and then arranges a marriage for His Son. This certainly matches our subject of God as “Sovereign”.
This should be obvious to who the son represents. This can only be Jesus that was God’s Son, who was born of the natural woman named Mary in Bethlehem. Isaiah 9:6 says, “Unto us a child is born, and a son is given” and this was written about the coming Messiah named Jesus (Yeshua).
The next key word in the parable to understand is “marriage”. This is a radically misunderstood concept for a lot of Christians, not knowing how to define this word.
In the eyes of God, a covenant is a marriage and God defines this to us in the Old Testament in Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 31:32 and Malachi 2:14, to only name three verses. Therefore, if a covenant of God is a marriage in His eyes, the marriage of this parable’s son is Jesus’s New Covenant, to His bride (Mat 9:15).
Guess who the bride is. If you said the church is the bride, you are correct (Eph 5:32, 2 Cor 11:2). So far, we have defined the parable subjects of the king as the Sovereign God the Father in heaven, and the son as the Lord Jesus Christ the bridegroom. How then does His church bride fit into this parable of a sovereignly arranged marriage by the Father God in Heaven?
In this parable, those that are the servants going out to spread the king’s invitations are symbolic for those that have already believed on the Lord Jesus and are working for God as His Kingdom servants to spread the Gospel (Rom 1:1). These servants represent the bride. They are working for God to get more into the wedding. These believing ones, are going out all over the world (Mk 16:15) preaching to those that are not yet saved. The invitations being given out represent the words of the Gospel of the kingdom (Mat 4:23, Rom 1:15-16), which is the good news of the free gifts of forgiveness, healing, deliverance, and salvation.
Those that are being invited to the wedding, represents all the people that are in the world that have not heard the Gospel. Notice in Matthew 22:5, that many of these receiving the invitation make light of it and offer excuses like they did in Acts 2:13 and Acts 24:25 to name two examples of this type of world’s behavior.
Then next notice how Jesus says in Matthew 22:6 that others in the world will take more extreme hate filled positions against the Gospel good news, to even beat and kill God’s servants (Acts 5:40-41, Acts 7:51-57, Acts 8:1). God very clearly in this parable says these people that rejected His invitation would be destroyed and their city burned down, and this literally occurs for the first time in 70 A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem.
In Matthew 22:8 Jesus said, those that were invited were not deemed worthy to receive the gift of the invitation to the wedding, so the king sends out his servants again in Matthew 22:10 telling them to go out into the highways and invite everyone. This again is the great commission of the church to go into the entire gentile world to preach the Gospel to everyone that is living on the earth. This is the heart of God to save all that are receptive to the invitation.
Hopefully, you do understand this parable better now being a representation of spreading the Gospel and how this works. If not, we can read about the process in detail in Romans 10:
Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Rom 10:14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
Rom 10:15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
Please pay very close attention to the words selected by God. The first key word is “whosoever”. This represents everyone in the entire world, not just a few people that some Christians believe are the “elect” of the kingdom. This is very clearly our first confirmation that the Parable about being invited to come to the king’s son’s wedding feast is for everyone. But the choice to come is personally left completely in the hands of each one that heard the invitation to decide whether they would value the invitation, to choose to come to the wedding.
Romans 10 is a list of personal choices. None of these personal choices are the forced will of the Sovereign God. Please go and read the entire chapter. The first 4 verses are written about many people that were in the natural nation of Israel that corresponded to people that killed the kings’ servant men in the Matthew 22 parable about being invited to a wedding feast, by those that were sent to them preaching the Gospel.
But then in Romans 10:5, Paul begins to write the message of salvation is for “all”, by God’s sovereign choice to send forth the Gospel to the entire lost world and “only” those that “believe” and “confess” Jesus as Lord in Romans 10:9-10 will be saved. Wow, this is what Jesus was speaking about in the Parable. The invitations are spoken to everyone they encounter, and they must believe the good news message by faith and get dressed and go to the king’s palace for the feast (Rev 19:9).
We get the confirmation again in Romans 10:11-12 that this invitation to believe in Jesus is open to everyone in the world. Paul writes very clearly that it is to both the Jewish and the Gentile nations. This is amazing information about God’s sovereign choices and His gift of invitation is always given to anyone that will choose to come. But how do we balance this with the original “Elect” verses? That is a good question. We begin to understand the answer in Matthew 22:14, the last statement of the Parable of the wedding feast invitation:
Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.
This is our key linked verse about the sovereign election of God. First, notice the Greek word G2822, that is translated as the word “called”. This word is defined and can be translated as “invited”. Therefore, to call someone to attend is an invitation. Next, notice the Greek word that was translated as “chosen” is the exact same word G1588 that was translated as the “elect”. Change the words “called” to “invited” and the word “chosen” to “elect” and reread it. “For many are invited, but few (choose to become) “chosen”. The italicized words are legally added because this is exactly what was taught to us in the parable. The entire parable is about those that choose to receive the wedding invitation, and it is them making this choice that causes them to be called “elect” (chosen).
Now let us shift to a totally new perspective that has been almost ignored by countless ministers.
Jesus the Only One Chosen by God
This is where we are going to potentially lose more readers. But this is what the Bible teaches us when we see it. If you do not understand the subject of “covenants” this is probably why you do not understand the title of this section. A covenant is between two parties or individuals. Any covenant is a lasting bond of unity exactly as a marriage was designed to be by God in Genesis 2.
However, a marriage like God’s covenants were completely dependent upon the weakest link in the bound contract. It only takes one party of the contract to break the covenant and if there is any imperfection in one, the covenant can be easily broken. This is what happened to the natural nation of Israel for 1500+ years. They were the weakest link in their covenant with God. They repeatedly went and worshipped other idols instead of the true and living God. God called this infidelity becoming a “whore” and God divorced these people in Jeremiah 3:1-8.
However, with God, He has no imperfections and is the strongest covenant partner possible. Israel in the Old Covenant was in a contract with God almighty, but they continually broke it making them the weakest link. This is why the New Covenant was not established between God and the church directly. Instead, our Father God sent His Son named Jesus to become a human and because He was equally God, He could become the God to man mediator.
Because the New Covenant was between God the Father, and God the Son who are both manifestations of God, they will never break this New Creation covenant that was first revealed to us in Genesis 15. Therefore, this covenant is eternally bonded between two ever living beings capable of not sinning to break it and it will never end (Heb 13:20).
If you go and read this story in Genesis 15, you will find Abram taking 5 animals and splitting three of them into two pieces and he places the bodies on the ground. Abram goes to sleep and sees a “smoking furnace” and “burning torch” walking through the covenant pieces. These two symbols represent God (the all-Consuming Fire Heb 12:29) and His Son, Jesus Christ (the Light of the World, John 9:5).
This information about Jesus being the one that is in covenant with God as the human representative, is very important. This makes Jesus the only one that was “chosen” as God’s “elect”, simply because He would remain faithful even when humans fail to remain faithful. We need to establish these assertions with more scriptures that claim Jesus is the only One God has chosen to be in direct covenant with Him. We will begin with Psalms first:
Psa 89:19 Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people.
If you read the next verse, God is directly speaking of David, but by God’s repeated usages of double references between the natural and the spiritual realms, this verse is also speaking of Jesus. Remember Jesus is called the Son of David multiple times.
What God is saying is that He chose David to be King, and the future Son of David, named Jesus to sit upon his throne forever and ever in the future. Let us look at another verse that also points to the coming Messiah:
Isa 42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
God calls the future Messiah, His “elect”. This is very amazing. But was this fulfilled in Jesus? We can discover this is what the Jewish people were expecting reading in Matthew:
Mat 12:17 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
Mat 12:18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.
God writing through Matthew, claims these Isaiah patterns of Messiah were all fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, again calling Him the “chosen”. If you can see this, why are you calling yourself the chosen and elect one of God? Can both of you be the chosen one and the Messiah? The answer to that question is “Yes” and “No” but we will need to learn more. But we will look at one more verse about Jesus being the chosen one:
Luk 23:35 And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.
This is a verse written about the time Jesus was hanging on a cross and all the people were watching and mocking Him. These people wanted Him to prove that He was the Messiah by coming down off the cross. But Jesus told them very clearly, no sign will be given you, except the sign of Jonah. As Jonah was in the belly for 3 days and nights, so the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth for 3 days and 3 nights (Mat 12:40, Mat 16:4).
Do you see how these statements are moving in parallel to the prophecy of the wedding invitation parable? Yes, the parable is a prophecy about what is happening to Jesus. These Jewish leaders hated Jesus so very much, that they incited a riot mob to demand His death, but this was the plan of God all along.
The main point from Luke 23:35, proves that the Jewish population was expecting the “Chosen one of God, called Messiah” to appear, and Jesus did not match their expectations because of their ignorance of the scriptures. Most were seeing a “conquering Messiah”, while ignoring the “suffering Messiah” in Isaiah 53. Finally, we are going to talk about the church next and all the references that call us “elect”, “chosen”, etc.
How and When was the Church Chosen?
We have observed verses in the Bible that place the titles of “chosen” and “elect” upon Christians, and this is a great hidden mystery to the how and when we were given these names. How did the church achieve this title, if God’s Son Jesus was the one that He prophesied would be chosen? The answer is not that complicated, but it may be resisted because some have never heard of it before. Let us look at scriptures that reveal how we made a choice that qualified us to be chosen by God:
2Th 2:13 But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:
As we can plainly see, the church was “chosen” from the very beginning. The beginning of what? Is this the beginning of time, creation, the world, the church, or what? In Ephesians 1:4 we find where God has chosen the church before the foundation of the world. Therefore, this is long before humans existed and could go back to the beginning of time, and creation. So, we have established the “when” this plan to elect us was established.
Now for the “How” question. We have previously mentioned this reason of “how” it was planned to be accomplished for us to obtain being called His “elect”. But now we are seeing it from a God perspective teaching us how we became chosen even before we were created. Please recall the “wedding invitation” parable of Jesus because this is being restated and expanded here in this verse written to the church.
God writing by the hand of Paul to the church says very clearly, we have been “chosen” to (receive) salvation because God sanctified us (made pure) by His Spirit, and this occurred because we chose to believe God’s words (invitation) which was the (Gospel) truth. Wow! This is just further confirmation that what we did to receive and believe caused God to cleanse our sins and define us as His “chosen”. But this is further confirmed in the next verse that follows:
2Th 2:14 Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here is just more of the confirming process of what we just read about in verse 13. Remember this was God’s sovereignly chosen process for our salvation, that was planned even before the world began. Did you notice the word “called”? Paul says very clearly that God “called” (literally invited) us by our choice to hear the Gospel. This is the same parallel that we have been observing from the parable of the “wedding invitation”.
God has again connected the facts of Romans 10 with the parable of the wedding invitation to how we have been chosen to be called God’s “elect”. To be called God’s “elect” was designed by Him for us to first qualify to be called this by any human hearing the preached good news Gospel and to believe it. Yes, there is more to it than just that over simplified statement, but that is the basis for all salvation. Let us investigate this a little further to confirm it is true:
Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
This is a new way to say the same things that we have already learned. But specifically notice the new revelation that is being offered to us to help explain what is happening when we choose to believe the Gospel of Christ. This very plainly states that Christians were “chosen” only because we were placed “In Him” and this Him, is Christ Jesus. But remember who Him is again? He is the “chosen” one that God could depend upon to keep His eternal covenant. This is why we need to be placed “In Him” spiritually, to insure we never break the covenant by sinning.
Again, God says this was His designed plan of salvation before humans were even created. We must get a hold of what is being taught to us and what God has done to us and for us.
2Co 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (creation): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
This is one of the many (over 150) verses that claim we as believers have been placed “in Christ” by God’s sovereign choice after we choose to believe. Based upon the number of verses that describe this reality, this appears to be a major accomplishment to achieve our “salvation”.
Why was being placed “In Christ” so essential to God’s plan of salvation? This is important for at least two reasons. The first reason is that we were all “In Adam” when he rebelled and sold us into Satan’s kingdom of darkness. Because we were “In Adam” when he sinned, we all sinned, and we were all given the same “death” penalty (1 Cor 15:22).
But by believing in Jesus through faith we were saved out of the darkness of death to be placed “in” the living kingdom of God’s dear Son called Light (Col 1:13). Wow, now reread 2 Corinthians 5:17 to see the new light that is shining upon us being placed in Christ. According to this verse God has caused us to become a brand new, and a never existed before creation that has also made us a completely new person “In Christ”.
It is this sovereign new creation, that places us “In Him” by faith, that is the chief part of God separating Himself and us from the evil influence of Lucifer/Satan and all his angels that have sinned. Let us consider a verse that maybe some have not understood before now:
Joh 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
Notice what Jesus is saying here. He is claiming to be a “door” for someone that is going somewhere. In John 10:7 we find that He is saying that He is the door for the “sheep” and being a “sheep” is a symbol for the saved Christians. What is Jesus saying them? Could it be that to be saved, you better enter in this door named Jesus? Could this be another way of saying that by us choosing to “enter” Christ the door, we will be saved by being “in CHRIST”? I believe it is. There are too many verses that confirm what we are learning, but we will end this section with this one:
Rom 16:13 Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine.
As you can see Paul writing about a random saved man in the church name Rufus, confirms again that anyone in the church is also chosen by God in the same way of choosing to enter the door of salvation named Jesus Christ. Because we that are saved, have chosen to get out of (exit) the first Adam and enter into the Christ by faith, we were all chosen and have become His elect “in Christ”. We accomplished this, not because we were God’s individual choice that was chosen for our personal salvation, but rather it was because we chose Him by believing the invitation of the Gospel, then we were placed “In Him” who was “the Chosen”. Wow! Praise the Lord!
Resolving Scripture Conflicts for Being Called “Elect”
There are countless scriptures in the New Covenant writings that conflict with a “sovereign God election” theological position where only a few people will be saved by a God only sovereign choice. If there were only 2 or 3, that would be enough to raise serious concerns that somebody was in error. But because there are literally dozens of verses, that is too many to ignore. We will only select a few to help limit the size of this lesson.
There must be a balanced approach to interpreting every scripture that God inspired to be written to ensure any confidence that we have found His intended truth. Remember according to God in 2 Peter 1:20, there is no private interpretation of the Bible that is allowed. This simply teaches us that the Bible will always interpret itself.
Also, it is impossible for God to lie, therefore, if we find any apparent contradictions in scripture, we are in need to hear from God to find how to resolve the conflicts using His Word as the only solution source. To do this we will apply what we have learned in the other sections to find out how they resolve the dispute with the “Sovereign God” only salvation belief.
It is only this interpretation of scripture about a human acceptance and belief in a divine invitation, that balances with all the other verses of the Bible on this subject of being called “elect” to represent our union with God’s plan of “salvation”. This was sovereignly chosen for us to believe in what He has done, to be placed in Christ, His chosen one. Here are just a few verses that would directly contradict with only a select few humans being chosen to be saved and all others in the world rejected to go to hell by God’s will:
Joh 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
This is the most popular verse in the entire Bible, and more Christian can quote this verse than any of the others. Yet this verse contradicts with the sovereign God only choice of human salvation. God says very plainly that He loved the entire human race in the world and wanted to save them all. But again, we see the problem it is only for those that “believe” the invitation of the Gospel that will not perish. Belief is a sovereign human choice. This again confirms that only that choose to believe that become the “elect”. Check out this verse:
2Pe 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
First, notice that God is called “long-suffering”, this is a divine characteristic of God. It strongly suggests that God is still waiting for humans to “come” to not perish. This places the responsibility for humans not perishing upon those that choose to repent, and not God.
Also, notice that this verse says, God is not willing that any should perish. Why then if God is sovereign, isn’t everyone saved? If God is waiting for some to repent, this means, they were not first chosen either. If we believe that it is God’s will that he has “chosen” some to go to hell, this makes this verse totally false. It is a major conflict of too many scriptures to believe in only a select few that are chosen by God for salvation, and God is not the one that is confused and needs to change His Word. Therefore, it can only be some Christians that have not seen God’s truth that need to change.
1Ti 4:10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.
God is very clear in this verse that it was His desired intention to save “All humans”. But then God clarifies that it is only those that “believed” the Gospel invitation that will be saved. This is only what fits the parable of the Wedding Invitation. In this parable, the king’s servants went out to invite “everyone”. But it was only those that chose to receive the invitation that went into the wedding feast for the king’s son. Remember many were “called”, but few chose to attend to be called the “elect”.
Rom 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
There are too many verses to include them all that say the same thing. This verse claims “whoever” calls on the name of the LORD will be saved. So, either God is forcing someone chosen to call upon Him, or humans have the choice to call and if they do, they will be saved and chosen of God as His “elect” being placed “in Christ”.
Conclusion
Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible here with us. We are a fast-growing family of believers that are hungry to know and learn the truth. If you are struggling to believe this lesson over your teachings of your denominational doctrines, it is strongly suggested for you to study the subject of “Human Freewill”. Go through the Bible and look for verses where God gave humans’ choices. Notice the first human choice sovereignly given, was to Adam eating from two selected trees. One choice brought Adam life, and the other choice brought Adam death. Adam disobeyed God and chose death, and we all died because of it.
There are so many verses that represent choices being sovereignly given by God to humans in the Bible that they should overwhelm you and help overcome your sovereign only belief that God is forcing all human decisions. There is a great need to balance the sovereign God given human freedoms to choose, with His desire to save everyone, and potentially your belief that He only selected some to be called His “elect”.
What we should have learned today, is that God gave us choices to make. He has sent His servants and His Son to make a way of salvation out of the automatic penalty of death and hell. We accept this way out of the world, by hearing about His Good News (Gospel) invitation to come to the wedding of His Son. Here is another example of God’s two choices being offered:
Deu 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
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:
God has placed a binary choice before every human of two possibilities and outcomes. One is a human choice for life and good by accepting His invitation, and the other is a choice for death and evil by rejecting His invitation. Could it be any simpler? You can live by believing and saying the right words.
Pro 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Yes, this verse is true and is literal. There is nothing misleading in the verse. It is plainly stated and is accurate to the infinite degree. Please don’t ignore it anymore. Memorize it and think about it every chance you get. Then apply it to your life. By us believing the Gospel we can do what God has invited us to do and be saved from our death to live eternally “with Him”, “In Him” and “Him in us” as part of His creation strategic plan of salvation:
Rom 10:8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
Rom 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Rom 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
These are not difficult instructions for beginning your journey of salvation if you have never done this. If you do this for the first time, please leave a comment and this will help place you on the path with the Lord as your lead Shepherd to help you and guide you each and every day. Jesus is the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:14) and He said, “if you confess me, before men, I will confess you before my Father” (Mat 10:32). This is why it is important to leave a comment before the world, to read.
What we have learned is that God has sovereignly chosen the method of salvation, but not the ones that were to be selected. Yes, God is all knowing, all seeing, and understands the end from the beginning. Therefore, He knows who will be saved and who will not. But this does not mean that He chose them to be that way. God has sent out His servants with a wedding invitation to the entire world. Therefore, every human must make their own choices to attend. If you are too busy for Him, you may regret this decision, eternally. However, God wants a bride that wants Him as much as He wants you, not one that is forced to be with Him.
Thank you and again, and we will pray for you all. Jesus could be coming back any day now. Hopefully you are all prepared and ready to meet Him. When this coming occurs this will be when the bridegroom Jesus, comes and gets all of those that accepted the invitation to the “wedding feast” and have made themselves ready by putting on His wedding garment of the “Robe of Righteousness”. This will take place in heaven for seven years. Ready or not it will happen much sooner than you think. God Bless you.
If you would like to read the next lesson, select “Part 3“.
Bible Answers: Understanding Spirits – What is Spirit Life and Spirit Death – Do Babies in the Womb that Die Go to Heaven?
(Ver 1.1) This is a Bible response to some awesome reader questions, concerning spiritual life and death. This may be one of the most important Bible lessons you can find on this website. There are too many Christians that are unlearned in spiritual basic truths. It is interesting that there has been growing number of unsaved people in the world that know more than a lot of Christians about spirits, but primarily the evil spirit Satan. There has been a growing worship of evil spirits, but my God is greater than all of these.
Christians today, need to know and understand that they are a “spirit” first and a human body “last”. This helps us identify and change our priority of focus. We also need to know our enemy is a “spirit” also and this helps us know how to deal with Satan. But most importantly we need to know about the Greatest and Most High Spirit that is God who created us all and trust Him to help us get through all of life’s unplanned events. Therefore, the reason for this Bible lesson.
A certain reader asks some very deep and relevant questions concerning the meaning of spiritual life and death. Here were the basic questions:
- Where does the human spirit come from?
- Is there “spirit life” in a human, and if so,
- When does spirit life begin?
- Is there “spirit death” and, what is it?
- and if spirit death exists, when did or does it occur?
From these questions about spirit life and death, we can also derive some other fundamental implied questions that many Christians are asking about today. There are countless numbers of women and men today that have known or personally experienced the death of an unborn child. Whether this was the intentional murder of the child through abortion, or an unintended miscarriage or other unexpected birth complication, we are going to answer these and other questions using only the Bible, which is the Word of God (Mat 4:4), also called the Word of Truth (2 Cor 6:7). Here are the applicable questions that come from the reader’s questions that will also be answered today:
- “Does a child that died in the womb, have a spirit?”
- “Was a child that died in the womb or out of the womb spiritually alive?”
- “Does a child’s spirit that died naturally or was killed intentionally, go to heaven or to hell, or just cease to exist?”
These are all great and thoughtful questions. It must be stated first that I do not desire to give my thoughts, or opinions on anything of this extreme importance, if possible. I will try to avoid sharing my thoughts because my opinions are as worthless as anyone else’s. However, I will share what the Spirit of God has taught me about this subject today based upon the Word of God.
I will also share with everyone at least one key God life experience. This relevant experience is the fact that my wife had a miscarriage over 30 years ago. This was a traumatic unexpected experience for us both. This occurred at a time when I had felt like the LORD had said He would give us another child. My wife had a difficult and drawn-out time of not getting pregnant. But it finally came to pass, and we both felt happy that God had answered.
However, an unexpected miscarriage was a shocking and saddening surprise. There is not much anyone can do once the conceived baby passes and is lost. This pregnancy had ended. It took years of Bible study and listening to the Holy Spirit to try to figure out what had happened and if we would ever see this child again.
It was only in the last few years that God gave me a dream about this loss. I saw a vision of this child in heaven. I saw it was a little girl. From this dream we can have confidence that children that die prematurely can be assured to be seen again in heaven.
However, this night vision while it was a great reassuring comfort, is not sufficient evidence and still must be further confirmed by what God has already taught us from His Word. Therefore, today we will use the Word of God to be assured and confident that unborn children go to heaven, and not by us just experiencing a night vision only. If you are ready to learn what the Word of God says on this essential subject concerning understanding spirits, and their life and death, let us open our Bibles and study.
Introduction to Spirit Basics
We will begin learning the spiritual basics with the straightforward question, “Are spirits eternal”? We will begin to understand this answer by first observing God’s revealed Spirit characteristics:
Joh 4:24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
The most fundamental truth about God is found in this verse of John. Here it is revealed that God is a “Spirit”. This establishes the foundation for knowing all other truths about God. This means God before creating the natural universe in Genesis 1:1, existed only in an unseen Spirit form and dimension.
But this verse also establishes that humans must worship God in spirit and in truth. This is your first clue that humans have a spirit, but it also reveals a lot of humans are not aware enough to know about their own spirit. Now let us look at the revealed nature of God’s Spirit:
Psa 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
This is a very plainly stated verse that God existed before the universe was created and will still be God after it. Therefore, God is clearly described to have existed from everlasting to everlasting, claiming God Spirit is an eternal Spirit. This is very logical to understand because time was not created until Genesis 1:1 also. But we will look at another verse to confirm His eternal existence:
1Ti 1:17 Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
We have now observed references from both the Hebrew Old Covenant and the Greek New Covenant that the Spirit of God is eternal. This means God’s Spirit will never cease to exist. It also implies that God’s Spirit has no beginning nor any ending. Therefore, we learn it is impossible for God’s Spirit to cease to exist, die a death, or to be destroyed.
Hence, we have established a basic truth about the Creator God of the heaven and the earth being an everlasting Spirit, without beginning and without end. But this is different apparently from all other spirits that are mentioned in the Bible. This is because the Bible reveals to us that humans and angels have a single point of origination that causes their existence.
Whether we call this a spirit birth (Jn 3:3), or a spirit creation event (Deu 4:32), or some other term, these types of spirit beginnings certainly happened. We will now continue with the “first man” named Adam and when and where his spirit came from.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Let us establish a few other essential spirit basics on this subject from Genesis. The Eternal Spirit of God formed the physical body of Adam from the dirt of the ground. Then as we can observe in Genesis 2, God breathed into the nostrils the “breath” of life and the man became a living soul (Gen 2:7). From these stated truths we learn the body of man was made and formed from pre-existing created red “clay” soil before there was a spirit or life present in the body.
God says very specifically that man’s body was “formed” from this previously created earth substance. The Hebrew word H3335 translated as “formed” describes the work of a “potter” that is squeezing wet clay to make Adam’s human form. This means this work of God was extremely personal and hands on. It also demonstrates divine artistic design and composition.
Even modern science can find and name the basic dirt-like characteristics of the human body. Just some of the significant elements found in the human body are elements like “oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorous”. But there are also found trace elements of minerals like iron, iodine, zinc, fluoride, selenium, copper, chromium, etc. All these elements and minerals can be found in basic earth composition. Yet none of it is “alive” in and of themselves alone. Uh oh!
Therefore, after completion of forming Adam’s body from dirt, he only had a lifeless human shell that had no spirit or any ability to live. We know from reading James 2:7, “that the human body without the spirit is dead”. Therefore, the body of Adam was a lifeless corpse until God breathed into him a spirit that came from God’s breath (Spirit)!
This Hebrew word H5397 translated as “breathed” is a word that comes from a root word meaning “to blow” as exhaling a strong wind of air. This is difficult for some to comprehend since God is not a man (Num 23:19) that has natural lungs to exhale from. Also, as we have seen He is clearly described to be only a Spirit in John 4:24. Therefore, we can easily conclude that Adam’s “life” source and his internal “spirit” came from the eternal Spirit of God.
In fact, Adam’s blood also came from this breathing out of the Spirit of God. How do we know Adam’s blood came from God? We can know this for several reasons, but we will begin by knowing that it was necessary for the “Blood of God” in the body of Jesus, hanging on a cross, that was required to pay for the sins of humans.
God says in Hebrews that it was impossible for the blood of created bulls and goats to pay the debt of man’s sins (Heb 10:4). This verse proves that sinless created animal blood was not sufficient payment for the debt of human sin. This literally means man’s blood was of a much higher value than all other created beings and can only point us to Adam’s blood having come from God.
This fact makes the redemption of humans a very costly purchase price as we can read in 1 Peter 1:19. This verse says that our redemption required the precious blood of Jesus to buy us back, indicating the loss that was given away when the first Adam sinned, was of such great value to God, that it was enough for Him to die personally for us to get us back. This fact demonstrates God’s immense love for His created human children.
The second reason we know Adam’s blood was from God is found in Leviticus 17:11. In this verse of the Law, God reveals the life of the flesh is in the “blood”. Therefore, if Adam had no life before God breathed into his nostrils a spirit, he also had no blood, or he would have been alive already, like all other created animals. You do understand that no other created animals have a spirit? Not a fish, not a bird, and no other land mammal has a spirit. Nothing was made in the likeness and image of God except for “man” (Genesis 1:26). This simply means Adam was not created like animals and that both the “spirit” and the “blood” had to enter Adam’s body for scripture to be truthful.
The third reason is the name that God gave to “Adam”. This name is comprised of three Hebrew alphabet letters. The first is the letter “Alef” and in the ancient Hebrew lettering is an image of an ox, a strong symbol of God. The next two Hebrews letters is the combined “Dalet” + “Mem”. These two letters spell the Hebrew word we translate as “blood”. Therefore, combining these meanings, we have the hidden message from God that Adam means “God’s blood”. Wow! That is amazing!
What we have just discovered is that Adam’s spirit originated as a gift from God. Without God there would have been no life in the formed body of the man. Therefore, what kind of life did Adam have in his spirit after creation? It had to be God’s sinless Spirit that held His nature of eternal life, the man being made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). God is also perfect in purity and holiness (1 Pet 1:16), and this was also transferred to Adam by God’s Spirit breath. This was God’s original design for man and as we know after Adam “sinned” this caused a new problem for God to solve.
We have quickly established the human beginning of the first man was God giving Adam, His own life, spirit, and blood. But let us now look at some verses concerning an angelic beginning point next:
Eze 28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
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.
Eze 28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
These are an essential set of verses to learn and know. They are written by a prophet of God, that viewed some long past ancient events that transpired before humans were created. These verses are speaking of only one angel in particular named “Lucifer” who is further described in Isaiah 14. This description reveals this being was angelic in nature, being called an anointed “Cherub” in verse 14. This being was certainly created as revealed in verses 13 and 15. We have discovered angels were created. This information teaches us clearly that angels were not in the eternal everlasting past, like God’s Spirit was. But rather that they were also created beings with a very specific beginning point, like the first man Adam. We have confirmed that Adam had a spirit, so now let us confirm angels are also spirit beings:
Heb 1:13 But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?
Heb 1:14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
This verse teaches us that angels were created by God to have “spirits” and that they were designed by God to minister to those that are heirs of salvation. Therefore, these angelic beings have spirits. But what about a physical body like the created man? Are they bodiless or do they have an everlasting physical body housing their spirit? If they have a body, are they everlasting or are they mortal, like man?
This would take a lot to answer these questions completely. But please understand that angels do have physical bodies. We know this because of several stories found in the Bible. For example, please see what Psalms 78:24-25 says. In this verse God claims the manna that He sent down from heaven for the children of Israel to eat in the wilderness was made from heavenly corn that God called angel food. If humans and angels can eat the same bread, this shows us that they are both designed with very similar body types. Therefore, there are important similarities and differences to the bodies of angels and humans and they both were designed as internal “spirit” containers.
Hopefully we will confirm whether these created human and angelic “spirits” have an ending point soon. But for now, the assumption appears to teach us that man and angel spirits have no ending of their spiritual life/existence since their spirits came from God the Eternal Creator Father of spirits (Heb 12:9).
Let us now shift to a very important new subject within our main subject of “spirits”, called “sin” and find its effect upon angels and humans. We will begin with the subject of angel spirits first because they existed before human spirits. If you did not know this fact, it is revealed to us in Job 38:7. In this verse God reveals when the earth and heaven was created, “the morning star sang (Lucifer) and the sons of God (angels) all shouted for joy”. Notice what God writes to us about Lucifer in the account of Ezekiel:
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
This verse reveals when Lucifer was created (began to spiritually exist and be alive in a body), he was absolutely created as perfect and without flaws. But then God writes “iniquity” was found and this was a major problem for God, causing God to speak some very profound prophecies.
Eze 28:16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
This is an amazing verse of information concerning Lucifer the created anointed cherub. Notice this verse further names him to be a “sinner” that is filled with violence. But God then begins to reveal His plans for this angel. God says, “I will cast you out as profane out of the “mountain” of God. First understand “mountains are significant symbols for governments, like God’s Heavenly Kingdom”. Therefore, God is prophesying the future removal of Satan (Lucifer turned into God’s adversary named Satan) to be cast down and out from the Kingdom of God.
This is your first clue to the concept of spirit “separation”. This would be defined as God removing a sinner from His Holy presence. Whenever God says He will cast Lucifer out, indicates that this means this will be a coming event, and that it did not happen instantly when Lucifer sinned. This also strongly implies to us that Lucifer has a right to be in God’s presence for him to be forcibly cast out. Why would God allow Lucifer to stay in His presence? Here is one potential good reason:
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.
Here we find Lucifer being described to be covered with stones. These 9 stones mentioned can be found on the High Priest’s breastplate that Moses made for God’s earthly tabernacle. This strongly implies Lucifer was the High Priest of the Heavenly temple. If you did not know there was a heavenly temple, please take the time to read the book of Hebrews. God plainly states that Moses’ temple was patterned after the heavenly one.
Just this information alone implies a lot. First there is never a mention of Satan ever being “destroyed” as in our definition of obliterated never to exist. The Hebrew word in Ezekiel 28:16 that is translated as “destroy” is “H6” and this word simply means to be “separated from”. In fact, this Hebrew word is spelled “Alef” + “Beyt” + “Dalet” and placing the ancient Hebrew letter meanings together appear to say to us “God’s House has a “Door”. This door in God’s house swings two ways. One way is for an “Entrance” and the other way is for an “Exit”. Guess which way Satan is headed for in the end?
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
Isa 14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
Isa 14:14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
Isa 14:15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
Wow! We are seeing the prophecy that was written over 2500 years ago about the soon coming prophesied “end of Satan”. However, pay attention there is no prophesied death ending (as in cease to exist) speaking of this created angel. God is rather only speaking of Lucifer about to “be separated” from the Kingdom of God. When we say “soon” this is potentially a point of confusion because God teaches us this ultimate end won’t happen for at least another 1000+ years. Read about it in Revelation 20:
Rev 20:2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
Rev 20:3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
Rev 20:7 And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,
Rev 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
As we can observe from these selected verses the “spirit” named “Lucifer”, “Satan”, “the serpent”, “the Dragon”, and “the devil” is eventually and totally going to be separated from the “Kingdom of God” forever and ever. This verse 10 confirms angelic spirits live forever, without any way for God to kill them. Thus, spirits once created, live forever!
This is our first clue to finding the definition to what “spiritual death” is to God. What we are learning is that angel spirits that have sinned will be permanently separated from all other spirits being thrown into a “pit” as God said would happen in Isaiah 14.
Please take notice that according to scripture there are at least 1/3 of the angels that have followed Satan. These are rebellious, evil, and appear unrepentant. Therefore, God needed a way to separate Himself being Holy and Pure. This strongly indicates that there is no salvation for the sins of angels probably because they had and have no “blood”.
Remember Adam was created with “blood” intentionally by God’s planned design and purpose. There is no mention of angels having blood in the Bible that we know of. We also know after Jesus was “resurrected” from the dead, His eternal physical body housed His Spirit which returned His physical life, and this body only had flesh and bone (Lk 24:39) and was absent of blood becoming like the angels (Mat 22:30).
Yet please notice in the Bible that there is also no immediate separation from God mentioned for their vast sins. We could explain why this is in great detail, but it would take too much detailed information for this lesson. However, we need to mention a few things to prove this to help us understand that even fallen angels can approach God’s presence even until today. We know this first because we can read the book of Job:
Job 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
Job 1:7 And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
We have already seen where the “sons of God” sang for joy when the world was created in Job 38:7. Therefore these beings called the “sons of God” are the created angels. This knowledge helps to understand Job 1:6 much clearer.
Job 1:6 says there was a “day” when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD. The LORD is a governmental authority title for God as the Supreme Judge. Notice that Satan is in this massive presence of angels also and the LORD directs all His words to Satan. This again strongly indicates that Lucifer is the chief or head priest of the heavenly group of living beings.
This is amazing information. Please recall that Lucifer has already committed sins, rebelled against God, and has 1/3 of the angels under his authority. This means all these heavenly angels are in the presence of God as a preplanned event and that after sin, there was no casting down of any of them because they are moving back and forth from the earth as Satan mentions in verse 7 and we can read about in Genesis 28:12 where God describes a ladder that allows movement from heaven to earth.
But let us look at the time after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It is a fact that Jesus defeated Satan when He was crucified and was raised from the dead. But I have heard a lot of preachers claim that this means Satan no longer has access to go back to heaven for any reason. But this teaching violates and contradicts other verses that teach us differently:
Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
Rev 12:8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Rev 12:10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
These are some of the most important verses you can learn about Satan’s soon coming demise and ejection from heaven. These verses have NOT occurred and will not occur until after the rapture. In Revelation 4:1 the voice from heaven told John to come up here, so that he could be shown things that would happen here after. This confirms this chapter 12 happens after chapter 4 and it is happening during the 7-year tribulation.
The first thing in Revelation 12:7 we find a spiritual war taking place between Michael and his angels, and Satan and his angels. Satan is unable to prevail in this war and he and all his angels are cast down. Sound familiar? This is the prophesied removal of Satan being cast down from heaven and the Kingdom of God and in verse 8, God says very clearly “Now was their place and position in heaven ended”.
Verse 10 confirms this by saying “Now has come salvation, and strength, and the Kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ”. Wow, that is an amazing statement about the final defeat of Satan. Do you remember reading in Hebrews 1:13 where God says to Jesus, “sit at my right hand until I make your enemies, your footstool”. Apparently, Jesus while defeating Satan, is still awaiting a coming time while seated in heaven for every enemy to be placed “underfoot”. Guess when this occurs. We are reading about it right now in Revelation 12!
But the main reason we are here is because of how verse 10 ends. This is the final confirmation that Satan has access today in heaven. This ending verse clearly states, “for the accuser of our brethren, is cast down, which accused them before our God, day and night”. This is a literal statement about a spirit being named Lucifer going to heaven to accuse Christian brothers and sisters on a 24-hour basis. This heavenly visitation continues until he is cast down permanently.
Therefore, we have observed a lot essential Bible truths about angel spirits from just these few verses.
- Angels are created “spirit” beings having a physical body.
- Angelic bodies have no blood, are not mortal and do not die.
- Angels and humans can eat the same food.
- The angelic spirit also does not die or cease to exist.
- Sin had no immediate consequence for removal of angels from heaven. We see this from Satan appearing before God in Job 1, and we see this again in Revelation 12 when Satan is finally cast down to the earth after accusing Christians day and night before God for at least 2000 years.
- There is coming a single appointed time of separation from God for all sinful angelic beings.
We have only touched on this subject but have established the basic facts on angel spirits. Therefore, let us analyze the sin effect and consequences upon Adam and all humans next.
What happened when Adam sinned? Let us first go to Genesis 2 and notice what caused Adam to sin and why there were any consequences at all:
Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
God has just given man a “law” from a spoken commandment to not eat from a tree called “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. If this “law” of commandment is broken, God says in the same day you eat you will die. Uh oh! What kind of death is God speaking of? Hopefully, you do understand that there are “two” kinds of death mentioned in the Bible.
But before we go to this part of our lesson, let us discover, what God says happens to the “spirits” of men and women that experience natural death on the earth? Do they cease to exist? Or do they remain eternal like the Spirit of God and angels. We will learn this answer from reading a real story that Jesus taught us about spiritual life after physical death.
Luk 16:19 There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:
Luk 16:20 And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,
Luk 16:21 And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
Luk 16:22 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
Luk 16:23 And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
Luk 16:24 And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
Luk 16:25 But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
Luk 16:26 And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
Luk 16:27 Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house:
Luk 16:28 For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
Luk 16:29 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.
Luk 16:30 And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
Luk 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Please do not show your ignorance and be foolish to leave us a comment that this is a “parable” and does not teach us anything about life after death. That is a deception and a lie from Satan to believe that. This is a literal real story of three men that lived upon the earth and died a natural death.
Two of these men have real names. Remember that Jesus never said this was a parable, and if He uses real names in a story and if it is not truthful, this makes Jesus a liar and God does not lie! Therefore, this story literally happened and is a warning to everyone to what could happen to them.
As you can see, the story is about a real man who was a beggar named Lazarus who sat outside another unnamed real rich man’s house. This beggar was in very poor health and appears to be completely disregarded and ignored by the rich man living well inside the house.
Lazarus died and his body was buried, but his spirit departs the earth to go down into an underground area which is called “Abraham’s bosom”. “Abraham” appears to be chief resident in charge in this area before Jesus died on the cross. There are good Bible reasons in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 to name two references that give us clues to why Abraham is of such importance to God and even us, now after Christ died.
However, notice the facts about the rich man after he died physically on the earth. His spirit also descended the surface of the earth, but he was not in Abraham’s realm of temporary existence. He makes the direct claim that he was in a place of fire and torment and even desired for Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger into a drop of water to cool his tongue.
Wow, if this story does not scare you into turning your life over to Jesus, there are no other ones in the Bible that are as graphic and plain. What we clearly discover from this real story is that “human” spirits live forever. But there are two direct after-life possibilities of eternal existence. One is a spiritual life after our natural death in an eternal torture in fire, and the other is an eternal life in a place Jesus called “paradise” to the thief that was hanging next to Him on the cross (Lk 23:43).
Also please notice that Abraham claims these two after-life realms of existence, are completely “divided” apart from each other and there is no traveling between them available. This is exactly what we saw was happening in the story of Lucifer and his destined dwelling in a pit. The pit is not the location of the Kingdom of God. These are just some of the basics of human spiritual existence. Let us review:
- The human spirit has a spirit origination point.
- Despite what some people try to teach, the human spirit is not “reincarnated” from a prior existence.
- From God’s description of the first man Adam, this human spirit origination appears to come from God’s Spirit
- Also, we have found that human spirits, like angels, have no ending point where they cease to exist or die.
There are many verses that teach us that spirits do not cease consciousness or existence. For example, Paul when speaking of his soon physical death, claimed for him to be absent from his body, is to be present with the risen from the dead eternal Lord Jesus in heaven (2 Corinthians 5:8).
However, we have also seen where human spirits that are alive forever, have two potential destination points for eternal existence after physical death. This appears to be divided into one group figuratively called the “sheep” versus the other opposite group called the “goats” (Mat 25:33).
We have not yet confirmed anything that is called “spiritual death” so far in this lesson. We have only established something called “spiritual separation” after natural death. But this is going to get a lot more interesting as we continue to learn what the Bible says. Let us go and explore the subject of the human spirit’s origination next. This should be very interesting.
Where do Spirits Come From?
This is probably one of the more difficult questions to answer. But God does give us clues in the Bible to help us understand enough to draw a sound conclusion. For example, the Bible strongly indicates by omission, that before the creation of angels and humans, there were no other spirits that were admitted existing, at least that we can find easily in the text. This fact alone points us to God as the source of all “spirits”. Therefore, the first clue given to us by God is that he chooses to write “no clue” about the existence of any other spirits. But there are also other relevant clues.
Clue number two, we can clearly read about the creation of the first man and see plainly that Adam’s spirit originated from the “breath” of God being blown into him. This is another direct reference that spirits come from God’s Spirit. Therefore, we have two witnesses that teach us the source of spirits can only be God. If you can find any contradictory verses that claim otherwise, please feel free to share them and we will look at their truth and application to our subject.
Next, we can read a New Testament verse that also indicates God to be the source of spirits. Let us turn to the book of Hebrews and read this:
Heb 12:9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
As you should be able to see and understand, this verse is a contrasting comparison between two father types. The first father mentioned concerns “fathers of our flesh”. This of course the male that contributed the sperm to form a child in the female womb. This father is a totally natural reference, but it is amazing what it says and does not say.
For example, this verse does not give the sperm contributor any involvement in the baby’s spirit existence. In fact, it completely refutes the baby’s spirit coming from the natural father based upon a comparison to God who is a Spirit (John 4:23) and He is being called the “Father of spirits”. This statement implies “ALL” spirits come from God the Father of spirits.
Therefore, we have two types of “fathers”, one is physical, and the other is spiritual. We can also take note of words that Jesus spoke in John 3:6 when speaking with a natural man about a new birth that has been prophesied. In this verse Jesus said, “That which is born of flesh, is flesh and that which is born of spirit, is spirit”. While this statement does not attribute the spirit origination being from God, it clearly says a spirit can only create a spirit. That sounds important and this confirms that since God was the only known Spirit to exist before any creation takes place, He is the only Father that can point us to their existence. This also helps us understand why angels are called the ‘sons of God” in the Old Testament.
These concepts are confirmed in another reference found in 1 Corinthians:
1Co 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.
1Co 15:46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
1Co 15:47 The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.
This is a potential new controversy. The Greek word translated as “soul” in verse 45 has a larger scope definition than just a “spirit”. From this Greek word G5590 (psuche) we get the English word “psyche” having the synonyms “spirit”, “soul”, “mind”, “ego”, “essence”, etc. This Greek word has its roots in a word meaning to “blow”, and this simply means exhaling of breath, or to breathe. Therefore, the word “G5590”, figuratively means to have “life” and this goes along with Genesis 2:7, “Adam became a living soul after the breath of God entered the formed earth made body”.
Ok, we are going to quickly give an overview of the triune nature of man for the ever-increasing numbers of new readers and subscribers. Every human is a spirit, has a soul, and lives in a body (1 Ths 5:23). If there is breath in this body, there is physical life and there is access for the unseen internal spirit to communicate with God and the created world simultaneously. If the spirit leaves the physical body, the body is dead and natural communication with physical people ceases and that is not a good situation for those that have not given their lives to God to believe in His Son Jesus Christ. We will get into this more soon because this is what God is calling “spiritual death” as in the process of separation.
What we are learning is the first Adam was a human body created from dirt, and then a spirit was given to him by God, and this caused the combined spirit, soul, and body to be a natural living human able to communicate in two realms. We can see this very clearly in Genesis 2 and 3 when Adam is speaking with and listening to God’s spirit voice, and later he also hears his wife’s natural voice, confirming two realms of communications were taking place simultaneously.
This has only been a quick overview of this part of the subject of where spirits come from. But from all these clues given to us, God appears to be the only viable and powerful enough source to create all spirits, whether human or angelic. This would be a good time to mention that there are no new angels being created that we can easily find in the Bible. But we know humans are having new babies every day. Therefore, there are still potential new spirits being created today. Let us move into this part of the lesson next and speak about babies that have spirits.
Baby Human Spirits
We need to go and find specific verses concerning naturally born babies on the earth that came out of the loins of the first created man Adam. Here are the basic questions that need answers:
- Where do human baby spirits come from?
- When is their spirit present? a. before birth or b. after birth?
- Are baby spirits alive or dead (separated from God)?
- If the Baby physically died before birth, do they go to heaven or hell?
- If the Baby physically died after birth, do they go to heaven or hell?
These are a lot of great questions. Does God answer them? The answer is “Yes”. God anticipated every question a human could conceive and places the answers somewhere for us to find in His Word. Are you ready? We will address the questions next.
When is the Spirit Present in a Conceived Baby?
This is a very important part of this topic that Satan does not want you to know about. Satan using cooperating humans living in the darkness of this world, has dehumanized conceptions in the womb, calling them just a blob of tissue and flesh. They have placed upon a real child, the degrading term of calling them just a generic “fetus”. This term causes a desensitized removal of thought that they are a child with an identity and personality that can be named, and that they have no “life” that can be killed.
This plan of Satan facilitates an access way for removing an unwanted pregnancy and makes the decision easier to agree with. This attempts to remove human guilt or regret for eliminating the created growing child and permits a reduction of shame and any temporary pain of conscience. This is where they have killed millions of children in the world convincing people this is not a child, but is this the TRUTH?
This is absolutely, not the TRUTH, and God speaks to this issue over and over and over in His Word. Even modern science is afraid of the TRUTH getting out. They have 3-dimensional sonograms today that show all the details of the new human and their life, a heart that beats, movements of torso, head, arms and legs, feelings, expressions, reactions to sound and pain, and sucking their thumbs and many other things that can be seen easily with modern technology.
Another modern science development has photographed the process of conception and fertilization. This is a truly amazing photo and video to observe. When the “sperm” cell encounters and enters the female egg, there is a significant flash of “light”. Scientists are trying to explain this as only a release of “zinc”, but according to scripture God is Light (1 John 1:4) and this is just a way to explain away God’s involvement in conception and the human spirit creation event at the time of conception.
From a Bible perspective, God is trying to communicate with us that this small light explosion that is clearly visible, appears to be God bringing into the single combined cell a “spirit” that obviously must come from Him (Light). This video is available on the internet when you search “spark of light fertilization”. It is easy to find, and you can judge for yourself.
Let us stop and think about the evidence of just DNA. The mother contributes half of the DNA necessary to conceive. The father of the child contributes the other half of DNA, including the sex determining chromosome either “X” or “Y”. Separated they have no ability to produce a child, but joined together they produce a single cell that is completely alive, and it begins to double itself, over and over until in a very short time, the exponentially increasing number of cells have formed a full featured child. This combined DNA of the egg and the sperm are “Life” and it is alive. Any educated scientist if they found this cell on “Mars” would claim we have found life on Mars. Why is this not considered the same here on earth?
After going through the physical evidence, let us move to the highest authority called the Word of God. God will either contradict the natural claims or agree with them. I believe True Science and the True Word of God Understanding will Always Agree! Let us find out what the Bible says on this subject:
Gen 25:21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Gen 25:22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
Gen 25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
Here we have the real story of a promised son of “Abraham” named “Isaac”, who married a wife named “Rebekah”. She was barren and unable to conceive a seed. But Issac seeks the Lord, and she becomes pregnant. Uh oh, what happens next is amazing. Rebekah is pregnant with twins. There are two sons, and they are fighting against each other within her womb already. She also seeks the Lord to find out what is happening to these two womb children inside her.
In verse 23, the LORD God says to her, “Two nations are in your womb”. Let us stop immediately and analyze this statement. God has already placed an identity upon them and said each will create a different nation of people. What would have happened if Rebekah had aborted them? There would be no two nations, and no Jesus Christ since He was in one of the children to be named Jacob.
All this discussion is based upon foreknowledge. We can see that God even knows who will be born first and second, and that the elder firstborn son will serve the younger son that will be named Jacob. God obviously knows all children in the womb, believe it or not. God obviously has a plan for all children in the womb. This literally teaches us that these developing children have a spirit, and a planned life, long before birth.
This story of two brothers in a womb simultaneously teaches they are aware of each other. This is true, because they are already fighting each other, and this war makes their mother very physically aware of what is happening. Therefore, these are confirmed to be living humans that have at least some limited awareness and consciousness. They were not blobs of lifeless flesh. Any woman that has endured pregnancy has experienced this life movement inside. They can kick fairly strong, and this can be irritating, but it proves they are living. If they are living this also means they have a spirit, because the body of Adam had no life or movement until after God places a spirit inside the body.
Let us look at another example:
Jer 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
This is one of those amazing hidden verses because a lot of people do not read the Old Covenant prophets. Here in the book of Jeremiah God makes a declaration about the man Jeremiah. God says very plainly that before Jeremiah was even conceived in his mother’s womb God already had a purpose and plan for his life. This is called “foreknowledge” and it is recorded in multiple verses of the Bible. But then notice what else God says.
The next statement is about Jeremiah in the womb. Remember this is a human male that is a descendant of the original human sinner Adam. Therefore, this man should be dead to God according to a lot of preacher beliefs and teachings. Yet God says I have already “sanctified” you while you were in your mother’s womb. This sounds a lot like the twins we just read about again, with God knowing them personally before they were born. This demonstrates God’s awareness and personal involvement in every child that has been conceived.
The Hebrew word H6942 that is translated as “sanctified” is defined as “to pronounce or observe as clean”. This is an amazing concept if you think about it. This is giving us the appearance that God is viewing humans a lot differently than religious minded humans view them. God literally, “knew” this future man, “chose” this future man, and made him “clean” long before he exited the womb of a woman. If God did this only for Jeremiah, He would be a respecter of persons, and the Bibles says God is not this way (Rom 2:11). Let us look at another human conception and birth about another prophet:
Luk 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
Luk 1:14 And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth.
Luk 1:15 For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb.
Luk 1:16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God.
Luk 1:17 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
God sent an angel to a man named Zacharias that ministered as a priest before the Lord. This meant this man was from the tribe of Levi that allowed him to be in the presence of the LORD in the tabernacle. The angel sent from God gives Zacharias a lot of information that only God could provide based upon “foreknowledge”.
The angel tells him that His wife will conceive, so it will be a natural conception and a natural birth process of 9 months of development. It is also amazing that God knows it will be male, since the father determines this by which “sperm cell” reaches the egg, either an “X” or a “Y” Chromosome will determine the sex of the child. Yet God knows exactly which one will arrive.
Now here is where it really gets interesting. The angel informs Zacharias that the developing male child will be “filled with the Holy Ghost” even while in the womb. Wow, if that is not amazing, what is? God is going to fill a developing baby’s body with His own Holy Spirit to be in full fellowship with the already present John’s spirit even before birth. This information shocks people who say abortions are just a lifeless blob of tissue and flesh. God does not view it this way at all and knows the child and their destined plan and purpose for existence long before they are born. Wake up! Let us read further down in this chapter to see what else is happening to the child John while in the womb:
Luk 1:39 And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda;
Luk 1:40 And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth.
Luk 1:41 And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:
Here is another example of the internal womb “life” of a “living” human body that is alive being connected to a living human spirit. Remember what we learned from the story of Adam. There was no life, no movement, no ability to respond or communicate if there was no “spirit” in the natural body. Uh oh?
When Mary, the future mother of Messiah comes to visit her cousin Elisabeth the baby John “leaps” inside of her when sensing the presence of Messiah. This action of a child in the womb proves human life is present and a human spirit must be inside the flesh. These children in the womb can do things, sense things, and know things, much more than you can possibly imagine, and this is exactly why the devil wants to kill them all.
We have fully confirmed based upon scriptural and scientific evidence that developing babies in the womb have life and a spirit. One popular movie called “Unplanned” documented the life of a woman that previously worked at abortion clinics. This woman was asked to help a physician perform a procedure on a woman. She was tasked at holding the sonogram paddles in place so the doctor could see how to dismember the developing child to kill it.
This woman saw the reaction of the baby at each doctor attempt to pull off its legs, arms, and head. The baby could feel the pain and even moved around to try to keep it from happening. This alone proves there is life and a fighting spirit awareness in these developing children. Please do not allow this to continue taking place.
Is a Womb Baby’s Spirit Alive or Dead?
We have already seen strong evidence in the last section that babies have a spirit, and that they can be known by God and even can be filled with the Holy Spirit before birth. These types of interactions lead us to conclude that human baby spirits are alive unto God like the first Adam was before and after sin. Uh oh! What did I say? Please put down your stones until you learn what else the Bible says, first.
We have also already seen some key answers to know about the spirits of babies in the womb entering at the initial fertilization union of the two joining cells that were designed by God to become one new flesh and spirit life. This strongly implies that these babies in the womb are also fully alive and able to fellowship with God as in the case of John the Baptist in the womb of Elisabeth.
Therefore, we are entering some potential new grounds for beliefs that could certainly be controversial or even contradictory with the world, but also with many churches, pastors, and teachers of the Word of God.
In this section we are going to explore some additional scriptures about children that may rock the religious boat and mind of many Christians, especially those that tolerate or are completely passive for allowing abortions to occur.
This is our first clue that God still creates every human spirit at conception. As the reader questioned, if God gives the spirit, then it must be still made in His image (Gen 1:26). This is exactly a very true fact found in scriptures. We are about to go through some new verses that maybe you have never focused upon to see some things that will potentially change your ways of thinking about what some claim is a dead spirit as defined to be completely separated from God by the sin of the first Adam.
In 2 Samuel 12, we find the story of Bathsheba and David who had an affair and she got pregnant from it. We will not focus on all the sins that David committed during this episode. But rather we will only focus on the child that was produced and what David told us about him.
We know when this child of Bathsheba was born, David was told by a prophet that he would die because of the sins of David. David fasted and prayed hoping for mercy from God, but the child still died. After the child’s death, David said the following:
2Sa 12:23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.
As you can see, David is speaking of two realms of human existence. One is the natural body life of the child and the other is the after-natural-life experience of a continuing eternal spirit life. David could clearly see that the body of the dead child was still present with him, but now the spirit had departed from the body. This was the opposite of Adam’s body being formed dead and then the spirit entering to give life. In this example, the baby was born with a spirit that left the body causing the body to be dead.
David said some amazing things in this experience that is essential to see and understand about human spirits. David says, “I cannot bring him back to me (here in the natural realm), but I will still go to him (in the spirit realm when I die)”. Also note that David is not talking about him or his child going to hell here in this statement, believe it or not.
Despite Davids’ obvious imperfections, let us help to establish his righteousness. In the book of Acts, David is called a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22). If you read the Psalms that were written by David, you can find a lot of his repentance and beliefs is an eternal salvation based upon God’s righteousness. We can also see in Psalm 23, that David called God His LORD and Shepherd. Jesus Christ is also called the “Seed of David”, meaning Messiah and we find Jesus comes to the earth being called the Son of David (Mat 21:9). God had a very special relationship with David, and it looks guaranteed in scripture that David will be in Heaven when we get there.
Therefore, we can understand when David is saying “I cannot bring him back”, he is speaking of bringing his son’s spirit back from a place where righteous people are all presently gathered. Let us confirm the reality that unborn babies and even children not of the age of accountability will be taken to heaven if they die a physical death. We will only look at one statement that Paul wrote about himself.
Rom 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
If you read the context, you will find Paul writing about the Law. In fact, in verses 1 through 8 Paul is speaking about the binding of the law to people that are under the law and have knowledge of the law. Paul also writes about how “death” separates the human from their bondage from the “law of sin through death”.
Paul makes it very clear in verse 7 of this chapter that he would not have known sin if he had not known the law. Continuing, he says he would not know that “lust” was sinful without first knowing God said “Thou shalt not covet”. Wow, this is more amazing information than you can possibly understand without God enlightening it to your spirit. Your carnal mind is not going to be able to understand this without God’s Spirit helping.
However, this chapter applies to children, and even unborn children. God is saying without the knowledge of “law”, there is not an impartation of guilt, and therefore no sin can be held against a child. Every child in the womb has an almost zero % chance of knowing what is good or evil, right or wrong. This is because they cannot speak or understand these types of complex concepts without maturity and training.
This is why Paul writes in verse 9, “I was alive once without (the knowledge of) the law”. Once Paul grew to the age of accountability, which is normally for Jews at the age of 12, they are considered able to judge right from wrong. But this is because they have all memorized the Torah before this age occurs. It is this knowledge that makes a child accountable for their sins. Once this occurs, they must choose Jesus as Lord to be saved. If this salvation decision is not reached when natural death occurs, the child/adult departs to go to hell.
This is why my wife and I’s miscarried daughter, was seen in a vision being in heaven. This is also why every aborted baby from the womb goes to heaven also. Any death of an unaccountable child will be a transportation into the presence of God automatically. This is because God is loving, just, and must judge righteously about every human the same. If you are still struggling with this information, let us confirm it again with a new set of verses spoken by Jesus:
Mat 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
Mat 24:16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
Mat 24:17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
Mat 24:18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
Mat 24:19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
These are verses about the rapture of the church to be taken out of the earth by a very sudden departure. These verses are written with warnings to those that have missed the rapture. But will only focus upon verse 19, because this is one about our subject of children and accountability.
In this verse Jesus said, “Woe to those (women) that are “with” child (pregnant), and to those (women) that have breast-feeding children in those days. Why does Jesus warn women about this time? It is not very complicated. This is because these two groups of children in the womb and those born below the age of accountability “WILL be taken up in the rapture”. This again is fair, just, and righteous judgements from God to save them from a certain death. Those humans that were left on earth after the disappearance of children and ready to go Christians, are warned to run away quickly without even taking any food or clothes with them. This means something is about to happen that is at any moment certain destruction.
Wow! Hopefully, this information is convincing you about the truth, that children have spirits, and they are not “dead” or separated from God until they obtain an age that they can know and make a conscious intentional decision to accept or reject Jesus.
This information also brings to question special needs children. What would happen to an autistic child that is not all there mentally? Could they seriously be held accountable to understand everything about what is right or wrong? Many do not believe so. This sounds like an opportunity for a loving God to demonstrate great mercy and compassion. I believe this is God’s heart. You can choose for yourself what you would like to believe.
We have just discovered in two sections the following scriptural facts of truth:
- Babies have a spirit at conception.
- God knows the baby, plans their destiny and purpose.
- God can even speak with the baby in the womb.
- All of this means a child’s spirit is viewed as innocent in the eyes of God.
- Therefore, baby spirits go to heaven if a death occurs before the age of accountability and sin awareness takes place to give the child the fair right of choice.
This was good news for those that have lost a child. If you have chosen to believe in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection and you will confess Him as your Lord (Rom 10:9-10), you will be saved to go to heaven and see your child again standing with Jesus’s loving arms around them. Let us shift to the last and another essential subject of how to define “spiritual death”.
Is there Spiritual Death?
What is “Spiritual Death” and
When Does it Occur?
Here is another popular misconception that is preached all over the church. People are widely taught that Adam spiritually died immediately after sinning. But everyone must still acknowledge that Adam lived 930 years until physical death occurred. But when does the Bible say his spirit died? Or does it say? We might be surprised what the Bible says about this subject.
In fact, this belief of spiritual death as it is taught by many pastors and Bible teachers, just does not balance with the rest of scripture when we take the time to study. Remember Paul wrote to us and said, “Study to show yourself approved, a workman, that does not need to be ashamed” (2 Tim 2:15). Therefore, we need to study this subject for ourselves, using a deeper understanding of “all” scriptures on the subject. We will begin this section on spiritual death by using verses that Jesus taught us on the existence of the “spiritually dead”.
Mat 8:21 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
Mat 8:22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.
This is a short but radical conversation between Jesus and a disciple. A certain disciple came to Jesus and asked Him, “Allow me to go bury my father”. Therefore, we have a man that has just died a natural death and his natural son has a desire to bury him, and Jesus’ reaction is more than significant.
Please let us use some spiritual common sense and see that Jesus is speaking of two different states of humans. Or more precisely two types of “death” and the “dead”. The first death type being referred to by the disciple is only “natural” death which is common to all humans after the sin of Adam (Romans 5:12). But the second type of death must be a spiritually viewed type of death because Jesus said let these types of natural people bury their own physically dead.
Jesus is implying to this disciple that he is not a spiritually dead man, therefore, Jesus was telling Him to continue to follow Him. Uh oh! Remember Jesus is speaking to a man that was not yet born again, because Jesus had not died and been resurrected. This means neither were born-again. Not the “dead” that would bury their “dead” (physically) nor the disciple that is following Jesus could be saved. Therefore, Jesus’ definitions of what a living man is, and what a dead man is, is completely different than what we have thought or heard taught before.
What was the difference between these two people types? The disciple that was following Jesus was in face-to-face personal relationship with God in the flesh, and all those not present were not known by God and did not know or speak with God. Could this be what Jesus is referring to? Does a relationship with God make the difference whether we are called living or dead to God?
This is where new controversy begins, that not too many people have ever been taught. What made this disciple spiritually alive, and other humans spiritually dead is something that we need to learn. How can we understand this based upon the fact that we have already seen clear evidence that “spirits” do not ever die or cease to exist?
Remember, we learned this concept from a story Jesus gave to the disciple about a rich man and beggar named Lazarus. In this story, both men died physically and then their spirits were carried away departing to an under the surface of the earth existence in two separated and eternally divided realms of after natural life existence. Do you remember this?
This story is essential to understanding how to differentiate those people who are spiritually alive and dead on the face of the earth while they were both physically alive simultaneously. Then knowing what happens after their natural death where their spirits departed the earth and are then divided apart from each other under the earth. Of course, this was taking place before Jesus was crucified and resurrected from the dead. This means in this story there was not, an access door named Jesus who would facilitate the human access to the Father in heaven.
This is only the beginning to help us understand what is taking place. What we are seeing, are these facts:
- Human spirits never die or cease to exist.
- However, Jesus labels some living humans on the earth as “dead” even while naturally breathing air in the flesh.
- According to scripture these people called dead did not have a relationship with God, speaking with Him and listening to His voice for directions.
- Jesus further implies there were some naturally living people on the earth that were already alive in their spirit and we have seen this more than once before in this lesson. These types of people appear to be those in intimate contact with the living God.
- From the story of the rich man, he was designated as “unrighteous” type of spiritually dead on the earth that continues to be separated in a lake of fire called the “tormenting” realm. According to Abraham he, must not have read and studied the Torah. Therefore, he did not know God intimately.
- But simultaneously the poor beggar named Lazarus is designated by implication to be “righteous” after natural death that departs to be with Abraham in the side of existence called the “comforting” realm. No doubt Lazarus had a lot of time to pray and ask God for help and assistance. There had to be some relationship with God for him to be in the righteous side of the natural dead humans.
That is a lot of new information but let us stop and go back to the beginning and work our way back up to this point of reference with Jesus walking the face of the earth in the flesh.
Please take the time to read Genesis 1, 2, and 3 again. These are all essential basics to understanding life and death both from the spiritual and natural parallel views. Take note in Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness”. Therefore, God is a speaking Spirit that is capable of the highest level of intelligent conversation and speech.
The first mention of God speaking to Adam occurs in Genesis 1:28-29. In these verses God “blessed” them by speaking the first words to them saying “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth”. Then God gives them dominion (authority) over all the works of God’s hands. This is all pre-sin conversations, and there is no mention of Adam responding. There is a presumption that implies that he heard and listened. This is first indicator that God and His man Adam had fellowship and relationship. This appears to be the plan of God for all His humans, and not just the first two.
Man was created in the same pattern of God, with the same features, characteristic, and capabilities as their Creator God. This means man was also a speaking spirit made on a slightly lower order than God (Psalms 8:4-5). Then we find in Genesis 2:15-17 God places the created man Adam in the garden that the Lord has made. Here God commands the man saying it is good to eat from every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not surely eat, for in the day you do, you shall surely die”.
Therefore, we have God being seen in the garden and again we see He is talking with Adam and giving Him one law to not eat from one tree that will cause him to die. Notice there is no mention of two deaths. Also notice God does not define death and what that means. Adam had never seen death before; how could he understand what this was? But he obviously asked no questions causing the presumption that he must have understood enough to not ask any questions.
Next in Genesis 2:19 we find God bringing to Adam every beast and bird for him to give a name. God says whatever the man calls them, that will be their name. This proves Adam knows and understands a language, has an intelligent and capable mind to understand and remember what he is doing. Clearly Adam understood the commandment that God had spoken. All of this confirms there was a relationship with Adam before sin entered the world. This according to the words we saw from Jesus meant Adam was not spiritually dead.
Next in Genesis 3:1, we find the introduction to another spirit being other than, God, Adam, and Eve. God describes this being as a symbolic “serpent” which is defined in Revelation 12 to be a representation for Satan. It is this serpent that tempts Eve and deceives her into partaking of the tree that God commanded them not to eat from. Next, we find Adam taking of the same tree being with her during the entire event. Therefore, sin has just entered the world and death by sin. Yet no one is dead. I wonder why? Did God lie or did we just misunderstand? I vote we misunderstood.
Next, we find God coming to the earth again to walk and talk with His creation in Genesis 3:8. Don’t forget who we are dealing with. God is the Creator of the heaven and the earth (omnipotent). He knows everything (omniscient). He sees everything (omnipresent). Therefore, there is nothing God does not see or already knows what has happened. But we find God the Highest and most Holy Spirit in the presence of 3 spirits that have all committed differing sins.
Do you see a problem here? How is it when preachers say that Adam died immediately in the spirit realm, that God is found in the presence of these dead sinners to be even asking questions to each of them and speaking with them all? This reality is a major problem to defining man or Satan as being spirits that were separated from God immediately after they sinned. We have already seen that Satan will not be cast into hell until at least another 1000 years from now at a specific appointed time. Does this concept of an appointed time for Satan’s spiritual death also apply to men? The answer is Yes! Let us continue to learn.
Here is what the Holy Spirit said to me this morning. God said, “Do you remember that I am the Good Shepherd?” What does a good shepherd do to save one lost sheep? He leaves the 99 and goes to find the lost sheep (Lk 15:4). Uh oh! Do you see that the first Adam was now a lost sheep that has chosen by reason of fear to depart from the presence of God and hide himself, covering his nakedness?
When God came down to the garden to talk with His lost sheep God knew exactly what had happened. God could not forgive the sin because Adam had the “blood” of God and there was not a sinless blood that could be offered to eliminate this sin permanently. However, God already had a plan knowing Adam would fail, He preplanned a Son of Adam who was also the Son of God, that could take away with His sinless blood every human sin from Adam downward.
Remember Jesus claimed to be this “God Good Shepherd” in the flesh (John 10:11). He was God (John 1:1-14), and the High Priest of God (Heb 2:17), the Temple of God (John 2:19), and the Sacrificial Lamb of God (John 1:36) in one combined package. Remember the parable of the lost sheep is found in Luke 15:4. And Jesus said He was only sent by God to the lost sheep of Israel in Matthew 15:24.
So, we have a major problem developing with the definition of spiritual death as being an immediate separation from God caused by human or angelic sin. We can find this problem continuing throughout the entire Old Testament. We find God speaking with human after human that is supposedly been separated from God by spiritual death. For example, the next time after Adam, we find God speaking to Cain after killing his brother Abel. Again, we find God dealing intimately with a lost sheep sinner man one on one. Let us look at another man that was truly amazing:
Gen 5:21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah:
Gen 5:22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
Gen 5:23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:Gen 5:24 And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
Enoch is one of the most amazing men in the Old Testament. He only has a select number of verses, but these words contradict the belief of immediate separation from God after sin is present. Notice God writes that Enoch walked with Him for 300 years.
This sounds a lot like Adam with God walking in the garden to fellowship. It should be becoming clear that man was created to have fellowship with God, and this continued even after sin.
Therefore, there is no separation from God if man is willing to communicate with God as we are discovering. It appears man is considered alive to God, if they speak to Him and walk with Him following His directions being in relationship with Him.
But here is the most amazing fact about Enoch. Genesis 5:24 says, that Enoch walked with God so closely that God just took him from planet earth in a rapture like event. This means Enoch’s spirit, soul and body were all removed from the earth simultaneously. This fact alone refutes the belief that all humans were eternally lost and separated from God.
What made Enoch so special to God. We are given to clues to this relationship God to man, man to God relationship. Let us look at the first to realize what causes God to be able to fellowship with some sinners and not others.
Heb 11:5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
This verse is found in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith”. This literally means Enoch pleased God by walking with God in faith. We know this because the next verse after this one says, “But without faith it is impossible to please God, because he that comes to God, must believe that He is (exists) and that He is a rewarder to those that diligently seek Him”. This is the major reason why Enoch was raptured off the planet long before Jesus ever died to save anyone. This is the most significant reason we have that contradicts why humans are not dead spiritually until the appointed time that we have not yet learned. The only other N.T. reference to Enoch is found in Jude:
Jud 1:14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
Here we have another amazing statement that Enoch prophesied about the LORD coming with ten thousand of his saints. This proves Enoch walked with God so closely that God gave him future prophetic visions of Jesus coming back to the earth in the 2nd Advent. These examples, show why God was so pleased with a man that He took him without seeing natural death.
There are countless other O.T. opportunities to view God speaking with human sinners that supposedly had dead spirits. There is Noah in Genesis 6:8-13. There is God speaking to Abraham in Genesis 12-17 and beyond. We find God speaking with Jacob in Genesis 35:1. We find God speaking with Moses in Exodus 3:14. In Numbers 22:12 we find God speaking with “Balaam”. We find God speaking directly to Solomon in 1 Kings 3:11.
There are other examples of God speaking with David, Joshua, and many other prophets, priests, and kings. These are all problems for defining man to have a dead spirit that is implied to be separated and unable to hear from God! Let us observe one modern definition for their modern view of spiritual death:
Spiritual death: is the separation of the soul from God. In Genesis 2:17 God tells Adam that in the day he eats of the forbidden fruit he will “surely die”. Adam does fall, but his physical death does not occur immediately; Therefore, God must have had another type of death in mind – spiritual death.
This was a very classic and traditional attempt from human reasoning to define what spiritual death is. This definition uses human thinking and terms with complete disregard for God’s definitions and thoughts. Therefore, we need to refocus what was written, what was said, and what happened to a new God definition and viewpoint for spiritual death to remove the carnal human reasoning factors that can only produce error. Here is the verse as spoken by God to Adam:
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Here is a new way to view this verse that eliminates the erroneous explanation for why Adam did not die the moment he partook of the deadly poisonous fruit. The key word that is being defined wrongly is “day”. This is because to a human we live every 24 hours as one day. This is not how God is defining or applying this word H3117 that was translated as “day”. There are literally several different ways this “word” is used in the Bible. Here is a list of some of them:
- A Day = The Sunny Hot 12 Hours of a Day from Sunrise to Sunset, and the opposite would be Night! (Genesis 1:5, called Light Day)
- A Day = 24 Hours of Time from One Sunset to the Next Sunset including evening (night) and morning (light) (Genesis 1:5, the First Day).
- A Day = Meaning a Single Connected Period of Time describing an event, as in “the Day of the Lord” when God created the heaven and the earth (Gen 2:4).
These are just three examples of the definition of a “day”. But there are others, and the key one that we need to learn from to apply is found in Psalms:
Psa 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
The Hebrew word translated as “yesterday”, is the same Hebrew word H3117 that is found in Genesis 2:17 used to describe “the Day you eat”. Notice what this verse in Psalm 90:4 says, “A thousand years in your sight, is a day”.
The Hebrew word translated as “sight” is H5869 (Ayin) and this word is normally translated as “eyes”. Therefore, we are getting a new God defined perspective to how He views and sees what a “Day” represents. Instead of us trying to define a “day” to be 12 hours, 24 hours, or the time of an event, let us see if this God view works out better.
Gen 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
God writes and informs us that all of Adam’s days that were lived was 930 years. It is interesting how God used the same Hebrew Word H3117 this time translated as “days” in a count of years lived. Let us take out the “plural” form from the verse and say it using the literal “Day” translation:
Gen 5:5 And all the “day” that Adam lived was nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
That is amazing when you see it. God has just written to us and said, of the “Day” (1000 Years, Ps 90:4) that God had spoken of in Genesis 2:17, Adam only lived 930 years. Now let us go back and see how this fit in to the words spoken in Genesis 2:17:
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day (1000 years) that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (930 years).
Here is another nugget of meat to chew on. If we take 1000 years as 1 Day and subtract 930 years of total Adam lifespan, we get the remainder of 70 years. Therefore, 70 years is the remainder of God’s Day definition that Adam live short of fulfilling one day of God’s existence limit for sin. In other words, Adam living short of 1000 years matches God’s Word of warning. It appears that God was speaking of only natural death, so far.
Did you realize that in Psalm 90:4 God used the word Ayin which is the spelled out Hebrew word for the Hebrew letter “Ayin”. This letter and word both mean “eye”. But the Ayin alphabet letter, also has a gematria value of “70”. We are confirming how it was God’s view of a day that was used to define what He spoke when He told Adam when he would die. This Day of death for sinning was within a 1000-year timed maximum God calls 1 Day. God foresaw this happening and now we have eliminated the confusion of the need to define what a spiritual death represents to God also using our own human reasoning.
Therefore, we are still in need of knowing what spiritual death more fully represents to God’s view, omitting our opinions. Do you recall that we found there was an exact time of separation of Satan from God? We found this in Revelation 20. If spiritual death is a separation from God, there appears to be an appointed time when this event begins and then it continues to occur without a course of reversal. Therefore, true spiritual death appears to be a separation from God but only from a timed beginning with a never-ending separation experience apart from God. If this was true for Satan, could it also apply to humans? It appears so, based upon what we learned from reading Luke 16 with the death of the rich man and Lazarus. Let us look at a new scripture that helps us understand this better:
Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
Notice what God says and reveals to us in this verse. This verse plainly states, “man is guaranteed once to die, and after this comes the judgment”. Wow, this sounds important. Please never forget, that God is LOVE (1 Jn 4:8)! Also, we must remember that God is longsuffering, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
Can you see where God is taking us? Remember earlier what the Lord said about “Him being the good shepherd that would leave the 99 saved sheep to go out and find the single lost one”. We are discovering that all humans even, those that commit sins like Adam, or differently than Adam have an opportunity for relationship with God. This would include humans submitting to God, as well as fellowshipping with Him. This as we saw in 2 Peter also involves human repentance for sins.
In other words, God has not closed the door for any human to know Him. He desires us all to be saved. He seeks us out and looks for ways to get our attention to cause us to come to Him and want relationship. This was true from Adam to Jesus, and is still true for the church from Jesus, the Last Adam to the end of this age. Those in the O.T. were given opportunity to gain righteous relationship with God and be saved on credit, waiting for the blood payment of all sin by Jesus on the cross. But us after the death, burial and resurrection, can just hear about Jesus, and turn to believe in Him and confess Him as Lord and we are brought in completely by Faith in His works. Let us end this section with God’s definition of “spiritual death”:
Rev 2:11 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
Here Jesus is speaking to the church a warning. Jesus is very clear that those in the church that overcome, shall not be hurt of the second death. Therefore, there is a second death that occurs after the first natural and physical death.
Rev 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Here is God’s definition of “spiritual death”. It occurs when people and angels are cast into the lake of fire in the heart of the earth. The rich man that died in Luke 16 was thrown there and is still there now. He asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers on the earth so they would not come to this place where he was. But Abraham said, they have the Word of God to read so they may not go there. Uh oh? This appears to say reading and studying God’s Words are a part of having a relationship with God.
Here are some basic rules to help us learn the truth to what spiritual death represents.
- Spirits do not ever die or cease to exist. Therefore, once a spirit comes into existence, they are alive for ever.
- Spirits of humans can choose to walk with God and live being in relationship with Him causes spiritual life.
- A human spirit if it is in a human body can be in relationship with God to be saved.
- A human spirit in a human body, without any relationship with God is considered dead already.
- It is only the spirit that leaves the body of a human without remaining in relationship with God that will be apart from God eternally in the Lake of Fire, called the 2nd death.
Conclusion
Thank you very much for taking the time to read and study the Bible with us. We love you all more than words can describe. The hundreds, and thousands of hours spent here to provide these Bible study lessons is our complete pleasure to share with the body of Christ as well as anyone else that is willing to read.
Hopefully you have learned a lot today, that you never saw before in the Bible. This subject was significantly shortened because of the amount of information that is given to us by God on these subjects. This subject of Jesus coming to the earth to give us spiritual and physical life to saved us from the everlasting spiritual death separation demonstrates His infinite love. Thank you, Jesus! Hopefully you have learned that every human spirit is spiritually “alive” and capable of being saved as long as they are abiding in their mortal body. Any human on earth has the ability to cry out to the LORD and He will answer them. This can become the beginning of your relationship with God.
Do you remember the parable that Jesus taught on the “Prodigal Son”? In this story of Luke 15, Jesus taught about a young son that left his father’s house after demanding his inheritance. This son went out into the world and had a party with all the money until it was gone. Then the desperate son while feeding pigs, came to himself and deceived to repent and return to his father. The father saw him returning a very far distance off and ran to him and kissed him.
In Luke 15:24, the father in this story told by Jesus confirms what being dead represents. While the son was apart from his father, there was no relationship together between them. The father calls this a son who is dead. But it was when the son returned that the father threw a party to welcome his son back into relationship to the family. This is very profound. I taught us death (spiritually) is being separated from Father God. We choose to do this of our own will. Therefore, to return to father is also our choice. This helps us significantly to understand what spirit life is and what spirit death is. by God’s definition.
If you have had an abortion or have lost a child, they are alive and waiting for you in heaven. They are not mad at you. They actually love you very much. There is hope for an eternal reunion in heaven. If you have not forgiven yourself, God loves you so much that He sent someone to write you a letter to help you get through this life. God has already paid for all sins, but we must humble ourselves and go to Him and receive His forgiveness. It is a free gift, just ask and take it by faith. If you have not ever accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, to make a relationship with Him, this is a perfect time to do so. Please go to the link at the bottom and click on it to find out how to be saved from hell.
God bless and keep you all, the day of the Lord’s return is closer than ever. Get ready for His return, and stay ready, it could be today!
Understanding the Sovereignty of God Part 1 – Introduction
(Ver 1.1) This will be “Part 1” in a series, concerning one of the essential subjects in Understanding God’s “Sovereignty”. This is a Bible Basic topic that is needed to be understood so that we as Christians know what is happening to us and why. But this lesson will attempt to teach new Christians and continuing disciples of Jesus that desire to know God’s Word of Truth, the basic concepts of balancing God’s “sovereignty”, with His revealed, integrity, nature, and character written in His Holy Word.
Today’s lesson is specifically and entirely focused on introducing the controversial and massively misunderstood subject of God’s “Sovereignty”. The Bible has a substantial amount of information on this subject. We can find examples of God’s sovereignty from Genesis to Revelation. But many times, people take these concepts as the only truth, ignoring all other truths.
There are numerous beliefs to what this word “sovereignty” means, and many range from one extreme of error even continuing to the opposite realm of extreme error. In today’s lesson will learn a little bit of what God’s sovereignty represents, but mainly focus a lot on what God’s sovereignty is not. Here are two major extreme areas of certain error:
- The first extreme area of error is that God is absolutely “sovereign” and is in control of everything that happens in the world down to the smallest detail. This belief states God plans even evil to achieve an ending good result for the goal to win the final game. It is like sacrificing your pawn in chess as a necessary evil, to later gain a more significant advantage over your enemy. This is commonly based upon the Book of Job and an incorrect interpretation of what is revealed to be happening.
- The opposite extreme of error is an atheistic viewpoint that there is no God that is helping or doing anything to stop evil and therefore everything that happens is an accidental fate, or chance. Many call this Murphy’s Law, being based upon the humanistic “bad luck” theory of existence. This belief conforms to “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong” or even saying, “Whatever, will be, will be”, both not involving the existence of a God that created us, loved us, and wants to help us.
Both extremes are ignorant realms of belief that were intentionally designed by Satan, to potentially lead humans to their demise (Hosea 4:6). Too many Christian minds have been vastly influenced to be deceived into believing corrupted meanings of God’s definition of this word “sovereign”. These tricks of deception can cause some people, even the real saved Christians to believe that everything that happens to us in the world, whether it be something good, or evil, it must be a “sovereign” work of God’s powerful, forceful, and controlling hand. But is that what the Bible teaches us when we want to see God’s actual rightly divided and balanced TRUTH?
In this lesson we will be looking at a lot of Bible verses that may not normally be taught on this subject of the Sovereignty of God. Some of these things we will be looking for our answers to how we address the difficult questions asked by too many people in the church and in the world. For example:
- Is God only good? Or is God only evil? Or is God both?
- Is God’s Will Always Done?
- If “no”, why not?
- If “yes”, does anyone else have the free will to choose anything? Does God override the will of others?
- Does God intentionally use evil to achieve and ending that is “good”?
- Does God use evil to correct or train His creation?
- If God is “good” and “sovereign”, why does He permit “evil”?
- If Satan is the source of evil, why didn’t God throw him into hell instantly the moment evil was discovered?
- Why does God warn us about people who call good evil and evil good, if His will is always done?
These are all great questions, and you may have others that need to be addressed. If this is true, please leave them in a comment.
Always know that there is a real God, who created everything, He is a God who is very concerned with saving people out of going to hell. This is a major fact of scripture. After all, for our God to come to the earth to become an intimate part of His own creation to personally die on a cross to shed His blood to save us, was the ultimate display of Love from anyone! We can also see that the choice to become a human to die is one of the greatest examples of the “sovereignty” of God. But even this choice must be balanced with the motivation of God’s “Love”, as being one of the primary reasons for this divine sovereign choice. Let us begin to go through the Bible to study this subject, to find if God is to blame for all “evil”.
Here are the topics that will be covered today:
- Our Most Basic Question. Is God Sovereign?
- Knowing and Balancing All of God’s Divine Characteristics
- What God’s Sovereignty Is Not
- Rightly Dividing God’s Word. Balancing Sovereignty in the Bible.
- Human Ways are Not God’s Ways
- Another Deception: Is Lucifer the Sovereign God’s Servant
- Conclusion
Our Most Basic Question
Is God Sovereign?
No one should ever claim that GOD is not Sovereign. If this is done, this is the first indicator of deception taking place. For example, teaching evolution without the inclusion of God’s intelligent design and hands on involvement is a major extreme lie. Nothing comes into intelligent order as our universe is, without the involvement of a far superior designer.
Therefore, when God created the entire perceivable universe without obtaining our permission or advice to how it should be made, as we know He did (Ps 33:6), this clearly demonstrates His highest ability to do anything that He pleases.
Then for us to know that He adds humans one by one onto the earth today, in certain locations born to very specific parents without asking permission of any of us that are here, this again signifies the sovereign nature of God. We can clearly see that God did not ask any human if they wanted to participate in His creation, to be born into this combination of a good and very evil world.
Not even the first created human that God called Adam, was a willing participant (Gen 2:7). Nor was Adam’s wife called Eve, asked if she wanted to become the mother of all the living on the earth (Gen 2:18). Neither Adam nor Eve participated in how they were created. No human has ever been asked about their opinion if they desired to participate within creation or that they should have a say in God’s callings, giftings and talents that were given to each of us (1 Cor 2:11).
No human was asked how tall they wanted to be. No human was asked what color hair, what shade of skin, what eye color, what sexual gender, etc. These are all visible signposts of God’s sovereign works. These can be easily found everywhere, and in everyone.
Let us go back before humans were created and enquire were any of the angels asked about their participation before they were created to serve God? Were any of the angels of God asked what role they would play in the Kingdom of Heaven? Were they also created without asking for their approval to cooperate or obey their Creator? If you can find a verse in the Bible that says God needed to check with anyone before they were created, please share it with everyone.
All these facts demonstrate that God is sovereign, and He has far superior abilities and knowledge over any of us. Therefore, if everything came from Him, this logically makes Him greater than everything else that was made by His hands.
This would be analogous to a human creating a rocket ship. The created ship would be of no ability to create itself without the maker’s involvement. Therefore, the created rocket ship would be subject to its sovereign human creator because it had no say for its existence or purpose to be created without the creator’s participation to design it.
But there might be some difficulty or challenge for us to be in complete unity and agreement when we are trying to define the word “sovereign” in the created human relationship with our creator God. This is because humans are not inanimate objects like a rocket ship that is void of emotions, memories, mental reasoning abilities, freewill choice rights, strength, power, etc. Humans were created far differently than a rocket ship that is only capable of an artificial intellect.
Humans were made in the “image” and “likeness” of their creator God (Gen 1:26). This means humans are more like God than any other part of His creation. A human is not a monkey, nor a whale, nor a cow, nor a bird, nor an insect, etc., nor like any of those that cannot comprehend, understand, create, speak, love, or believe. Humans were even created on a higher level than angels (Ps 8:4-5). In these verses the word translated as “angels” should have been “God” (Elohim).
God made us to be and to act exactly like Him (Ephesians 5:1). Therefore, whatever God is, we were made to be of the same class and pattern of similarity with Him but on a slightly lower order (Psalm 8:5).
Knowing and Balancing
All of God’s Divine Characteristics
To define and understand God’s “sovereignty”, we must also know that God possesses other major qualities that are as strong and/or equal as being sovereign. Every one of His God revealed qualities must be balanced together with each of the other qualities. In other words, one God quality is not going to conflict, contradict or oppose any other of God’s personality characteristics. Here is a quick list of some of the major reveal characteristics describing God. He is:
- Holy
- Eternal
- Immutable
- Omnipotent
- Omnipresent
- Omniscient
- God is LOVE
- Reigns as Sovereign
This list represents the basis of absolute “truth” concerning God’s unchanging personality and characteristics. Each of these qualities could be a separate lesson series. Therefore, they will only be mentioned in a very short introduction of each sub-topic of our main subject of “sovereignty”.
First notice that God is said to be “Holy”. This is an essential topic to know about God. Revelation 4:8 describes 4 created beings that surround the throne of God and day and night, they cry “Holy, Holy, Holy” to the “Lord God Almighty”. This verse also says they are crying “to Him that was, is, and is to come”. This verse is amazing because it mentions 3 of God’s qualities at the same time. Did you see them? These were Him being “Holy”, Him being “Almighty”, and Him being “Eternal”.
Notice that these creatures are declaring with the emphasis of saying it three times, God is exceptionally Holy. Holiness appears to be one of God’s most awesome qualities of needed focus and emphasis. Therefore, this word and description can never be omitted when discussing any other divine characteristic like the concept of what is “sovereignty”.
To be “Holy” must include at the minimum, that God is “Pure”, “Sinless” (Morally Blameless), and it certainly implies that God is of the Highest order of “Perfection” apart from “sin”. This simply means God would never desire to do evil, be evil, or be judged as evil. He is clearly so “Pure” that there is no possibility of evil intents or desires to be in Him.
Next, God is eternal with no beginning and no end (Ps 90:2). Placing this together with God’s Holiness that teaches us there is no existence of “sin” or “evil” in Him, in the past, present, or future. This is more important than you know when defining the word “sovereign”. This simply means there are possible “evil” sovereign rulers that people try to imagine God to be like, and this is impossible based upon His Supreme Holiness.
Next, most agree that God is not shifting, variable or ever changing, and this is called being “immutable” (Mal 3:6, James 1:17). This quality of being unchangeable, combined with God’s quality of Holiness means we can depend upon and trust in what God promises us. If God promised us anything in His Word, it is a violation of divine moral character for God to change His mind. This makes it impossible for God to break a promise unlike humans. We confirm this by reading Hebrews 6:18 where it is clearly stated that it is “Impossible for God to Lie”.
Therefore, we just learned another “limitation” to what it means to be “sovereign” when applied to “God”. We have discovered that God will never “Change”, “Sin” or “Lie” even if He could, because it would violate His true unchanging character and moral values.
Next, God is said to be “omnipotent”, meaning He has supreme power (Col 1:16, Ps 19:1-4, Heb 1:3). This simply teaches that with ultimate power, God is certainly capable of doing anything. Again, this supreme power must be confined to the self-imposed limitations that God has placed upon Himself by His sovereign will. This reveals another quality that God possesses. It is called “self-control”. This means God has enough power to not get angry and say and do things that He would regret later.
Next, most agree that God is “omnipresent”, meaning there is no place where we can be, that He is not already there. Proverbs 15:3 says, “God’s eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good”. This simply means there is no location whether the created natural realm or the spiritual eternal realm, where God is not, which brings us to the next quality omniscient.
The next quality is about God being called “omniscient”. This word means there is nothing that God does not already know (Ps 139:1-6). This means, He sees all, hears all, knows all and is the only one that can always judge righteously in all matters. This literally means that God knows all the internal thoughts and intents of the human mind and heart, even if they are not spoken. Wow!
Next, let us consider what 1 John 4:8 teaches us. In this verse of scripture, God claims Himself to be LOVE. This does not say He has Love; it is more direct to be used as a noun and not a verb. Love as a verb denotes a potential emotional state of varying degrees and potential to shift to the opposite extreme of “hate”. But this would contradict with the immutability of God.
Therefore, every other characteristic of God must be defined in relationship to what Love is as defined by God. We can learn this type of divine love by reading 1 Corinthians 13:1-8. These verses describe a supernatural experience of a type of LOVE that few if any humans have fully attained. This type of LOVE is always patient, always kind and that causes most people to fall short immediately.
This type of LOVE only thinks good God thoughts towards every human, again what human has attained to this? But word descriptions like this give us a picture of a much different type of God than most know or understand. Therefore, we must apply all these words in this verse to our definition of the concept of God’s sovereignty.
Finally, God is considered “sovereign”. Meaning He does not answer to any higher authority. But as we have discovered God has implemented self-imposed limitations upon His desires, thoughts, choices, and actions, that will reduce the scope of God’s choices that He is willing to make. Let us talk about this subject more next.
What God’s Sovereignty Is Not
We are about to discover one variation of a wrong type of sovereignty that is being cast upon God to violate His character and nature that we have just learned. Remember whatever our understanding of “sovereignty” is, it cannot corrupt God’s Good character or standards of moral values.
What does it mean to you, for God to be sovereign? How exactly would you define this word? Does this word mean to you that God is making everything that happens to you whether good or evil to happen? Does God’s sovereignty mean that He is making the angels do everything that they do? Does God’s sovereignty mean that He is controlling every moment of your day, your thoughts, your actions, what you say, what you eat, when you sleep, etc., and that He has made you to be an unwilling participant to not be able to choose anything for yourself?
We could not agree with that type of definition of “sovereignty” in any way. That would make God the creator, a maker of mechanical angels and humans that were only made to be game pieces in a complex game for God to sovereignly move around and control. This would further cause us to believe that we were only made to be like mindless robots, and God was the string-pulling puppet master and our programmer, controlling us all through methods of divine robotic programming.
However, this is what many preachers preach. We have heard preachers say something like, “God has everything under control”. This phrase can be heard on many popular Christian television networks and ministry teachings. But is this a true statement as it is believed? Does God have complete control over the thoughts, motives and acts of every human, angel, devil, or demon within His creation? If He does, then God has a severe problem for us to understand His true nature, characteristics, and moral values based upon what we see all His creation doing to each other.
If God has everything under His full powerful control, and He causes everything on the earth that people claim to happen, our God comes across to us as looking to have a shifting an ever-changing set of values based upon favoritism to be good to some and evil to others. Wouldn’t this cause our God to appear to be double minded or to have a schizophrenic personality? The word schizophrenic comes from two Greek words meaning “split” and “mind”. This sounds like the word “double-minded” we have read about in the Bible.
Would God tell us to not be double-minded (James 1:8) and it would be fine for Him to be this way? If this is correct, then this belief contradicts with being made in His image. No scripture when correctly interpreted is in contradiction with any other. James 1:8 informs us that a human that is double minded is unstable in all their ways. Then take what God says in James 2:1 and learn that if we have any respect of one person over another, we are committing sin.
Apply what God says to us (His creation made in His image) back to Himself as our Creator. Being made in His image and after His likeness, it is logical to conclude that as He is, we should be the same. Therefore, God must not be double minded or show favoritism, since this is what He instructs us to do. If God is double minded, He also would be unstable, unreliable, and we could not depend upon anything that He would ever say or do. If God has one respect for one person over any other, He too would be guilty of the sin that He told us not to do.
Therefore, to kill some people and then to save others clearly is both double minded and a respect of some people over others. This is very troubling to see that this is how some people believe God is. Consequently, if being made in His image, we are instructed to be single minded and no respecter of persons, that must be how God is also.
But this wrong definition of sovereignty to mean controlling everything, is exactly what people claim God is doing, without realizing it, when they say God creates earthquakes, tornados, cyclones, tsunamis, floods, rockslides, avalanches, etc., that can potentially kill thousands of people instantly. What about plane crashes, automobile wrecks, buses going off a bridge into a river, boats being capsized by a storm, trains that derailed, wildfires started by a man or lightning, terrorist bombs, etc. What about wars between nations where there are many deaths of the populations?
If God is creating situations to kill people today, after He personally came to the earth 2000 years ago, to save all these people (Jn 3:16) that are claimed to have died by an act of God, this is the type of behavior of a split personality like a Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of God. This type of God would cause us all to ask, “Whose personality will manifest today?” If you do not know the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde it is based upon a fictional story about a single man that takes the appearance as being two kinds of men. One appeared evil and the other was good.
Are we not living in the church age of divine Grace and favor? Most educated Bible scholars agree that we are in the “Dispensation of Grace”. If so, can we trust in and depend upon a loving and caring covenant God to continue in this covenant until the end? Or do we need to fear the hand of God to kill us and throw us into hell suddenly and unexpectantly because we have had a bad day or have made a mistake and lack His perfection? Or maybe we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, where an evil was happening? Were these God’s doings?
In insurance policies and on news programs, they claim many types of natural disasters are “Acts of God” implying sovereign control and intentions. In church funerals some claim that a premature death of a child was for God’s unknown purpose and plan, and it was known by God’s will and purpose to be for good, and it will work out all for our good also eventually. Therefore, God gets the blame for killing innocent children.
Too many preachers claim God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our ability to comprehend so that we are unable to know or understand why our spouse died young. But they claim after we die and go to heaven, we will suddenly be able to understand it. Other preachers just say, “it was just their time to go”. These types of statements imply to us that every death that has occurred on our planet was a “God” designed, planned, and timed event.
We have only begun to see that none of these types of works should be found in the definition of God’s sovereignty. We are only beginning to see what a one sided and perverted definition of “sovereignty” is. Now let us begin to learn what the Bible says about how to rightly divide God’s word.
Rightly Dividing God’s Word
Balancing Sovereignty in the Bible
We have just briefly discussed one area of extreme “sovereignty” where God is accused of doing every evil type of work against His creation. But “Extremism” is just one potential way to bring error into understanding God’s Word. There is a second major popular source for “error” and “misunderstanding” of the Bible called “exalting one truth to be the only truth” of scripture.
Do you know how many truths are given to us by God in the Bible? There are more truths given to us by God than we can know or understand completely. This knowledge teaches us that what we know about a subject is far less than what we need to learn about the subject. It is pride to believe that any of us are experts on any subject. Only God understands it all.
What does it mean to “exalt” one truth. This simply occurs when a person takes a single verse of scripture to be the only truth, in exclusion to every other verse of scripture truth. This practice of “making a truth” the highest “truth”, promotes one limited amount of truth to be the only truth that is needed to understand the subject fully. But this is a major cause of wrong interpretations and understandings.
God’s book of truth is comprised of limitless threads of precisely chosen words containing specifically selected alphabet letters where each word is very exactly placed in what many people would describe as being in random order. But that belief of randomness is wrong. Every single letter, word, sentence, paragraph, and book has infinite wisdom hidden in its design. This book was written by the “All Knowing” God. He knows exactly why every word was chosen and why it was placed at its location in the Bible.
But we still know that any Bible subject can be found anywhere in the Bible, from the beginning to the end. Any word and subject can be defined, explained, and commented upon by God anywhere else in the Bible He chooses. God can describe ending future events in the first chapter of Genesis. God can describe pre-creation events before humans, in Ezekiel and Isiah or anywhere else He selects. Therefore, not everything in the Bible is in “chronological” order. In fact, most things are not in exact timed order.
Also, God can teach a subject, by providing just a living example of it, without ever mentioning the subject being described or taught. For example, Hebrews chapter 11 is what many call the “Hall of Faith”. In this chapter God describes that each of these mentioned people exhibited significant levels of faith yet reading the stories in the Old Testament in isolation, you would never know this was one of the key subjects being taught.
But one of the most essential elements of understanding scriptures is to understand they are “ALL” about Jesus Christ in some way, even if it is hidden from plain view (Jn 5:39, Rev 1:8). These are just some of the examples of God’s “sovereignty” to how He chooses to lay out truth in the Bible. Not everything is obviously stated, God has sovereignly chosen to hide many truths (Prov 25:2).
This simply means when we look at one verse of scripture, in one book of the Bible, and we are not seeing the other threads on the same subject we are omitting some potentially valuable information to understand our desired subject.
However, each thread of truth overlaps other threads of truth to bring even more revelations of truth connections. Always remember that the ultimate big picture of the Bible will reveal and lead us to Jesus, including every alphabet letter, word, sentence, scripture, chapter, and book, will only guide us to the masterfully designed big-picture image of the knowledge of Jesus (Eph 1:17).
The Bible is like an intricate woven fabric of Truths with many of them placed in what appears to be random order of diversely scattered patterns. God can even in one single verse cause an overlap of multiple threads of truth subjects to be discussed and revealed. These threads can tell a natural story on the surface and a hidden prophetical spiritual story in the same words. This is why we need the Author of the Bible to live in us, to help us and guide us into what He wants to teach us about any given subject.
2Ti 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Why is it necessary for us to rightly “divide” God’s Word? This is a great question. It first teaches us that there are many potential ways to wrongly divide it. We can hear many conflicting viewpoints on scriptures concerning the subject of “sovereignty”, but we must realize that only God’s viewpoint will prevail if we accept it.
Does this mean this lesson on sovereignty is the only right one? Absolutely not, every Bible teacher is ignorant of the complete truth that only God knows. This lesson while not perfect will present how God has revealed the subject to one teacher. You are required to study to show yourself approved as we have just read, to verify everything that is taught here is what God shows you to also be true (Acts 17:11).
We have just explored some basics about one extreme position of authority, that many believe is in error, including us. This belief system discounts human responsibility and participation in the plan of God for our lives. There are too many people that are blaming God for something bad that has happened to them, and we are about to further see in this section that it was not God that was doing it. Let us begin to analyze how to rightly divide the subject of God’s sovereignty.
Are words spoken by people blaming God for evil, truthful? Does any of these types of words that are blaming God for evils and deaths, help us to be comforted in our times of grief? No, they do not. This is because they are not based upon the fuller balanced truth. These types of beliefs and descriptions of God committing evil to kill children, men, women, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, etc., conflict with the real Bible when discovered, rightly divided, balanced, and understood. Look at this Bible verse to learn a set of necessary new subjects that will help us begin to understand God’s truth on “sovereignty”:
Joh 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
Uh oh! The concept of “sovereignty” or being “sovereign” is never mentioned in this verse. Therefore, what does it have to do with our subject? This is just one example of how a subject can be hidden within words that never mention a study subject directly.
What we should first know is that this verse came from words spoken by Jesus Christ while on the earth. Therefore, this is the sovereign God manifested in the flesh who is speaking. Knowing this fact alone, it must have something to do with our subject even if it is not directly stated.
Let us begin by asking a basic question. If God is completely sovereign and His will is always done, why is there a thief on God’s created earth who is stealing, killing, and destroying His creation and his created people? Why doesn’t God do something about this part of His creation while He is encountering him in person?
Based upon what some people believe about God they are claiming God is either the thief or He must be allowing the evil one to do these evil works. Is this “thief”, God’s manifested evil sided personality and mind? If so, this means He is committing evil. But did you ever see Jesus commit any evil acts while on the earth? Jesus very plainly stated, “When you have seen me, you have seen my Father”. Therefore, whatever Jesus did on the earth is a revelation of the true nature of God. Consequently, this teaches us that God is not doing evil from heaven to anyone.
Or is God who is described to be abundant in goodness just allowing evil to occur? If He is allowing evil to exist, why? Does this mean the omnipotent and omniscient God who certainly had the power, ability, and the knowledge to stop all evil has chosen intentionally to ignore evil and just allow it to go uncontrolled?
We also know that God is not this thief because Jesus (God in the flesh) is comparing Himself in John 10:10 to be the life giver, and this is described in direct contrast and opposition to this thief that kills. Therefore, they must be two separate “living beings”, one that is God/Good, and one that is the devil/evil.
It is interesting to see even the words are connected to show what each are. One adds another “o” to “God” to reveal Him as “good”, and the other removes the letter “d” from “devil” to reveal him as evil. Therefore, God “adds”, and the devil “subtracts” and takes away. This is very profound to see. If you apply this knowledge to understanding the book of “Job”, you will figure out who to blame for what.
We must also logically conclude that since God has not fully dealt with this being that is the source of all evil, there must be some reasons why God has not ended this wicked one’s involvement from human life completely. In fact, if you study this out in the Bible, this devil will not be permanently removed until over 1000 years from now. There will be a 1000-year period that he will be confined in the pit, but God releases him for a short time after this to deceive people again (Rev 20:7-8). Wow, there is something going on here that too many Christians are completely ignorant of.
We may get into these reasons later, but the basis of the answer is based upon God’s character that we learned about earlier. God is also the “Righteous Judge” of all His creation, and whatever He does must not violate His standards of “Holiness” or “Righteousness” (Gen 18:25, 2 Pet 2:23). Since many do not understand what this is, they assume incorrectly that God can do anything, anytime, in any way He desires. But as we have seen God has placed self-imposed restrictions based upon His nature and character that limit His “sovereign” involvement.
Let us look at another verse to confirm what we are learning in John 10:10:
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.
We also can know from reading here in Acts 10:38 that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power so that He could go around doing “Good” to heal all those that were oppressed of the “devil”. This verse is the same contrast given to us in John 10:10 comparing two works of opposition. The one true God is described to be “good”, and the “other” created spirit called the devil is contrasted to be “evil”.
Acts 10:38 further confirms that Jesus the Son of God is “good”. Jesus did good because His heavenly Father anointed Him, with His own Holy Spirit who must also be the source for all “good” (James 1:17). This additionally teaches us a new overlapping truth to why Jesus was not able to do sovereign works as God on the earth. It would not be necessary for Jesus to be anointed if God was manifested in His Son Jesus in His full deity powers, and abilities on the earth.
We learn from reading the book of Philippians that God chose to be manifested on the earth as the man Jesus in the normal likeness of other humans. He was able to do supernatural wonders on the earth only because He was anointed by God to perform these miraculous signs (Acts 10:38).
Philippians 2:7 declares an essential truth to us, about this sovereign God decision. God in Heaven sovereignly chose to become a human on the earth and specifically selected to remove Himself from manifesting His Sovereign powers and abilities while here. He did this to specifically live a life like us, to show us what we would be capable of doing with His anointing upon us.
This was certainly a “Sovereign” right of God to do this, wasn’t it? Please do not try to tell anyone that the “sovereign” God can’t do this if He chooses to do so? No one was asked by God for their permission. No one was consulted about it being ok. Therefore, to try to say that God can’t or won’t do this would violate many people’s definition of what it is to be sovereign, or it would make the Bible a book of fiction to contradict Philippians 2:7. According to many, God can do anything he chooses at any time He chooses, right? If not, God is not sovereign.
What some of us have just discovered is that there are two opposing spiritual forces of; 1) God who is good, and 2) the devil that is evil. No Satan is not a match for the Creator God, but he appears to not know this. Nevertheless, Satan is here on the earth and Paul called him the “god of this world” even after Jesus died (2 Cor 4:4). We can then see that we have a lower case “g” “god” that is opposing the “upper Case “G” “God”. But technically there were no capital letters in the Greek language and the same Greek word G2316, is describing them both.
Therefore, we need to learn more about why the “god” Satan is legally here on the earth, and why God reveals to us that He can’t or won’t do anything about him until a certain time in the soon coming future. Most do not understand how God has sovereignly designed the concept of “time” to work. We may be able to touch on this more later. But for now, let us move to another way people incorrectly define God’s Sovereignty.
Human Ways are Not God’s Ways
God has chosen to sovereignly do some things that appear very foolish to the religiously wise of the earth. 1 Corinthians 1:27 plainly states that, “God has chosen the foolish things of our world in order to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of our world, to confound those that think they are mighty”.
Remember that Acts 10:38 additionally confirmed that Satan, aka the devil was the one and only source of the evil works that made all people on earth to be sick and diseased, which must have been intended to potentially kill these people. But Jesus came into the world to reverse this evil by healing them and restoring them to a life of health (Jn 10:10). But look at this verse and what God reveals about His ways that can appear “foolish” to some.
Isa 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Notice what God says about the differences between created humans and their creator God. He very plainly says that His thoughts and ways of thinking are not like our natural human ways. Neither are our ways of doing things close to how God chooses to do things. This simply means if we are applying our biased thoughts to the definition of His “sovereign” acts, we are probably very wrong.
We can see many examples, of God doing things in ways that are not normal according to how a human would do them. For God to offer His righteousness, salvation, grace, and mercy to us for free when we have not earned it, causes the religious mind to bend. Religion wants to earn their salvation, deliverance, and healing, but this would give humans a right to brag and be proud (Eph 2:8-9). God is not going to allow that to happen.
This was only a reminder to not think carnally when attempting to understand how to define “sovereign”. God’s idea of being “sovereign” is very far from a religious mindset. If we attempt to define God’s sovereignty to be like human examples, using human governments standards or religious definitions, we are far from His perfection.
Another Deception: Is Lucifer the Sovereign God’s Servant
who Obeys Consistently?
There have been some Christians that have believed a slightly differing variation of potential deception. These mostly claim that the John 10:10 “thief”, and the “oppressor” of Acts 10:38, is the devil (aka Lucifer and Satan), but they believe that the devil only performs works “for” God as He sovereignly commands. This type of belief the acts were God initiated and Satan is performing works of evil because of God’s purpose and plan.
Others further believe that Satan desires to do evil to everyone but can only do these evil things to God’s creation, after he can obtain God’s directive, or permission to kill, steal and destroy humans. This type of belief is another variation of extreme “sovereign” control of God over everything that occurs in creation but shifts part of the blame to it being Satan’s desire to ask for permission and God’s agreement that it would work out something for good for His usage also.
However, this type of belief violates the basic laws of correct interpretation of all balanced truth. It has elements of partial truth that are being mixed with untruths, resulting in a drink of potential poisonous belief. Remember that we have already seen verses in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 that described the beginning of Lucifer. It is revealed plainly that Lucifer revolted by His own freewill choices to cause pride and sin to be formed inside of him. He was created with neither of these characteristics.
Now, let us just use some basic common sense to begin to understand how this belief is false. For example, no thief on earth would ever ask anyone for their permission to steal or rob from anyone. That just violates the known operandi of a thief. Thieves are lawless by nature and will ignore sovereign governments. They are normally self-centered and motivated by greed. They have no value system for the care of other’s lives or property. They love to work under the cover of darkness and God is only light (1 Jn 1:5).
Can you find a verse in the Bible that informs us about Satan asking for permission to revolt against the Kingdom of God? Can you find a verse of scripture in the Bible where God caused the sinful revolt of Satan against Him? This is the downfall of too many people’s belief about what it means that God is “sovereign”. People are ignoring the sovereign design of God to create beings that have their own “freewill” to make independent choices apart from His sovereign will and desires. Don’t believe this? Look at this verse:
Joh 4:23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.
What does it mean to “seek”? This word represents an act of “searching” for something desired. Do we ignore this definition and word choice because God is sovereign and always makes happen what He wants to happen, when He wants it to happen? This logically does not make sense and directly contradicts this truth of the scripture.
This verse in John 4:23 is very clearly stating that God is looking for people (who have a freewill choice), to decide to come after Him with their whole heart (spirit). This is the heart’s desire of our Creator. At the time when Jesus spoke this, there were obviously few to none of these types of people on the earth. In fact, Jesus confirmed this when saying, “This people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their heart (spirit) is far from me.” (Mat 15:8). We can very clearly see that God wants people that want Him and is not forcing us to do what He desires us to do. Let us look at another verse in the New Testament concerning the subject of human responsibility:
1Pe 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
God is warning Christians of providing the devil a point of “access” like an unlocking or the “opening of a door”. This is exactly what 1 Peter 5:8 warns us about. In this verse God says, “Be sober and vigilant, for your adversary the devil, goes about seeking whom he may devour”. The fact that God warns Christians to be sober (not drunk) and awake (not asleep), indicates that we could be living today in a state of unawareness God calls “darkness”, that opens the door for Satan to gain an advantage over us (2 Cor 2:11).
Can we agree that 1 Peter 5:8 is about humans being awake because the devil who rules the darkness is trying to destroy us? Remember normal natural people only sleep in darkness. God appears to be alerting us (the saved spiritually awakened) not to fall back into Satan’s territory of evil within the kingdom of darkness. The Lord is saying that when we leave the Kingdom of God, to drift back into Satan’s domain, we are very easy to be devoured.
Col 1:12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:
Col 1:13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:
See what God confirms to Christians saying, God has made us able to become saints in the light. This is God’s New Covenant Kingdom in Jesus Christ. We can clearly see this in verse 13 where God says, He has sovereignly delivered us from the authority of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son.
Now we are learning something very essential for us to know. There are two spiritual kingdoms of authority upon the earth. We can see them described in these two verses of Colossians. There is the Kingdom of the dear Son of God which is called “Light” exclusively. Versus the kingdom of evil that has only those that are spiritually asleep or drunk in darkness.
Kingdom of Light heirs are the saved saints, that God has sovereignly translated and moved out of the authority of darkness (Rom 13;12). These are the believers in Jesus. Are you in God’s Kingdom of Light and Day (1 Ths 5:5)? If you are, remain there! Submit yourself to God daily and resist the devil and the devil will flee from you (Jas 4:7).
Did you notice in the last paragraph we had God’s sovereign choices to how we were saved taking place? But did you also notice there was an implied human participation to us being saved? This necessitates us balancing several scriptural truths to obtain a higher truth understanding. We saw this in a previous verse of John 4:23 where God desired true worshippers but needed humans to have the same desire for Him.
There is a very significant sovereign God side to human salvation, but He does not force us to be saved. This means humans are required to choose what they “hear”, and “believe”. We either believe in God and His Word, or we reject it and are lost (Mk 16:16).
But we know that once we choose to believe and receive His sovereign gift of Salvation, this clearly means God (Light) is not our enemy and is not working with or controlling Satan (darkness) to direct him how he is to come against us. Remember what God reveals about Himself in 1 John 1:5. Here God says, “God is Light, and Him is No darkness!”. This clearly states Light (God) does not associate or cooperate with darkness (evil).
Ask yourself, why would God warn His people in the kingdom of light, if He is the one that is sending this enemy of darkness to teach us a lesson? No, this verse 1 Peter 5:8, clearly reveals our adversary the devil, is not sent from God! Therefore, Satan is not working for God. And there can be “no” covenant, cooperation, or agreement between them.
These verses concretely confirm God is not in total “sovereign” control of humans or the devil, or the events that occur on the earth. We have freewill choices that must be made in obedience to determine our outcome of being devoured or not. God has very clearly written to Christians; to “Fight” (1 Tim 6:12), to “Resist” (Jas 4:7), to “Overcome” (Rev 21:7), to “Reign” (Rom 5:17), “Hold Fast” (1 Ths 5:21) and many other commands. Do you see how God is assigning humans responsibility to be saved? In other words, God still desires humans that want to know Him.
Wouldn’t this make sense that the sovereign God has made a sovereign choice to delegate authority and responsibilities to His creation, and if we choose to not do them, He won’t? God would not warn the people about the devil coming before He sent the devil. If He had sent the devil, we would be watching out for God to devour us.
Those that believe Satan works for God to do His evil, attempts to cause us to accept that Satan does this to fulfill God’s hidden evil purpose on the earth to achieve some kind of divinely designed ending “good”. This belief asserts that God created this “thief” and “oppressor” deliberately for His greater unknowable intentional plan and purpose to achieve a culmination of something positive.
It also teaches us another potential lie, that God’s plan of creation for a perfect Lucifer was only a ruse for the intended real plan to cause Lucifer to sin. But is this logical? Does this type of logic adhere to the known character of a good God? Would any human ever make all perfect new auto parts to first destroy them before they then attempt to build a new better car? This would be an example of someone doing something needlessly destructive so that they can construct a better car rather than using parts that were completely flawless to begin with.
What we are needed to ask, is 99% truth mixed with another element of 1% harmful substance, ok to swallow and believe as the whole truth? Not if the 1% is completely deadly poisonous being enough to kill you. A 100 % T-bone steak is what a canine would love to devour. But insert into it or dust it with poisonous strychnine and it is still enticing enough to deceive because it appears good, but ultimately it can be deadly. This is why we need to do our best to seek and know only what God determines is truth, and not a message of poison from any human or devil.
We have already seen where God made angels and humans in a state of “perfection” and “very good”, and it was their bad choices that caused them to fall (fail). Therefore, this logic of using evil to achieve good sounds like a deceptive trick of this thief named Satan to shift the responsibility off himself to help steal the truth away from us to blame God for doing evil. Can you see this?
CONCLUSION
Why do people love the extreme sovereign God false message? When someone believes this way, (that God is causing all the evil in the world with occasional times of goodness), it completely absolves them and makes them not responsible for any participation to do what God has told them to do. Therefore, when the will of God is not done in their life, they can say it is not my fault, God must have had a hidden reason for the apparent evil to occur. However, that is a deception, and not the truth. Their belief that they will not be held responsible because of their ignorance, non-participation and full cooperation for obedience is the plan of the devil to possibly send them to hell. It also causes people to never fight against the devil and allows Satan another victory.
It is Satan’s plan to cause people to believe God is to blame for all the evil in the world. This belief shifts the truthful focus for all anger to be redirected away from him. Have you ever met people in the world like this? One man says, “I hate God, for killing my son”. Another lady says, “Why God did you allow me to be beaten up so badly?” Others say, “Why didn’t God stop that from happening to us?” These are classic thought types given to people by Satan. His words are usually “first person” accusation, like it is the person themselves having the thought about God. This is truly a tricky way to deceive people by playing on their emotions to cause them to have a thought to blame God. But they are so very effective thought strategies that come to place the blame upon God or His people, or anyone that is not their spiritual enemy that was working to cause it to happen.
If you have ever felt this way, hopefully you understand the reason why now. Realizing this was a deception from Satan, is one of the first steps to healing and reconciling with God. By repenting before God, a mind renewal occurs and this changing of thought then opens the door for God to help bring about more healing and help to you.
So why do bad things happen to good people? Who says there are any good people? In Matthew 19:16-17, Jesus is confronted with a rich man saying, “Good Master what must I do to have eternal life?”. But Jesus responded to Him saying, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, that is God!” Jesus just taught us that every human is far from God’s perfection of good. Therefore, we all deserve to die and go to hell. But conversely Jesus also said very plainly that only God is fully and completely “Good”.
When we choose to blame God for evil, we are doing so because we are very ignorant to know who God really is. Remember Jesus also said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). We can never see Jesus ever doing anything but good to people because He was anointed with the Holy Ghost and power (Acts 10:38). Therefore, Jesus never killed anyone. Jesus never made anyone sick, weak, or ill. Jesus never made anyone poor. Jesus didn’t even condemn anyone for being a sinner. Jesus simply offered forgiveness, healing, and blessings to everyone that was willing to receive it.
If Jesus manifested the presence of God in heaven upon the earth as it says He did in Colossians 2:9, then humans for the first time were able to see the actual true character and nature of God personally face to face. This true nature of God was hated by Satan and the religious people of that day. Yet Jesus still offered to them “forgiveness” saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. What an amazing display of LOVE!
If you do not know God’s love personally, and the Son of God who was sent into the world to make God known, it is a great time to believe in Him and ask Him to be the LORD of your life. There is a link at the bottom of this page to receiving and beginning the salvation process. This will open up a new way for living and knowing God. You will be able to talk to Him personally, and He is more than happy to talk to his new child and help you to grow in spiritual maturity. Please do not let this opportunity pass you by. For those that are not in the Kingdom of God, there is no guarantee of any tomorrow. This could be your last invitation, please do not take it for granted.
Thank you for reading and studying this Bible Essential subject of knowing and understanding the “sovereignty” of God. It is very important to know that after we are saved, God desires us to grow up to be led by His Holy Spirit that is living on the inside of our human body (Rom 8:14). He has come to live inside of us for us to know that He will always be near to us to help us (Heb 13:5-6). Satan may try to attack you a fresh again, and again, but God is our ever-present help to always cause us to “overcome” our spiritual enemy (1 Jn 4:4).
Hopefully this has been a blessing to you and clarified some things taught to us in the Bible. We learned that:
- “God is Only Good” (Mat 19:17).
- “Satan” is only Evil and is a thief that has come to only kill, steal, and destroy people (Jn 10:10).
- God is Sovereign (Ps 115:3).
- However, God has sovereignly chosen to place character limitations upon Himself to restrict what and how He can do things.
- Angels and humans were created good but were also sovereignly given a freewill by God’s sovereign design, to disobey and to choose to become evil (Eze 28:15, Gen 3:11).
Thank you again for taking the time to study God’s Word. May God continue to richly bless you, knowing that He adds no sorrow with any of His abundant blessings (Prov 10:22). The Lord be willing there will be more lessons coming soon. There is just so very much to learn from God’s Word. Thank you for sharing these lessons with those that you know that will be blessed by them as the Holy Spirit leads you. Thank you again for being led by the Holy Spirit to study with us.
If you would like to continue reading and studying in this series, please go to “Part 2“.
Jesus Our Kinsman Redeemer Part 1 – Introduction
(Ver 1.0) This will be Part 1 in a series that answers a very challenging Bible question using actual Bible verses. The series title is about Jesus Our Kinsman Redeemer. This will be the introductory lesson to help us establish what a “Kinsman Redeemer” is and why did God elect to fulfill this role to save us? There is a warning up front that this is again a deep spiritual topic that has the potential to offend people. Many people who call themselves Christians are not spiritually mature enough to handle strong chewy meat subjects like this one. Therefore, if you feel you are new to the faith in Jesus, it might be best for you to go and read some lighter soft milky subjects. Please judge yourself and make the personal determination to act mature no matter what you are feeling about the subject today. Thank you and God bless you.
INTRODUCTION
Most Christians have heard the terms “redeemer” and “redemption”, from Bible study and teachings. But we will start with this word to find out what this means in Biblical terms first. To redeem someone is a term relating to the purchase or the buyback of someone that was previously sold for a price. In modern times this is like a Pawn Shop where someone takes their expensive piece of Jewelry to sell permanently or temporarily, and they offer them money in exchange for the item. But the value of the item is always far greater than the sum of money that was given to acquire the item.
This exchange of item for money is always in favor of the buyer of the item and not the seller. The seller must return with more money than was paid to them to regain possession of their sold property. If they never return to “redeem” the item, then the buyer can sell it to whomever they choose for more money. This is the simplicity of “selling” and “redeeming” and it is clearly taught to us in the Bible. Let us continue by looking at the Strong’s definition of the Hebrew word translated as “redeemed”.
The Hebrew word H1350 Gawal is translated as “redeem”, “redeemed”, “redeemer” and “kinsman” primarily. Bible redemption relates to the subjects of a “family”, their heirs or lack thereof, and their possessions. This concept of redemption also directly relates specifically to family deaths and the remaining living family members.
This is a very interesting Bible concept. It takes place when a male family member dies leaving a widow without having an heir. The dead male kin’s property is made available to be bought or redeemed back into the original family ownership by a redeemer close relative. This relative would normally be a brother and he must also marry the widow of the dead brother to have a child heir for the dead. This concept is mentioned multiple times in the Bible, but we will leave that to future lessons in the series. For now, we will look next at a verse that relates to what we have just learned:
Isa 52:3 For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.
The Bible is not written in chronological order. There are clues of truth spread out all over the Bible many times in random order. This verse is one of these types of clues. God reveals through the prophet Isaiah that Adam sold humanity into bondage but obtained northing of value from the deal. When Adam sinned, he gave every human over into the bondage of Satan. You see Adam was given complete dominion rulership over the entire planet (Gen 1:26). But he gave it over to the hands (authority) of the devil and we learn this in Matthew:
Mat 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
Mat 4:9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Notice what Satan says when tempting Jesus to worship him. Satan tells Jesus very plainly that every kingdom (king’s domain) in the world was given to him. Then Satan says he will give this realm back to God (Jesus) when He worships him. Hopefully you understand what is happening here. God gave the earth to the first king of the earth named Adam. World ruler Adam sinned willfully and died, and the world’s kingdoms were transferred to Satan’s ownership. This is the financial transaction that was spoken of in Isaiah 52:3. The first Adam sold himself into captivity under the rulership of the darkness of this world and Satan. This made Satan the ruling god of this world (2 Cor 4:4).
This is very essential Bible knowledge to help you understand what God has done to get us back from the hand of God’s enemy Satan. It should be obvious that the first Adam and all his descendants were unable to buy themselves back from this eternal spiritual transaction because everyone sinned (Rom 3:23). This information teaches us why it was necessary for God to implement a different plan to accomplish this human redemption buy back.
But God had a provision of redemption thought out long before He created our world and man sinned (Rev 13:8). Praise the LORD! We have only briefly touched upon this topic, but we can see it is humans that need redemption from the kingdom of darkness. Therefore, we know that it was by God’s design to redeem us to Himself, but who did it and how as it accomplished. Let us find out next.
Who is our Human Redeemer and What Price was Paid?
We first learned about our need for redemption. We have also seen that it was impossible for man to redeem himself because we were all spiritually dead due to Adam’s sin (1 Cor 15:22). However, this is where God comes to our rescue. Guess how He accomplishes this? He becomes a new sinless man that contains the untainted pure blood of God and enters the world as God’s 2nd man (1 Cor 15:47) and the Last Adam (1 Cor 15:45). This will become amazingly important as we continue. Let us go through some selected few verses to help confirm what is being said:
Luk 1:68 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people,
This is a prophetical statement from the mouth of Zechariah in Luke 1 after the birth of John the Baptist. Notice Zechariah is claiming the LORD God of Israel is being brought forth into the world to visit His creation personally. Then it is clearly stated that the reason for this visit is to “redeem” His people. This is the plan of God transpiring in the natural realm. But when was the plan made by God? Read this verse to find out:
Rev 13:8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
This is a very strong verse of scripture revealing the plan of God was laid out before Adam ever was created. Our God by His omniscient knowledge outside of time already knew the first Adam would sin and we would need a redeemer. Therefore, God Himself, became a man to die and by being slain on a cross, He would shed His blood. Why was shed blood important? That is a great question and let us find the answer:
Rev 5:9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;
As we can see clearly that God’s plan of redemption was for Him to shed His own blood to “redeem” (buy back) people out of every human family, every language, and a people from every nation of the present created world. This is a very strong statement. This is God claiming not everyone will be saved. Please keep this in mind as you learn. We can find another confirmation for God’s blood sacrifice in the book of first Peter:
1Pe 1:18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
1Pe 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
This is a verse that teaches us the fulfilment of the previous prophecy found in Isaiah 52:3 about Jesus. Do you remember what Isaiah wrote? This verse said humanity sold themselves (to Satan) for nothing, but they will be bought back without paying money. As we can see in Peter, the world’s money, like silver and gold, is called a corruptible substance. This Greek word translated as corruptible simply means a substance that is decaying away. In other words, naturally created things are not capable of buying back God’s given human spirits from their death resulting from their spiritual sins. People are infinitely more valuable to God than anything that was created (Mat 10:31).
We can clearly learn from verse 19 that it was the “precious” blood of Jesus Christ that was used by God to “redeem” humanity. This is a very challenging statement for religious minded people that claim they are unworthy sinners. If this was true, God would not have needed to use His own life and blood to buy us back. Think about this for a while. Let us begin to see ourselves as God sees us, as being very valuable and precious.
We have established the fact of truth that it was Jesus who was God in the flesh (Mat 1:23) who paid for our redemption to take us out of our captivity and certain doomed eternal death in hell. It was God’s own blood that He used to make this purchase. That teaches us God loved us so much that He personally died to save us.
Act 20:28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
CONCLUSION
This was simply the introduction to the main subject of God’s word about Jesus Christ being our “Kinsman Redeemer”. In this part of the lesson, we were simply introduced to the basic concepts of “what is redemption”? What caused the need for redemption? Who was it that needed to be redeemed? Who fulfilled this role of the required Redeemer? What was the purchase price for the buy back out of the human condition that the first Adam sold us into? If you can’t answer these questions, it is highly recommended that you go back and restudy this introduction and take better notes.
If you are struggling with understanding any of these answers, it is OK to ask questions. This subject is absolutely a necessity to understand what God has done to show His love through extending His great hands of power to be nailed to a cross (Act 5:30, Col 2:14), to die (Rom 5:10, 1 Pet 2:24), to go to hell for three days to take the punishment for all human sins (Mat 12:30, Eph 4:9), and then to be raised up from the dead to begin a new creation apart from evil (2 Cor 5:17, 2 Pet 3:13).
The Lord be willing in the next lesson in the series, we will focus upon the subject of a Redeemer also being a near relative “Kinsman”, because this was God’s plan and design of our redemption. God becomes a male human baby on the earth born into a manger of a virgin woman named Mary. This woman was a descendant seed of the first man Adam. Mary was also a seed of Abraham and a seed of David. This made Jesus the same as His natural mother. But this baby had a different Father called God. This made Him a new unique type of human that could be called 100% human and 100% divine simultaneously. We will get into this much deeper soon.
Thank you for taking the time to study God’s Holy Word with us. There are not any other books of writings, that are as amazing as this one called the Holy Bible. The infinite intelligence of its design displays the handywork of God in every word choice. There is more information in this book than you will ever be able to fully grasp in many lifetimes.
If you have questions or comments, please feel free to leave them. As the LORD leads us, we will do our best to read them and possibly address them. Thank you again and God Bless you all, we love you and pray for you continually.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please go to “Part 2“
Why Study the Ancient Hebrew Language and Alphabet?
(ver 1.1) There could be many skeptics in the church body of believers that resist new revealed concepts found hidden in the Bible. These lessons are NOT intended or designed to introduce new doctrines or beliefs. However, they do contain several basic revelations that many may have not yet seen before while reading and studying God’s Holy Text. This lesson series is only intended to take what the scriptures actually say and teach us about our Messiah, Lord and the Savior of humanity named Jesus and show us how God reveals Him in an ancient Hebrew pictographic alphabet.
This concept of the ancient Hebrew Text has become an incredibly expanding study subject on the internet and in churches. There are many Christians that have received partial revelations about this subject and have started teaching it also. There are multiple pastor teachers on “Youtube” that have had many of the fundamentals revealed to them and they are teaching it to their churches and to those that want to watch it on the internet. Praise the LORD! It is true, that not everyone has seen the exact same things, but we trust God to continue to work in us and through us all, to come to the increasing fullest knowledge of Jesus Christ. Amen.
There are numerous reasons to learn these lessons about the ancient Hebrew Language. One of the first reasons is simply to understand the selected graphical designs of each letter, and how each of them tell us a story of Jesus individually. After learning the basics of each letter we should desire to learn how letters are joined together to create a greater revelation found in each Hebrew root word meaning. Finally, for advanced students it is then beneficial to see how each larger Hebrew word is built upon the foundations of the alphabet letters and the root words that are laid together to build a greater message of hidden meanings.
Do you remember the old saying that a picture tells us a story of at least a thousand words? We are going to explore today just some of the reasons God reveals this is an important subject to learn. Let us get started on this first subject of why we should study this ancient alphabet with Reason 1.
Reason 1: Jesus Personally Claimed to be the Alphabet.
Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
You have hopefully seen this claim stated before in previous lessons. Jesus in the Book of Revelation twice declares to be the Alpha and the Omega, written as the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. However, the writer of this book was John who was a Jew, Jesus the speaker was also a Jew, and they both most likely were speaking in Hebrew to write the book of Revelation. We know for sure that Jesus spoke Hebrew, because when Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus, it is written in Acts 26:14 that Jesus was speaking to Saul in Hebrew.
Now we must also understand that in the Hebrew text of the Old Covenant, there is a word that occurs very often and it is mostly completely ignored by translators. This word H853 is created by God using two Hebrew letters. These two letters correspond to the Alpha and the Omega, being the first and the last letters and in Hebrew they are called the “Alef” and the “Tav”. That just cannot be a coincidence or accidental occurrence.
Yes, there are modern day scholars that study the Hebrew language and believe these two letters, while not being translated only are there to place emphasis on primary subject verbs. But please do the studies for yourself. Analyze each word if you have the time and its placement and usages. Notice how it sometimes appears to be random when it occurs, and then notice there are many, many verses that do not contain this untranslated word Alef + Tav. Then notice that there are other verses that can contain this word more than once. Finally, pay attention that almost every verse that this word occurs could apply to Jesus in some direct, or hidden form, whether it be in name, title, typology, symbolism, etc. So, the fact still remains that this word H853 occurs more than 5000 times in the text, and Jesus makes it an emphasized point to say these letters represent me, and this cannot be ignored.
Therefore, if Jesus is claiming to be the first and last letters of the alphabet, it is at the least strongly implied that He is also all of the letters in between these two also. This only makes logical sense, because He is called the literal “Word of God” revealed to us in Revelation 19:13. If Jesus was called the “Word of God” in this verse, this just further confirms that He is the entire alphabet that creates the Words of God also. Doesn’t this make sense? It takes all the letters in the alphabet to write the Word of God. Therefore, Jesus by being called the “Word of God” and claiming to be the first and last letters personally, we can make the easy revelation to see Him as every letter.
Reason 2: Jesus Personally Knew and Referenced the Jewish Alphabet
Mat 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
There is a very interesting confirmation for Jesus’ ability to speak Hebrew in this recorded verse from Matthew. Matthew consistently wrote to help Jewish people to find and see their Messiah. In the Genealogy of chapter 1, it is only given to us originating from the fathers Isaac, Israel, and their father called Abraham all proving Jesus to be the promised Seed of Abraham. Now notice what Matthew wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in chapter 5 verse 18. Here in this verse Jesus is speaking of the Old Covenant writings and says very to the point not one jot or tittle will pass away from these writings.
There is some debate about what exactly a tittle represents. Some believe these are only the vowel markings of the word that are very minor in size. This could be a reference to the text marks found in Hebrew during the time of Jesus. But it is the word “Jot” that must capture our primary focus. In this verse the “Jot” is a transliteration of the Greek letter “iota”. Wow, this is another single alphabet letter.
But the “Iota” letter is a transliteration of the original Hebrew alphabet letter “Yod”. Wow again. Now place a few more puzzle pieces together to see what is being communicated. Jesus just picked the most used letter in the entire Hebrew Old Testament writings and said none of these are going to pass away from God’s written word. But wait, what does a “Yod” picture represent? If you have studied this, we know it is the representation of “a hand extended from an outstretched arm”. This picture connects us to the “hand of God”, the “hand of man”, or the “hand of angels like Lucifer”. The “Yod” further represents the concepts of “power and authority” within kingdom realms. These kingdoms include the Kingdom of God, human kingdoms, and the kingdom of darkness.
The Yod is also the letter that begins the name of Jesus in the Hebrew language. The letter “Yod” is the same letter that begins the name of “Jehovah” (LORD) in the Hebrew language. This letter “Yod” also begins other essential words like Israel and Jerusalem. Are there any light bulbs being illuminated in your mind yet? Why did Jesus pick this letter to place such an emphasis upon it saying none of these will pass away from God’s Word? The simple answer is because God places the emphasis upon this letter in His written Word.
Could it also be Jesus was connecting Himself to this letter and again saying this one is me also? Remember what God wrote in Hebrews 1:8. In this verse God is speaking to His Son Jesus and says, “But unto the son, he says thy throne oh God, is forever.” Can you see the direct connection of the throne of Jesus Christ being forever, and not one Jot (Yod) will pass away? I personally believe that it is just another clue to connect us with the ancient Hebrew language.
Reason 3: God’s Intelligently Designed Alphabet
The next reason that becomes self-revealing from the study of this ancient Hebrew alphabet, is that these letter pictures could not have occurred by accident, or by human creation alone without God the Creator of our universe’s personal involvement. There are just too many signposts found in each letter that point us to only one person in the scriptures, and He is called the only begotten Son of God and is named Jesus Christ in English.
God is an amazing God and has a beyond amazing intelligence and level of understanding. The layers of intentionally designed information found in the Bible is like an onion. There is a never-ending supply of hidden treasures to find in the Bible. Jesus talks about this in a short parable:
Mat 13:44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.
As you can read the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. When anyone comes to the realization that Jesus is talking about His Word and knowing Him by His Word, they will change from never reading their Bibles to spending all of their spare time digging in it, seeking to find and learn new hidden treasures. Why would a man sell everything to buy a field that he had just found a very valuable treasure? The only logical common-sense answer is that he expects to find more treasure in the same field. This is a perfect description of the Bible. The Bibles is the ultimate field containing infinite hidden treasures.
If you are a computer geek or engineer, then you might understand that all intelligently designed, organized and presented data and information, does not occur randomly, without intensive intelligence involvement of a creator. This realization brings us to the amazing conclusion that this book could have only occurred without God being personally involved. The known facts prove this by asking and answering the question, how could one book written over 1500 years of time, by over 40 different individual authors, and each one of their unique writings contain the harmonious union of a single story about the One True God? This could not occur without contradictions or errors, unless there was an external God author that inspired every letter and word! If you would like to debate that the Bible does not have errors, that probably proves your ignorance of what the words mean. It could also say you may be ignoring how the organization of the words were designed, and how even each letter was purposefully organized and chosen to create each word.
When assumed conflicts are encountered, they normally come from a human that does not know how intelligent God is and therefore could never relate on the level with His extreme intelligence. In the book of Isaiah 55;8, informs us that His thoughts and ways are so much higher than our natural human ways. This is exactly why when we become a saved Christian through believing in Jesus, then we are given His personal Holy Spirit to live on the inside of us to help teach us what He hid in this Word for us to find. This is an amazing intelligently designed encryption system. Unless we are spiritually born again, we are totally unable to comprehend some of the simple Bible statements. It is very much like a 2-year-old trying to debate a chess master on the subject of how to play the game to win.
Reason 4: God’s Word Conceals Him
Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
This is an amazing clue to finding Jesus. Before we look for Him, we must know that He is hidden for us to find. We learn this from this verse and others like it. To understand what is being spoken of here, we must analyze the words “thing” and “matter” which is the same Hebrew word H1697 (dabar).
This Hebrew word H1697 is spelled “Dalet” + “Beyt” + “Resh”. If you have studied these individual letters, you already know the “Dalet” is the door of the house, The “Beyt” is the “House” and the “Resh” is the Head, ruler, or Prince of the House. Placing these pictures together in a sentence we get “The door of the House is the “Prince or Head”. As you should know by now this is a prophecy of Jesus as being the Only way into the Father’s house. Jesus stated this very plainly in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes unto the Father except by me”.
Wow, that is an amazing revelation alone. Jesus is claiming to all of God’s creation that there will be some that do not or more clearly can never enter the Kingdom of God. This is too complex to go into in great depth. But the bottom line is that Jesus is revealing Satan and his angels will be excluded forever from the Kingdom of God because of their rebellion and sin.
However, there are others that will never enter the Kingdom of God. God reveals these others that will never be able to enter into His kingdom in Revelation 21:8. In this verse the LORD says, “the fearful”, “unbelieving”, the “abominable”, “murders”, “whoremongers”, “sorcerers”, “idolaters”, and ALL LIARS, shall have their part in the lake of burning fire another name for HELL! Remember these are words written down by John from the mouth of Jesus. What we are finding is that not everyone will be saved and if they do not enter into the door when they can on the earth, that door will soon shut when they die a physical death. But let us get back to our subject of “dabar”
Ok, what is God speaking of in the Hebrew “dabar” translated as “thing” and “matter”? I believe this verse should have been translated more literally and said “It is the glory of God to conceal the “Word”, and the honor of kings to search out the “Word”. This Hebrew word H1697 is translated as “Word” more times than any other and this is the literal definition. That information should be causing lights to shine in your heart right now.
Who is the Word of God? Remember, we saw this answer mentioned earlier. God revealed the answer to us in Revelation 19:13, but also, He shows us more of this mystery in John 1:1. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. We can find out in John 1:1 that the Word of God is God and God is His Word spoken and written simultaneously. Then we learn in John 1:14, “that the Word (God) became flesh and dwelt among us”. This flesh Word manifestation of God was Jesus! Therefore, the Word is God, God sending His Word into the World manifested in human flesh form, and God walked around us in person through Jesus who was born in Bethlehem.
Do you see better what Psalm 25:2 is saying now? God is the “dabar” Word, the “dabar” Word was with God and was God and He the dabar “Word” who became flesh to reveal Himself to humans in a touchable human form. Therefore, it was “The glory of God to conceal Jesus (the Word), and it is the glory of kings (Christians) to search Him out and find Him in the Word everywhere from Genesis to Revelation.
Reason 5: God’s Word Proclaims Him
We are about to discover a few more hidden jewels within the Word of the Living God. God’s Word has a fundamental design to reveal Him, and His nature, His Character, and His Ways to those that desire to know Him personally. But to those that do not desire to know Him, He has built into His Book a spiritual encryption language to block the carnal human mind and thoughts from knowing or understanding it. Therefore, if you are struggling to see what the Bible actually says about the God who is called Love, Light and Truth, it could be you need to pray and ask Him to help open your eyes to see what He has to say today to you personally. These are innumerable valuable hidden truth treasures placed in His Word for us to discover with our faithful and diligent Bible study. Let us confirm our reasons to study this subject with this next verse:
Psa 40:7 Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me,
This verse is written down about the coming Messiah. God clearly states that there are three very important terms about studying the ancient Hebrew language. These three words are “volume” (H4039), “book” (H5612), and “written” (H3789). We will dig deeper into each word to find God’s treasures.
H4039 translated as “volume” refers to the concept of ancient scrolls made of leather or papyrus sheets that are rolled up after having letters written upon them. But these exist in blank form first awaiting someone’s thoughts to be recorded and preserved. This concept is a parallel to the human heart and mind. When first born onto the earth, each of us is a blank slate awaiting to be imprinted upon. We can see this concept and God’s intention of His Word to fill it, by reading God instruction to us saying, “for us to write His Words and Commandments upon the table of our heart”, in Proverbs 7:3.
The Hebrew word H5612 translated as “book” is very similar to the word translated as “volume” for it also refers to the scroll of a skin or papyrus rolled up, but this word more directly attached the meaning of this document containing a record of handwritten words with letters and also implied or direct numbers. This is a representation of a book that has was previously written upon using an alphabet building words.
Finally, the Hebrew word H3789 translated as “written” moves us to the process and act of writing implying with the usage of a “hand” (Yod) to accomplish this book of records in the volume of the book. This is actually representation of the human level of participation to take words and store them into our heart. But this verse in Psalm 40 while revealing spiritual application for us, is primarily focused upon Jesus as a prophecy.
It is most interesting to know that this verse is further quoted in the book of Hebrews. This is an amazing blessing from the LORD, because it gives us a word for word direct transition from Hebrew to Greek. In other words, it removes any guess work for knowing what Greek word corresponds to which Hebrew word. Let us look at the same words written in the book of Hebrews next:
Heb 10:7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.
The Greek word G2777 was translated as “volume” and it corresponds directly by quotation to the Hebrew word H4039. This word in Greek dictionaries is very similar to the Hebrew meaning “a scroll”. But this word also reveals that it means “a little head” as in the top of a round stick that the scroll is rolled up upon.
The Greek word G975 translated as “book” is the Greek word “biblion”. The Greek word G975 is a diminutive of G976 “biblios”. Hopefully you are seeing these are the words that give us our English word “Bible”. And our Bible is the book of writings penned by man from the inspired breath and finger of God.
As you can see, we are getting to some more of the good stuff now. The next Greek word is G1125. This word in an English transliterated word form is “grapho” and as we should know, it is translated mostly as “written”, and this again is implying with the work of a “hand”. In fact, in Biblical terms, we should understand this is the cooperating hands of man, being guided by the powerful hands of God. Both of these references connect us back to the statement of Jesus about the “Yod” (hand) letter never passing away.
According to the Mounce Greek dictionary this word “grapho” means “to engrave, as in to write, according to the ancient method of writing on plates of metal, waxes, tables or tables can also be known as tablets. There are many of these recovered writing surfaces that have been restored to prove and show us the ancient Hebrew Texts. I believe that is an interesting fact of history.
In the Thayer dictionary this word G1125 is further expanded to refer to the handwritings containing alphabet “letters”. As we should all know it is this concept that is the basis for all ancient and modern written words. Every word can only be created by people with intelligence through the proper education and selection of each of the letters made to form the words. Each individual created word can further be expanded to the concept of being organized by the person to convey in writing their thoughts, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and ideas and many other types of word thoughts. But God designed words to mean so much more than this basic idea of communication of ideas and imaginations.
Hopefully you see where God is taking us. The Greek word “grapho” defined by Thayer means “to write, but it contains the direct reference to the form of the individual letters”. The clear emphasis given to us by this definition is that the shapes of letter matters. This is where many ignore the forms of the individual letters as being unimportant. But many of them have been transformed from the original and ancient writing style to the modern letters we see today.
Just a few examples of this are, the ancient Hebrew “Alef” ox pictogram looks like the English letter “A”. The ancient Hebrew “Mem” wave picture design looks very similar to the English letter “M”. The ancient Hebrew letter “Tav” cross picture is very similar to the English letter “T”. However, other letters were not so blessed and have been distorted to remove much of the ancient pictographic message from it.
However, let us learn from the Greek word “grapho”. From this word we can derive English words like “graph”, and “graphics” or it can be used as a “suffix” as in “biography” to tell one’s life story. All of these deal with ideas that are written by hand on either a piece of paper or in computer terms of digitally remembered designs of the same handwritten or drawn information.
Now let us go deeper into modern tech applications. Every website will hire one or more “graphic designers”. What are these people responsible for? They represent the design of the content of that website. This would include picture and photographic designs that are associated with textual content, including the font style, sizes and colors, etc. All of these come from the Bible. God is the ultimate “Divine Graphic Designer” of the Bible. Every picture image came from the mind of God and not a human. Each word style and order of the letters in the messages came directly from the mind of God the Creator of the heaven and the earth.
There is a significant challenge in modern culture, to try to understand the original designs and writings. The alphabets of most languages have transitioned and in modern terminology the font styles can vary so widely that every letter has been perverted to a nature of its own human reasoning. This is where God’s original manuscripts can reveal the same types of challenges, but the general shapes of the letters are still true to original intent and they still convey the basic envisioned picture meaning. It is only when we ignore these ancient original forms and only look at the modern modified variations that we could easily miss about what God hid for us to find, by Him designing Himself into each letter picture. Let us remember what Jesus said again in John:
Joh 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Jesus is speaking to Hebrew leaders who could read and write in their native language. Speaking directly to these religious leaders, Jesus makes a claim that blows their minds. With this statement Jesus is making the claim that He is Messiah. But this statement is so much more than our simplistic human thinking of His declaration of truth.
Jesus is implying a much deeper truth than to just read from plainly stated verses written about Messiah. All these Jewish leaders knew the Messiah would be a Son of Abraham (Mat 1:1). All these leaders knew Messiah would be a Son of David (Mat 22:42) to rule David’s throne forever. All these leaders understood that He would be born in Bethlehem (Mat 2:6). These types of verses were so plainly understood by most scholars. Therefore, Jesus could not be talking just about these. No, these leaders knew all these verses and did not recognize the God in the flesh man named Jesus that stood before them that fulfilled them completely.
Therefore, Jesus is definitely speaking of deeper hidden truths. What Jesus was speaking of had to be a type of search that contained things that could be easily hidden from them in plain sight. This “search” would require more than just reading and implies a deeper need of “pursuit” behind words to find Him. I personally believe that what Jesus is referring to as Him being hidden, can apply to many layers of methods of deep study. Some of these could be methods that we have not yet fully found or understood, but all of these are placed there in plain sight using simple alphabet letters. In other words, there are no hidden coded messages that required us to do some unencrypting of the text to find Him. Let us go over some new examples of how Jesus was potentially hidden in Hebrew Words containing ancient Hebrew pictogram letters, next.
JESUS the GIFT of GOD
Knowing this about Jesus possibly being in the Alphabet and the Words built from this Alphabet, we begin by realizing one way for God to hide Himself, was for Him to create an alphabet of 22 letter pictures where every letter tells a part of the story of who He truly was and what He came to do. We find this message in the story of the alphabet letters pictures and in the placement of these letters to create words for greater God thoughts and God ideas. For example, we know God Almighty is the first letter of the Alphabet called the “Alef” representing the picture strong Ox servant, who is self-driven to move towards the final letter picture called the “Tav” representing His death on a wooden cross.
Along this journey and pathway of planned design, God moves through each letter to bring us new knowledge of His plan and the benefits that we will obtain by following after Him with our whole heart. For example, look at the Hebrew word H5414 a root word meaning “to give”. This root word is comprised of three letters with one letter being the same letter that is the beginning as well as ending letters of the word. Uh oh? Do you remember what we read in reason number 1 about Jesus claiming to be the first and the last? Who gave us a gift and what is this gift that is being given?
Remember that Jesus directly claims to be the “gift of God” in John 4:10 to a woman at a well. In this statement Jesus said, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that said to you Give me a drink…”. We will not teach this story, but pay attention to the fact that Jesus is calling Himself this gift and remember in John 3:16 we find “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life”. Jesus was offering this woman at the well a drink from His Spirit coming from His mouth and these words could have imparted to her eternal life if she believed. We have just learned that Jesus is the Gift that was given by the Father to the world so that we might be saved.
Now what are the two letters that make up the Hebrew word H5414, translated as gift? The first and last letters are the letter “Nun”. Uh oh, again. Do you recall what this letter means? This letter primarily means “a seed” but has implied applications to be the spoken “Words” of God also. We know this because the “Sower” (Jesus) sowed the Word of God in Mark 4. Therefore, the Word of God is being stated plainly to be “seed”, the letter “Nun”.
We also know that the Word of God is likened to bread in Matthew 4:4 where Jesus quotes to the devil “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. Do you see the progression God has just taken us through? You do understand that wheat is a type of grass that is cultivated to obtain its seed to make bread? You do know that bread is a very basic staple for maintaining natural human life? Therefore, God just said His words of “seed” are the same type of life source for the human spirit of man.
There are other applications to this “Nun” representing Jesus by knowing Jesus is called the “Seed of Abraham” as well as the “Seed of David” in the New Testament. Jesus further makes the direct claim to being a “seed” that came to the earth to die and fall into the ground in John 12:24. Jesus said unless He does this He would abide alone, but if He accomplished this goal, He would bring forth much fruit for God.
Now the middle letter of the word sandwich is the pivotal letter called the “Tav”. Surprise, Surprise! This letter as you should recall is the picture of the “cross”. Remember the cross is a torture instrument for death. Placing these three letters together “The Seed must die on a Cross (be buried) and will arise again (the third day) a new Seed of Life”. We get the attention to detail of the third day by just paying attention to the number of letters in the word being three (NTN). There are no accidents in the design of scriptures, but there are a lot of misunderstood and yet to be discovered things the Lord will reveal to us if we choose to “search” for Him. He is still hiding in plain sight in this word “to give” (H5414, nathan).
JESUS the STONE the BUILDERS REJECTED
Another awesome hidden Jesus is found in the Word translated as “stone”. The Hebrew root word H68 that is mainly translated as “stone” is also comprised of just three letters. Again, this is not a coincidence either. Three, is the number of divine completeness. There are three divine manifestations in the Godhead, revealed as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But what are these three letters?
First let us look up why the word “stone” represents Jesus. We know from reading Mark 12:10 that Jesus speaking to the Jewish people and leaders is claiming to be the “stone”. In this verse He quotes a Hebrew verse found in Psalm 118:22. In this verse we find the Hebrew word H68 translated as “Stone”. But this is a verse of prophecy about Jesus the coming Messiah that “the builders” and the “keepers” of the Old Covenant were supposed to accept in joy, but rather rejected because they did not know Him.
This Hebrew word “H68” is spelled “Alef” + “Beyt” + “Nun”. This is an amazing Hebrew word containing great layers of revelation in just three letters. In simplistic letter for letter interpretation, we see the Alef as the Strong Servant, the Beyt as the House of the Father and the Nun as the Seed that comes from the Father’s house. Therefore, placing these meanings into a sentence, we get “God will come forth from His House in heaven to bring forth a Seed to the earth to die”, as we learned before in the word Nathan meaning “to give” a gift. This new word “ABN” contains the basic prophetical message of Jesus being born as a Son sent from the Father’s house in heaven and the reason for His appearance was to be a “Seed”. Is this amazing or what? Can we begin to agree upon the intelligent design of not only individual letters, but also of the creation of root words as prophecies?
But wait, there is more. The first two letters “Alef” + “Beyt” spell the word “Abba” the word for Father. The last two letter “Beyt” + “Nun” spell “Ben” the Hebrew word for “Son”. Is this an accident? The Father becomes the Son? This is exactly what happened in scripture. We learn in John 1:1, In the Beginning (the first Letter Alef” representing God) was the Word (the second two letters the Son Beyt + Nun, aka known as the Word of God, Rev 19:13), the Word was with God, and the Word was GOD!
Heb 3:6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
We do not have the time to teach the entire revelation in this shortened version but understand the middle letter of these three letters translated as “stone” in the Hebrew word H68, is the “beyt” representing a “house” and a “family” transition from the “Father” to the “Son”. The Son of God has become the Heir of God’s House by His death on a cross. By being raised from the dead Jesus becomes the firstborn Son of God from the dead (Rev 1:5).
Then notice what God revealed to us in Hebrews 3:6. Jesus has implemented (BUILT) a new house of God and He calls us (the Church saved believers in Him) to be the building blocks that will be joined together with Him (1 Pet 2:5). Remember Jesus is the “Chief” (Head) corner stone and all of us that are saved in Him, are living stones to be built with Him as His Body.
Do you see how this is all fitting together containing a hidden puzzle from three letter design of the word stone? Jesus is plainly hidden in the Hebrew Word H68 “ABN’? Psalm 118:22 clearly included this word to relate us to Jesus. But within this word is Jesus’ story and God’s plan found in three letters. That is just too amazing to be an accidental chance occurrence. These organizations of specific letters to tell a story and make a prophecy are too great for us not to be excited about what God has hidden for us to find.
CONCLUSION
Thank you for taking the time to read and study the Bible on this website. If these kinds of hidden pearls of treasure do not excite you enough to sell all you have to obtain more of them, then you may not be one of His disciples. Remember again what Jesus taught us in Matthew:
Mat 13:45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
Mat 13:46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
God’s Words and gaining the knowledge of them is more valuable that seeking to gain all of the silver and gold in the world. These words of knowledge and truth will save you, heal you, deliver you and transform you. They renew our mind from the dark filth of this present evil world to move us into the light of the knowledge of the true and living God that came and died to save all of us. Praise the LORD for His immense wealth of all knowledge and wisdom.
Be blessed in the LORD as you continue to learn things that you have never seen before. There is a never-ending supply contained within just the words and the alphabet letters that create them, and these were created and written in His Bible by the Hand of God. If you enjoy these lessons, like and share them with your friends and family. God’s Word will go forth to all the ends of the world, and then the End will Come! Jesus is Coming very Soon! Are you Ready?
If you would like to begin to learn more about this incredible ancient Hebrew alphabet, please go to the beginning of the series “Introduction“.
Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 14 – The Mem Part 2 – The Water

(Ver 1.0) This lesson is “Part 2” of “Part 14” of the Bible study series revealing the Lord Jesus Christ, that had been hidden by the Spirit of God in His design of the original Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. In this lesson we are focusing upon the letter “Mem” and how it represents “water”. If you have not read the first introduction to this mini-series within the larger series, please go to “MEM Part 1” first. Also, you are able to go to the entire series introduction “Part 1 INTRO” to get the basic foundational information for the entire series.
We have learned the two primary meanings of the ancient Hebrew pictogram of the “Mem” are 1) Water and 2) Blood. We focused upon the subject of blood in the first lesson because the “blood” of Jesus is an incredibly essential subject in the entire Bible for our human salvation. We should have learned that Jesus was the Last Adam. We further learned the named Adam means “God’s Blood”. Based upon this information we should be able to understand that the first Adam rebelled against God and destined all of humanity to separation from God in an eternal hell. But Praise the LORD God who became the “Last Adam” and it was His sinless Mem “Blood” that met His own righteous justice to be able to pay for all of our sins as a free gift.
In the introduction we learned the individual letter “Mem” study is a picture of 3 significant waves of a sea. Therefore, God was focusing this letter primarily upon the subject of moving “Water”. This Mem water symbolism will be the focus of this lesson. We are about to discover the incredible significance of this subject of “water” from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. For example, the world was destroyed twice by water. The first in Genesis 1:2, and the second is found in Genesis 6. Our present world will culminate with its destruction in fire, the antithesis of water. But the new heaven and the new earth will contain a “river” of pure as crystal water that flows from the throne of God in Revelation 22:1, that water provides us life.
The references to “water” in the Bible, is so much greater than these. The various forms of the word “water” is found over 700 times. The words “sea” or “seas” occurs over 400 times. Also do not forget some seas and bodies of water have specific names that are mentioned. The words “river” or “rivers” occurs over 250 times. The words “well” or “wells” occur over 50 times. The words “brook” or “brooks” occurs over 50 times. The word “lake” occurs at least 10 times. But there are many other words that are associated with the concept of water that also occur in the Bible. For example: a “flood”, to “drink”, to “wash”, to “draw” from a well, to “fill” a cup, the “depth” of the body of water, the movement of the water called “waves”, and on and on we could go. To cover this subject fully would take writing many volumes of books, derived from countless numbers of hours from a study with the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Today we will be learning only a limited number of subjects of the total amount of God’s important information about Jesus Christ found in the letter “Mem”. In fact, in this second “Mem” lesson about the subject of “water, we will only be covering the following seven titled subjects:
- Jesus in the letter Mem Number 40
- Jesus’ First Miracle Turning Water to Blood
- God’s Spoken Words are the MEM Waters for Spiritual Life
- Washed with the (Mem) Water of the Word of God
- The Spiritual Cleansing Power of Jesus Water and Blood from Sin
- Natural Water Waves Created and Connected with God’s Spirit Voice Sound Waves
- A God’s Real-Life NOW Application of the MEM – Calming Life’s Storms
- The Mem Water Conclusion
Let us get started with learning this incredible picture of God’s “Mem” letter as being His representation of Jesus Christ.
1. Jesus in the letter Mem Number 40
Remember the ancient Hebrew letter “Mem”, is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and has the gematria number value of “40”. The number 40 has the basic symbolic meaning for the time of testing, trials and temptations. We find this number as a pattern for these, repeatedly in the Bible. We should know that Noah’s time of testing continued through a time of 40 days of rain that destroyed the rest of the world. We should also know Moses met with God on Mount Sinai for 40 days. Then the children of Israel ate manna for 40 years in the wilderness. There are other examples of forty, but we cannot cover everything today.
It is very essential to observe how the earthly ministry of Jesus begins after a 40-day preparation time of testing. And then we must also notice how the earthly ministry of physical Jesus ends with another 40-day period of speaking a flow of words to the church to help direct them into their arising future. Let us briefly go through both of these confirmation to Jesus being the “Mem” fulfillment of ancient prophecy found in the number 40.
Luk 4:1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Luk 4:2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
We must first understand the direct water connection to the “Mem” with these verses. Before this 40-day trial and temptation of Jesus occurred, He was physically “baptized” into the waters of the Jordan River by John. This meant the physical body of Jesus was “fully” emersed within God’s created substance of “water” (H2O) a definite picture of the letter “Mem”. This is truly amazing and definitely not a coincidence. Jesus appears to know and understand exactly what He is doing all the time while interacting with water. He purposely chooses to be fully covered by the “water” before He even begins His ministry. Jesus actually said He was doing this to “fulfill all righteousness” (Mat 3:15).
It is very, very important to note what John said about Jesus before he baptized Him in the Jordan river:
Mat 3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:
Here is your first clue that the “Mem” physical water matter represents a symbolic substance of far greater spiritual application to Jesus. We can see this by how John compares his physical water baptism of Jesus, to a different kind of future spiritual baptism that is assigned to a coming role of Jesus. We know from studying other verses that John is speaking of a “baptism” that Jesus could only perform after He had ascended back into heaven.
We do not see this coming Jesus baptism taking place until the first time it is mentioned in Acts 2. We are about to find out that this “baptism” of the Holy Spirit would also occur after a 40-day series of events. What do you believe the Holy Spirit is trying to say to us? There appears to be direct connections to the letter “Mem” and the fulfilment of multiple types of “water”. We can see how Jesus began His ministry after being baptized in physical water. But the prophet John claimed Jesus would be baptizing people with the “Holy Ghost” and “Fire” and this clearly began in Acts 2. Notice how all of this information is being communicated by “Words” that were spoken first, and then written down for anyone to read and speak.
It is very interesting to note that the 40-day temptation of Jesus occurs directly after His Baptism into Mem physical water that flowing in the Jordan river. Let us stop and analyze what this means. The name Jordan is the Hebrew word H3383 and is defined by Strong as a “descender”. This is a major revelation. It describes God’s position of His ultimate highest supremacy has been reduced to become a part of His fallen creation in the first Adam. Think about it! The eternal Creator, and the self-existent God became a created mortal human that could experience death. He did this for several reasons, but one of the primary reasons was to save His creation from permanently being separated from Him.
The picture of Baptism in water is a windowed view into God’s plan and process of salvation. The descent into the water represents His death and burial. The time spent under the water represents His 3 days in the tomb and His time in hell to pay for all of our sins. The rising of the body of Jesus out of the water, represents His coming “resurrection” from the dead, into a newly created realm of fresh eternal life. All of this occurred using the pictogram ancient Hebrew letter “Mem” type of physical water.
Remember what happened to the children of Israel after they were saved out of Egypt? The Pharoah regretted letting them go, even after all of the problems that God had caused them through 10 plagues and especially the deaths of the first-born of every man and beasts that was not protected by the blood (Mem) of lambs. So, Pharaoh got his army together and went after them. Here is where it gets interesting. The children of Israel were camped next to the “Red Sea”. Uh oh! This is another “Mem” water supply. This water was at first imagined to be their death not allowing them to escape. But God suddenly divided the “Red Sea” and dried up the ground and the children of Israel went through to the other side.
Then came Pharaoh after them into the “Red Sea”. But God collapsed the walled and divided (Mem) waters and these their greatest hinderance became their amazing permanent deliverance from Egypt. Because the Red Sea flooded the Egyptians suddenly, God caused all of the pursuing Egyptians to drown (Heb 11:29). Wow, this is an amazing picture of what God did for us all in the New Covenant. Notice the name of the Sea is “Red”, which is the color of “blood”. Could that be a picture of the blood of Jesus that we learned about in “Part 1”? Of course, it is! Going through the “Red Sea” is a pictured type of “Baptism”. Please notice what Paul wrote by the inspiration of the Spirit:
1Co 12:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
The works of God’s plan of salvation was a complete surprise to Satan. The devil thought by crucifying Jesus on a cross, he had just gained a great victory over God. But God by raising Jesus from the dead, implemented Satan’s defeat and greatly modified the presence of the Spirit of God in every human that would believe.
Paul writes about this by saying the Spirit of God “baptized us (believers in Jesus) into (His) 1 body”, making us all one with Christ. Clearly this greater Spirit baptism, was a type of what happened to the Lord Jesus in the river Jordan and the children of Israel in the Red Sea. The entire body of Jesus went under the water. But now in the New Covenant we can read every Christian has become a “member” of the Body of Christ, which is still a growing spiritual entity today.
Do you see what is happening here? Notice the “water” concepts being given to us in just this verse. There is a two-fold work of the Spirit of God. Every saved Christian has been placed “inside” the Spirit of Christ as His growing temple and body. But simultaneously we drank this same water (Spirit) to have Him become alive inside of us. That is one of the most important concepts that is needed to be understood after you are saved. It changes our identity from being a dead human, to a new living house of Christ. Hopefully we will go deeper into this subject as we continue to learn.
It is also noteworthy that when Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him from heaven in the bodily shape of a dove, and the Heavenly Father said in an audible voice “This is my beloved Son, whom I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). But what happened to Jesus next after being immersed in water, is a very stark contrast. All of these actions that occurred to Jesus also occurred to us as His spiritual body.
After being fully emersed into the water of the Jordan, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Guess what a “wilderness” is? A wilderness can be defined as an uninhabitable dry desert area. Notice that we are studying about “water” the Mem letter and Jesus went from 1) a full immersion in a water river, 2) then receiving the Holy Spirit, 3) the fully audible spoken voice of Father God, 4) to being led into a dry place where no water is easily found. Apparently, this dry area of “no water” made Jesus more accessible for the tests, trials, and physical and spiritual temptations of the enemy. It is also interesting to see how what Jesus went through was a fulfillment of what the children of Israel also experienced. These occurred when Israel was being led through the Red Sea (baptism, water and blood), and then going into a dry waterless wilderness of testing and trials for 40 years, before they began to possess their promised land. Where they failed, Jesus came to succeed for us all. At least three times the people of Israel required God’s miraculous provision of water to survive in the wilderness.
These are all important concepts that were just mentioned. We are being introduced to a new set of “Mem” representations. The Mem water letter is a symbolic picture of 1) Physical Baptism, 2) Spiritual Baptism into the Body of Christ, 3) Receiving (drinking) the Holy Spirit, and 4) hearing God’s spoken words.
We in this section are being introduced to the fact that “Mem” represents the Words of God. The more Words of God that we are surrounded with, the safer we are from the attack of the devil. Let us take notice of something that Jesus taught about humans that are inhabited by demons:
Luk 11:24 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out.
Luk 11:25 And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.
Luk 11:26 Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.
Why would demons want to go to a dry place like a wilderness where Jesus was led to go? This is because the devil and his demonic forces know the power of God’s spoken words to cast them out (Mat 8:16). In this example, of Jesus, He says a human can be loosed from a devil temporarily but they will attempt to come back inside the same human mind and body. Uh oh! Jesus is implying this human was made clean by the “Mem” water but was not filled with the Spirit and the Word to keep their enemy out. This is an introduction to “Mem” realities of water to represent both the Spirit of God as well as the Word of God.
What is interesting is that Jesus when tempted by the devil, each time He would quote the Word of God by saying “It is written…”. This clearly teaches us how Jesus overcame the enemy’s temptations because Jesus had been filled with the Spirit and Word of the Mem water of God. Every time the devil brought a new plan of deception to Jesus, Jesus just spoke the Word of God. Even when Satan quotes a verse to Jesus, which was a new trick, Jesus countered with “It is also written”. So, in the temptation of Jesus, we are observing a battle of opposing Mem “words” of water. This concept will be a theme of the rest of this lesson revealing the spiritual application of physical “water” to be a representation picture of spiritual words.
We have just been going through the baptism “descent” of Jesus into the created realm of death. But let us shift to the time just before Jesus ascended to go back into heaven which is pictured by the coming out of the waters in physical baptism. What we are about to discover is another pattern of “Mem” gematria number 40. What we will read, is the fact that Jesus after being raised from the dead, interacted with His followers for exactly 40 days. During this 40-day time, Jesus would test His disciple to help teach and guide them into learning about faith, but we will not be able to get into this in great depth. Let us read the record of Luke the writer of the book of Acts:
Act 1:1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,
Act 1:2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:
Act 1:3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
We can all clearly see these three verses are about Jesus. We can further observe that Jesus appeared to His followers to 1) give commandments to the chosen church, 2) to show Himself, and 3) to provide infallible proofs by being “seen” of them for forty days. Finally, the last part of verse 3 says all of this was accomplished by Him “speaking” of things that pertained to the Kingdom of God. Here we again see the pattern of salvation that occurs from “Words of God” being spoken (sowed), and “Words” believed (consumed) and confessed in agreement.
Think about what the Bible says about what Jesus did after being raised from the dead. He appears at the tomb to get his body. He encounters women and tells them to go and tell his disciples that He was alive. That is the first test of faith to see if they will believe what He had told them. Jesus also appears to the disciples later, with Thomas not being present. This is another example of a test. Thomas failed this test and receives a rebuke. These are just a couple of examples of tests that Jesus gave to His disciples and there were others. Jesus performed this by speaking words to people and then these that saw Him telling others so that they could also believe in Him. Clearly this was a training mission to show them how to spread the Gospel. When Jesus spoke to Thomas, He said; “Blessed are those that have not seen and yet believe”. That is where we are today. Do you believe?
Ok, we have only been quickly introduced to the concept of “Words” being Mem water. But we will see this more and more as we study this subject today. Just please pay attention to the fact that for exactly 40 days the number value of the “Mem” letter, Jesus went to over 500 people in the nation of Israel, to appear and teach them about His works that were accomplished on the cross (1 Cor 15:6). In doing this Jesus fulfilled two very significant examples of the number 40 and the picture of water interactions. We are now going to shift into a new fulfillment of Jesus and the letter Mem.
2. Jesus’ First Miracle Turning Water to Blood
We have learned the connection that the “Mem” pictogram is a representative of both “water” and “blood” in the Part 1 introduction. It just so happens that the first miracle of Jesus has something to do with both of these natural symbols.
Joh 2:5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.
Joh 2:6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.
Joh 2:7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
Joh 2:8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
Joh 2:9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
Joh 2:10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
We are studying an ancient Hebrew letter called the “Mem” that is a picture representation of water and blood. It is amazing that we see both of these appear in the very first recorded miracle of Jesus. The first thing we need to realize is that this takes place at a “wedding” that Jesus was in attendance. This wedding was no doubt one of Jesus’ siblings either a brother or sister. We can easily deduce this because of the role of Jesus’ mother as a person that was able to order the servants and tell them what they should do to listen to obey her son Jesus. It is practically impossible to ignore how Mary had such authority to do this at anyone else’s house other than her own family.
Now notice there are exactly 6 earthen empty waterpots that are present at this wedding location. The number 6 is a representation for the number of a “man”. Man was created by God at the end of day six on the last work day of creation (Genesis 1). These 6 pots we are told are used for Jewish ceremonial cleansing. Therefore, these water pots normally contained water for people to make themselves clean. Please, remember that we have learned this is a significant quality about water in previous parts on this water letter subject.
Jesus orders the servants to fill the 6 empty pots with “water” (Mem). We can potentially see that the fact that these pots were empty, meant they previously contained wine that was already consumed during the wedding feast. Therefore, the need to be refilled implies this is why Jesus commanded them to be “filled” with Mem water. But everyone knows water was not what they needed to continue the feast, or was it? We should understand that Jesus who created everything, including grapes knew how wine was made and He knew it must originate from “water” being fed into the roots of vines to flow into the finished fruit of grapes. Jesus appears to be starting with the water, and expecting the rest of the process to occur supernaturally.
After filling the pots, they are ordered to draw and take out from them and go and serve it to the master of the feast. These servants were operating by faith in what they were being told to do. So, they bare the cup to the master, and he took a drink and was shocked. He called for the bridegroom and gave him a high praise saying “Most serve the good wine at the beginning, and then when everyone is drunk, they bring out the cheap wine”. That was a paraphrase, but it conveys the meaning precisely. What the servants and the disciples of Jesus had just witnessed was a supernatural miracle with amazing symbolic representations fulfillment to our letter “Mem” prophetical picture.
We know that the “Mem” is first thought to be a picture of only water. But we have learned that it also represents the internal unseen flowing blood movement in the body of a human, being pumped by the heart repeatedly to every body part for the functioning operation of life. We also learned that “blood” is predominately made up of “water” and this water is internalized by consumption. This human water to blood transition is what Jesus just demonstrated with His first miracle. But many will say, this miracle was just a story about turning water into “wine”. That is why we need to learn more about what God says about grapes:
Gen 49:11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
There is more than one verse in the Old Testament, that describe the juice of grapes to be its blood. It should be obvious from squeezing a red grape that it produces red juice that looks very similar to “blood”. What we need to realize is that the “blood” of grapes called Juice is produced from fruits produced upon the branches of vines. In order for the branching to produce juicy fruit, the vine’s roots must take in the “water” (Mem) from the soil and send it up to every branch. This is God’s natural process and it was being accelerated by Jesus performing a parallel spiritual process.
Perhaps you do not understand what is being said yet. Remember Jesus claims to be the “Vine” in John 15:1-5. In this example, Jesus claimed humans were the attached branches that must produce fruit in order to remain connected to the vine (Jesus). Do you see how this will match with the “baptism” concept into one body of Christ? The fruit and its production of juices with good taste are implied to be the Words that Jesus was giving to humans. Now take this knowledge and apply it to Jesus’ first miracle illustration of what happened in turning water into wine:
- Jesus the Vine is called upon to provide wine for the marriage feast
- Jesus instructs humans to fill 6 pots with water
- The empty pots represent the unsaved human body
- The water represents the Word and Spirit of God
- When filled the servants were commanded to take out water by faith
- Then by faith they shared it with the Master of the feast by faith
- Taking water out of what is deposited on the inside, is a picture of sharing the Gospel with others by faith
- The master receiving the water finds out the word of God is very good
- He become saved and gives witness and praise to the bridegroom a picture of Jesus our LORD of His good gifts to serve the best last.
So, we have found a direct application of water being changed to the blood of grapes to be an analogy to be like the process of salvation. It is interesting that this prophecy in Genesis 49:11 is about Jesus, but it is being spoken by Jacob to his son Judah in whom Christ would come. It is amazing how Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine a mentioned type of blood in the Bible. It should be becoming clearer to many readers that Jesus did nothing by accident. He taught us repeatedly that He only did what His Father told Him to do, and only said what His Father told Him to say. This makes everything that He did on the earth something designed to teach us about Him, His nature, His purpose, His works, His identity, and His Father.
3. God’s Spoken Words are the MEM Waters for Spiritual Life
Let us begin this section by reviewing real events that occurred in the Old Testament. We briefly mentioned these earlier in the lesson. The children of Israel during their time in the wilderness were thirsty, and searched everywhere for essential drinkable water. This was a reoccurring problem while they wandered in the desert. Moses in Exodus 15:23 came upon a place called “Marah” (bitterness) that only had “bitter” poisonous water. This caused a great problem for Moses, because the people murmured against him. The people of Israel chose to place all of the blame for the test of having no water on his shoulders alone. There was obviously no trust placed in God who brought them out of the land of Egypt! How soon they forgot their God that was so good to them, killing all of their enemies drowning them in the “Red Sea” that we saw earlier. Was God someone that would save them, and then leave them to die in a dry land? Many believed this lie of Satan, and turned against God.
God was clearly more than capable of solving their little lack of pure “water” (Mem) problem. It was God that created this substance. He totally understood the chemical make-up and its purpose for life. Notice the connections being made here in this story to the people of Israel speaking negative words of complaints and them standing before a pool of “bitter” waters called “Marah”. Do you see God’s connection? God told Moses to get “wood” from a certain tree and cast it into the bitter waters. Moses obeyed and the “mayim” bitter waters became sweet drinkable water for life. I believe the “tree” was a pattern for the work of Jesus to be hung on a wooden “cross” that would result in the Spirit of God coming on the inside of every saved human. This is only one of the illustrations found in the Old Covenant deliverance. Let us look at another.
When we move to Exodus 17:6, we find Moses faced with another crisis of no drinkable water to be found for the people of Israel. The people again speak negative faithless words before Moses and God. They complained and grumbled loudly to Moses, saying “Is God with us or not?”. This was not the right words to speak before God who heard everything they said. God instructs Moses to stand before a rock and strike it with his staff. Ok, stop right there. In the previous example God had Moses throw “wood” into the pool of bitter water to make it sweet, and now here we see God again using “wood” as a symbol of authority to bring “water” (Mayim) out of an apparently dry rock by striking it.
Not a lot of readers may understand what is happening here with Mem water and wooden sticks yet, but it will become clearer. Let us look at the third example found in Numbers 20:8. In this chapter we again see the people of Israel without water. God again tells Moses to hold his wooden staff in his hand, and then gather the people before the rock. But we saw that God had changed the instructions for Moses to not strike the rock this time, but rather to just “Speak to the Rock” commanding it to bring forth water with “words” that came from out of his mouth. However, Moses disobeyed God and spoke curses upon the people and hit the rock twice. This was clearly an unbelieving act of faithlessness for Moses and he was not permitted to enter the promise land because of this failure to follow God’s instructions completely.
Psa 103:7 He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.
What was God doing in these three examples of water and wood? Believe it or not, God was teaching us and Moses some very powerful ways of the Almighty. We can clearly see in Psalms 103:7, how God revealed to Moses His ways, while only showing his acts to the children of Israel. There is a vast difference between seeing God’s miraculous acts of deliverance and knowing why God did them the way that He decided to perform them, and how they apply to us. What we are about to see is everything had a meaning, a purpose and a lesson for the called out and saved church of God.
These were three cases where water was made available by God’s grace and mercy to a lot of bickering and faithless people. Let us analyze what we should learn from these three “Mem” water examples. The first example, of bitter waters was a typological picture of Christ coming into the world that was full of bitter poisonous and deceitful words given by the devil’s intent to destroy all humans. Christ was the man that would be nailed to a tree to shed His blood, and He was the only source of a pure truthful word water supply. God revealed His truth through Christ’s pure spoken words. God did this to satisfy all humans that were spiritually thirsty to know Him and His truth. God did this to counter the poisonous words of the Pharisees and Sadducees who were spreading the untrue words of their father the devil.
Ok, the next instance of striking the rock to bring God’s people access to pure waters directly from God occurred when Jesus was beaten to be hung on a cross. Jesus endured such great humiliation and torture for our sake. He was beaten with a whip 39 times, ripping the flesh from His body. A crown of painful thorns was placed upon His head. He was slapped and hit with human hands across His face. His beard was even pulled out. How does this brutalization of Jesus match our second water out of the rock example? We get our first clue by reading in 1 Corinthians:
1Co 10:1 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;
1Co 10:2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
1Co 10:3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
1Co 10:4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
Here in these verses God is revealing how Christ fits into what was happening with the natural nation of Israel. Can you see the comparisons being made by the Holy Spirit? We can clearly see in verses 1 and 2, that there is a direct connection with Israel passing through the Red Sea as it being a type of our spiritual baptism that we receive from Christ. Remember baptism is an entrance into, a covering completely, and a resurrection back to life using Mem water. But verse 4 is where we want to focus. God is plainly informing us that the Rock that Moses struck was another symbolic type for Jesus Christ.
Therefore, God is revealing the fact that Christ was only coming to the earth to be crucified one time. He would only suffer the pain and humiliation once. Being beaten the first time was for out salvation and healing. But Jesus being beaten and crucified twice, would put Him to shame unnecessarily and would be vain. Please read over these verses carefully and notice any words that could relate to the letter “Mem” meanings and applications:
Heb 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Heb 6:2 Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.
Heb 6:3 And this will we do, if God permit.
Heb 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
Heb 6:5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
Heb 6:6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Heb 6:7 For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:
Heb 6:8 But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.
Heb 6:9 But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.
These are some very amazing and complex spiritual statements being taught to mature Christians. God begins by saying, let us move up from the basic foundational teachings of Christ and let us grow spiritually mature to be able to receive and understand God’s deeper spiritual truths. Notice that the number 1 foundational doctrine refers us to the subject of “baptism”. This connects us directly to our letter “Mem” bible study. God is informing us very clearly that there are fundamental things that need to be understood about the purpose of water and being baptized.
Let us begin our passage study to focus on verse 4. God begins a warning for people that are saved in this verse. This verse begins by warning every Christian of an impossibility. What this means, is what is about to be described is something that is not possible to recover from if chosen. God confirms that this verse is about Christians by saying, “those that were once enlightened”. We know from reading 2 Peter 1:19, Hebrews 10:32, and Ephesians 1:18, that being “enlightened” is what happens when an unsaved person receives Christ into their hearts. Next is where God gets into the subject of the Mem. God describes these people as, “having tasted of the heavenly gift”.
We will focus upon the word “tasted” first. This Greek word G1089 literally means to put some type of food or liquid into your mouth to experience the good or bad flavor. We can logically conclude, that if the substance placed in the mouth does not taste good, it is spit out of the mouth. Or if it is found tasty and desirable, it is swallowed and consumed to become an internal part of that person physically. Remember the water into wine example earlier. The master tasted the end time wine and found it to be the best he had yet tasted. This is an amazing prophecy of how the knowledge of God and His word will become greater, better, tastier, and more desirable in these last days.
Job 34:3 For the ear trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.
We learn the natural concepts of tasting applies to us spiritually. This parallel concept is explained to us in the book of Job above. When someone hears the Gospel message of Jesus, and receives the Word of God as good, it enters into their heart (spirit) and Christ comes into them to begin a planting and growing of new life on the inside of them. Therefore, this phrase is also speaking of people that received Jesus and did not reject His new life offered free gift.
Next, at the end of Hebrews 6:4 God ends with describing this person as being a “partaker” of the Holy Ghost. The Greek word G3353 that was translated as “partaker” can also be defined as “participant”, “partner”, or a “sharer”. All of these words relate to a human that invited Christ into their heart to be LORD and Savior, and have become “one Spirit” with Him (1 Cor 6:17). Therefore, God is describing very clearly this person has intimately experienced the “Holy Spirit”. There is no way this is not describing a “true” Christ follower.
God in verse 5, reaffirms this is a Christian by stating again, that this person has “tasted the good word of God”. This is a new detail to what exactly is being tasted. Wow, now we are getting directly into the subject of the “Mem” sweet and pure waters. God’s word to a dry human that has never experienced Him, is desperately in need of God’s word to live. When someone tastes the Word of God for the first time, it is very much like a human that is stranded in the desert without water. The intense heat of the desert will kill them soon, if they do not find the physical water to live. As we continue this Bible lesson, we will repeatedly see again and again, how the Word of God is His pure Mem water for spiritual eternal life.
Ok, verse 6 is describing a person that has accepted Jesus but has now turned back into the desert to be tricked into leaving Christ to return to the ways of darkness. It is inconceivable why anyone would want to do this, but the devil is a master at deception. He will do everything possible to get someone to reject Christ, and God must allow this freewill choice to take place. God is not going to force anyone to be saved the first time, or to remain saved until the end.
Notice the ending of the warning! By accepting Jesus Christ as our personal LORD, if we decide to reject Him and turn away from Him, and then attempt to return again, we are putting Him into open shame. God says this person is trying to crucify Christ again. We should know that Christ died once for all, and it is now impossible for Him to die again, because He has a resurrected body, incapable of experiencing death one more time.
Pay attention to the fact that in verse 7, God again speaks about the subject of Mem water. Is this an accident? Obviously not. In this verse God says, “as the earth drinks in the rain from heaven”. This is clearly figurative terminology speaking about spiritual realities. People were designed by God to drink His Word send down from heaven to produce any saving harvestable “fruit”. God is describing a process of the continual drinking a plant or in the spiritual realm a person, to continue its life.
Next in verse 8, God contrasts the saved Christian that continually drinks the Word of God, with the one that ignores taking the time to value the Word enough to spend time to receive it daily. This person is stated to become a dry type of plant that only produces thorns and briers. God very clearly says, this plant will be rejected at harvest time.
Finally, God ends the warning in verse 9, with an encouragement of faith filled words, that this rejection will not happen to anyone that is reading this warning. Are we all receiving this warning? If you believe you can never be deceived to turn away from Christ, then you are on a path of potential destruction. Being aware of your enemy and his tactics will greatly help you to avoid the tricks and the traps of his plans. It is strongly suggested that you go and read down to verse 12. God continues the encouragement to be diligent to continue in the faith until the end.
Rev 22:1 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
It is absolutely essential to begin to understand that a “pure and clean natural water supply” is a symbol of spiritual spoken words from the mouth of God, and these waters are able to save and preserve any human life, that will receive them in this mortal life. This supply of water words will continue throughout eternity also. God has a never-ending supply of knowledge that we can continue to learn from.
In the spiritual realm, God views spiritual “pure” water to be pure words. We can very clearly see where pure water comes from, by reading the above verse in Revelation 22:1. In this verse we see that God’s throne is where the Lamb (Jesus) is also seated right now. But this verse is describing the existence of God’s kingdom in eternity after the end of this present world. We know this because words written in preceding verses in chapter 21, God describes the creation of a new heaven and new earth that never existed before. Therefore, chapter 22 is in the coming new heaven and new earth. In chapter 22 we can still see where pure waters containing God’s spoken words, are still flowing from God’s eternal throne. This teaches us clearly that there is still a lot that God would want to say to us throughout eternity.
Perhaps you have heard stories told of man’s attempts to search for a fountain of youthful life. Whether true or not, they point us to a human’s desire of a life without death. It must be our Creator that has placed this desire in the hearts of mankind. We can clearly see that humans are held in bondage by Satan by our fear of this coming “death” (Hebrews 2:15). The fear of the unknown after death is certainly only eliminated by knowing God’s Words of Truth.
God desires us to know Him so that we can live eternally with Him. He has placed His word everywhere, trying to get everyone to search for Him and His words of life. We can read in Proverbs 4:20-22, to confirm God’s Words being “life” to all that find them. We also can read in Deuteronomy 8:3, where God says “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, does man live”. Wow, we are further confirming that the pure waters in Revelation 22 are the words of life being spoken from God’s throne.
But what other characteristics describe these pure Mem water words of life? We can read in Psalm 12:6 and Proverbs 30:5 that God’s words are “pure” words. We can read in John 17:17 from the mouth of Jesus, that “God’s words are truth”. We also know from reading Numbers 23:19 that God is not a man that He should lie. And in Hebrew 6:18 we further confirm that it is absolutely impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we have established a firm foundation that God’s words are pure waters and this is because He cannot ever lie to us.
These concepts of pure waters introduce us to an antithesis truth. We can conclude that since there are pure waters of words of truth producing life coming from God, there must also be other types of watering words that are not from God, and potentially harmful, hurtful and even deadly. For example, the vast amounts of “ocean” water is “salt” based and will kill a person that drinks it. Moses in the book of Exodus 15:23 came upon a place called “Marah” (bitterness) that only had “bitter” poisonous water. Therefore, we immediately learn there are two types of water representing two types of spoken words. The pure water gives us natural life and this can only be God’s Words. The tainted poisonous types of waters, must represents the enemy Satan’s spoken words that produce spiritual death.
Rev 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Notice a list of some of the poisonous water types that God lists in Revelation 21:8 above. Fearful words are poison intended to kill us. Unbelieving words are designed to lead you away from believing God’s truths. Fowl tasting words will kill us. Listening to the words of the murderer Satan will kill us. Words of deception that draw us to witchcraft, or idolatry will kill us. But the one that needs to be emphasized is lying words of deception will lead more people to hell than any others. It is essential to notice the ending of this verse. God is clearly warning every human that there is a second spiritual death, that is by far worse than the first natural death. God describes this death to be eternal existence in a lake of fire. That is just another way to describe “hell”.
We are learning of two realities of possible drinkable waters to give to others or to partake of for ourselves. For example, God’s Words will produce life everlasting and are good and pure drinkable words. We are also seeing how there are enemy of God words spoken by humans and/or demons controlling humans that will poison us to die two deaths. Being a liar will get us into hell. Believing the lies of the devil will also get us into hell. Either way we all have a lot of choices to make every day. We must choose between heaven or hell, life or death, good or evil, in what we are listening to, and what we are sharing with others. Deuteronomy 30:19 declares God has set the choice before us that we have the right to select our ending of life or death, and He strongly recommends that we choose the pure water life words. People everywhere are still ignoring the coming end of their life, when it will be too late to make this choice.
It is amazing how God’s created qualities and characteristics of “water” types, parallel the power of spiritually spoken words. We learn this conceptual fact from reading Romans 1:20, where God declares, “the hidden things of God are clearly seen, being revealed in things that were made, even His eternal power and godhead”. That is an amazing statement to memorize. This teaches us we can learn a vast amount of spiritual information by analyzing naturally created substances and objects, and “water” is one of the most dominant elements on our planet. Let us continue with knowing “pure water” is a representation of God’s words, by reading some words spoken by Jesus in John:
John 4:7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.
We can clearly see from this single verse and by reading the context, that Jesus was sitting at a natural well of water all alone, when a woman walks up and finds Him. Jesus immediately asks the woman for a drink of water from the well. This gets her attention instantly, since she was a Samaritan and she thought Jesus was a Jew apparently from how He was dressed. She immediately questions Jesus about why He was speaking to her, because Jews did not normally do this with Samaritans. In fact, at the end of this story, even the disciples when they came to find Jesus were shocked at Him talking with a Samaritan. We will skip down to verse 10 next to discover the words of response from God in the flesh (Jn 1:14):
John 4:10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
John 4:13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
John 4:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Notice these very radical and exciting words spoken by Jesus the Messiah/Christ. The primary subject is about “Mem” water. But there are two kinds of water that are in parallel being spoken of. The first is natural water that was in the well. Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of natural water. This got her attention. Then Jesus shifts the conversation to a spiritual drinking water reality. Jesus told this woman, if you knew who you were speaking with, you would have asked me for a drink. Wow! This caused the woman to become even more curious, since Jesus had just asked her for a drink of natural water from the well, and He clearly had no physical water to give to her. Can we agree, there are two kinds of water in this conversation?
Did you observe how even the woman notices that there was a problem with their conversation? She said to Jesus, that He had nothing to draw from the well with. But Jesus changes the subject back to spiritual water to say “whoever drinks this (natural) water will thirst again”. “But the water that I offer will cause them to never thirst”. Jesus said very clearly that the water He offered was “living water”. Jesus in verse 14 declares something even more shocking by saying to her, “the water (mem) that I shall give to people, shall be in them a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. Jesus speaks like this again in John 7:
John 7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
John 7:39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
These verses sound very familiar, don’t they? Jesus again speaks of internal spiritual waters hidden inside the body of a human. Jesus used the hidden unseen “belly” as an internal symbolic reference to the unseen human spirit. Jesus again is discussing “Living Water”. But in this context Jesus introduces another new perspective to what “water” is in the spiritual mind of God. God is revealing that to those that will believe on Jesus to be the Son of God, He will give them the Holy Spirit. And His Spirit living inside of us, will cause rivers to flow out of our belly (spirit). These descriptions are of “Words” that will be spoken out from the unseen spiritual heart of a human.
Joh 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
We are learning about a spiritual connection that is astounding. Did you notice what Jesus just revealed? He just claimed, that His spoken words were both “Spirit” and “Life”. Isn’t this what Jesus was telling the woman at the well when He asked her for a drink? Remember that Jesus told her that He would give her a drink of “Living Water” that she could choose to drink, and would cause her to never thirst again? Wow! We are finding amazing parallels to natural water and God’s spiritual living water that He says are His spoken words. Do you see the connection to our verse in Revelation 22:1, where there was a continual flow of pure waters coming from the throne of God in eternity? Do you see how we can partake of this flow now in the natural realm by drinking His waters of life? What have we learned so far?
- Pure natural water is a symbol of God’s spoken Word.
- God’s spoken Words are from His Spirit and carries the power to join/plant His Word in the heart (spirit) of humans.
- We can and must partake of this water now, in order to receive it later in eternity.
- Receiving and drinking God’s pure water will produce life eternal in us now.
- Not receiving and partaking of this pure water now in this natural life, means we are dead spiritually.
If we analyze the concept of God’s created natural spoken words, we will discover that a human’s voice is a flow of sound waves that are produced by the vocal cords within humans. These sound waves travel and are moving through the atmosphere at over 700 miles per hour. These moving waves can travel from a speaker to a hearer/listener and be received into the ear to communicate a message. This is exactly what Jesus was doing with the woman at the well, and it was these two acts of Jesus speaking and the woman listening that He called giving her a drink.
These sound waves, are very similar to God’s created water waves found in the letter “Mem” pictogram. We will continually see repeated patterns in the natural and spiritual realms. Both move in waves as long as there is a power or force causing them to occur. For water, this movement can be caused by the “wind”, which is the similar concept for human breath that exhales to produce sound waves. But God gives us some more information in this verse about our words:
Luk 6:45 A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
Everywhere Jesus speaks of the human “heart”, He is referring to our spirit. All humans have a spirit inside our body. Jesus is revealing our heart is a container for our spoken words, just as our belly is a container for drinking natural “water”. This is why Jesus said in John 7:38, “Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water”. Jesus was speaking of a human that had been filled with His Spirit and His Words and they were being released from their mouths by speaking them to others, to produce a new life in them. Here in Luke 6, Jesus is contrasting two types of fillers that can be contained in a human heart (spirit). These two spiritual realities are the 1) words of evil from the darkness (no light, no Word of God knowledge), versus 2) the forever good Holy Spirit of God that gives us His pure words of Light.
Can we all agree that the picture of the “Mem” as moving water represents Christ speaking God’s words for Eternal Life? These words were initial planting of seeds, spiritual enlightenment (Light), and His “living water” that were combined together in the spirits of every human that would listen and keep them as a most valuable treasure.
4. Washed with the (Mem) Water of the Word of God
Drinking natural water for physical life is absolutely a requirement. Without it we die physically. But the same concept is paralleled by God’s design within the spiritual realm. Consuming the Word of God for obtaining Eternal Life is just one of the primary benefits of God’s Spiritual Drink of Pure Water (Mem). There is only one spiritual water fountain of eternal life and it flows out of the spoken Word of God. But we all should know that “pure water” is also essential for cleansing a human body, clothing, dishes, pots, pans, floors, walls, and etc. If anyone attempts to wash their clothes in a muddy creek the clothing will never become clean. This same concept is true in the spiritual realm. But God’s pure Word has the built-in benefit for cleansing of the human soul and mind.
John 15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
As you can clearly read in this verse, Jesus is speaking to His disciples and informs them of the power of His spoken words to make them “clean”. Remember this was spoken before they could be saved, because Jesus had not yet risen from the dead. And obviously, Jesus is not speaking of a natural external cleaning that is taking place either. This means Jesus was again speaking metaphorically about spiritual truths. Jesus’ spoken words were never filled with lies, deceit or deception. This means His words were from God and were completely pure. This made them the ultimate cleaning and purification agent to change every human that would focus to hear them. It should be very clear from this statement that Jesus is declaring His words to be cleansing waters, to remove the unclean words from their human “minds” that were previously spoken to them while growing-up in the lost world.
By Jesus speaking directly with His disciples for over three years, they gained a lot of knowledge from the mouth of God. This means they were being 1) enlightened, 2) seeds were being planted, and 3) water was causing it all to begin to grow that we learned previously. But simultaneously God’s Words were doing something else also. You see, when we grow up in the world as a child, we are being heavily influenced by the words spoken from people that are being ruled by the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4). It is the devil that is able to work in everyone living in his kingdom of darkness. Our minds need to be renewed or refreshed (cleansed), and our ways of thinking need to be transformed. The only way this is possible is by us constantly drinking in the Pure Water of the Word of God.
God’s pure water words (Mem) have the power to cleanse our minds from the dirt and filth of this world. Let us look at another verse to confirm this work of His Word:
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
Eph 5:26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
In this context of these scriptures, we find God speaking to husbands and wives. But hidden in this discussion is the fact that God reveals a mystery that Jesus is the husband and the church is His bride. Jesus is described to be sanctifying and cleansing His bride with His spoken words. The Greek word G4487 is translated as “word” in verse 26, and it is the word “rhema”. This Greek word primarily means the spoken words of God. But do not forget these words have been written down in the Bible so that we can learn to speak them to give them a voice.
Notice that what was happening to the disciples of Jesus before they were saved, still continues with the entire church after our salvation and infilling of the Holy Spirit. Every human still has a defiled mind, filled with Satan’s lies, deceptions, distractions, useless information, and things that are designed to fight against us knowing God fully. This is why everyone saved in the church is told to do this:
Rom 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
It is interesting to know that when we are born again, we receive a brand-new spirit that never existed before. This newly created spirit is completely pure and clean. But the other two parts of the human triune composition are not made newly fresh. In fact, they are the exact same. The human flesh just needs to be imagined to be dead being crucified and this will place it into subjection of the new man inside. But the soul of man consisting of the 1) mind, 2) will, and 3) emotions must be renovated by the Word of God to be made clean and fully saved (James 1:21).
Like physical water consumed into the human stomach and is processed to renew life, and to become a part of the human body, God’s spiritual water of His Word does this in the unseen mind. Now just apply the natural water concepts to the spiritual water parallels of God’s words. God created a system of cleansing and eliminating impure, unclean words deposited in our minds, using the infinitely more powerful spoken Words of God. We could call this Heavenly or Spiritual mind washing. There are probably many people, that have heard the term being “brained washed”. A lot of people think this is automatically and evil and bad thing, and it can be that, in certain examples. But washing our minds with the “Pure Water of God’s Words” we are getting only His truth.
These God truths are doing things in us that no other words can produce in our minds. When we consume God’s Words we are being “transformed”, this Greek word G3339, represents a “metamorphosis” type of process for changing caterpillars into butterflies. That is amazing what we are learning about God’s Words of Power and what they are capable of doing if we choose to drink them in. As long as Satan can convince you to only be drinking his words, and ignoring the words of God, you are an easy prey to be consumed by him (1 Peter 5:8).
The Mem concepts of water being used as a cleansing agent, is very powerful and necessary. Only people that drink-in the Word of God daily will become less likely to be deceived. The more Words of God we drink, the more words of “Life” we make a part of us. This knowledge is what greatly helps us to recognize the tricks, traps, lies and deception of the devil.
Every human mind on the earth is in desperate need of cleansing from the impurities of the devil. The corruption of the world has been joined into every part of our culture. No one can watch a movie, a television show, an internet video, or even the news and not have their minds corrupted by some demonic lies to influence and guide them into the darkness and away from the light of God’s Truth. The deception in every public school system and higher education colleges and universities are greatly affecting the minds of almost all children in varying degrees of perverseness.
The only way to eliminate this word and image filth that is being poured out to be consumed by people today, is to immerse yourself under the flow of God’s words. Think of God’s spoken words as being like a faucet that when turned on is pouring out pure cleansing waters. Think of the human mind as being a cup of dirty water. Since we cannot literally pour out our memories and thoughts to start with a new mind, we must approach the cleansing of the unclean mind differently. These unclean words in our minds, can only be washed out by pouring more clean words into our minds than we are receiving of the unclean. By focusing upon the clean words of God, our old ways of thinking will be replaced by the new ways of God word.
Try this experiment at home. Take a cup filled with muddy waters. This is clearly not anything that a normal human would want to drink. But how do you make it drinkable without pouring it all out, cleaning the cup, and starting over with only clean water. The solution is to set the cup under a full flow of pure water. Notice what happens to the cup of muddy water? The muddy waters are running out of the overflow of the combined clean and muddy water. But eventually the water is practically pure, because of the continual flow of good and no more additional dirty. The water in the cup has gone from undrinkable filth to good and purer water to consume. This should help everyone know how to clean up their mind with the Word of God. How much time do you spend drinking the words of God versus drinking the dirt of your enemy? Let us now move to a new subject.
5. The Spiritual Cleansing Power of Jesus Water and Blood from Sin
We could write books and books of information on the concepts hidden in one letter Mem. This section will be only a quick overview of this topic due to the potential overwhelming length of this Bible lesson. We are about to enter into topics that we have seen before on the surface to find there is so much more that God speaks about it in His Word. We will briefly review an event that happened to a “leper” man in the book of Mark, chapter 1:
Mar 1:40 And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.
Mar 1:41 And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.
As we can see there was a leper man that came to Jesus believing that He could help him, if it was His will to do so. This is where many humans are today in their faith. They all know God is powerful enough to do anything for them to help them in their situation, but “Will He?”. This leper found out very quickly that God is always very compassionate and He is willing to save anyone. This man was saved from a slow and painful death. It was a physical death sentence, found in the process of leprosy. It was completely a hopeless situation. But not with God!
The natural symbolism of physical “leprosy”, is a representation of spiritual sin. The external death and decay of the human being a leper was even more demeaning, because the law forced the man to walk about screaming “unclean”. This was done to warn others to not come near him, and also die. Leprosy was a highly contagious disease and almost always resulted in “death”. This makes this story even more amazing. By Jesus reaching out and touching this man’s body, this man knew Jesus was either crazy and had a death wish, or He was answering His question that it was His will to heal Him. Most believe it was the answering and removing the man’s doubts to receive his healing.
But notice how this man worded his request. He knew that he was unclean (dirty, sinful) and he said Jesus you can make me clean! Wow, in doing this he is calling Jesus the Pure Water of Life that cleans all sin, and disease. That is a pretty amazing connection to Jesus being the ultimate fulfillment of the Mem letter prophecy. What we are learning is very profound. There is a direct connection between physical leprosy and spiritual sin. Leprosy would cause natural death and spiritual sin causes spiritual death.
Both are curable with two realities of words which represents water as we have learned earlier. Jesus answered the leper’s question with the words “I will”, and then further spoke more spiritual water saying “Be clean” and the man was made clean. Do you remember the paralyzed man that was let down from the roof into the room where Jesus was preaching? This story occurs in Matthew 9:1-8. In this real event Jesus connects the forgiveness of sins to be no different than the healing of paralysis.
Jesus looked at the paralyzed man and said “Your sins be forgiven”. The religious men in the house, thought in their “minds”, “This man blasphemes. No man can forgive sin, only God”. It is very unfortunate that they knew not this man Jesus was God in the flesh. Jesus perceiving their thoughts said to them “Which is easier? To say your sins be forgiven or to say rise and walk”. With these words God was making a connection that human sin was the source cause for this man’s paralysis. But Jesus then said, “That you might know the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sin, Rise take up your bed and walk”. The man was healed when he believed and obeyed what Jesus had said to him.
We have quickly learned a basic concept of becoming clean from both sin and sickness is found in the process of receiving the Word of God (Mem water). God’s word received by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus will causing anyone that will receive it and confess Him as Lord to be saved. The Greek word translated as “saved” is “sozo”. This word is all encompassing, being spiritual, and physical salvation. We are not able to fully teach this concept today, but we will end this section by reminding everyone that Jesus is named the Word of God in Revelation 19:13. We also know in John 1:1 “the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Then in John 1:14 we receive the revelation that “The Word became flesh and tabernacled with humans”. Relate this information to the reality we are learning the God’s Words are His Waters of Life and Cleansing and we are beginning to learn new things that are incredibly applicable to our lives being saved, made new, and our minds cleansed and transformed.
Let us move to a new subject about the works of Jesus found in the Gospels next.
6. Water Waves Created with God’s Voice Sound Waves
We have already been introduced to this concept of natural Mem water and its waves, being a representation of spoken words that proceed from the mouth of God. We are further beginning to see that these spoken words are also capable of saving us from spiritual death. We additionally saw in the Gospels that Jesus spoke words to cast out devils and to heal people. We have also seen where these Words have the power to cleanse our minds from worldly influencing spiritual words being contributed by Satan through people. Now we are going to further explore and confirm that God’s naturally created waters, are a pattern of God’s spoken words, in more depth. What we can see from the picture of the Mem waves of water, is a strong resemblance to them being like sound waves. Let us allow God to reveal this concept to you from His Word.
We are going to confirm these parallel concepts more directly with scriptures. It is always essential for every word of truth to be established from the mouth of two or three witnesses in the Word of God.
Rev 1:13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Rev 1:14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;
Rev 1:15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
Here are three verses describing the Lord Jesus in the Book of Revelation. In verse 13 we are told that someone was standing in the middle of the seven churches and He is like the Son of Man/Adam. This can only be Jesus the head of the church body. We are not going to go through every description, but rather we are going to focus upon the last statement in verse 15. In this statement, Jesus is described to have a voice as the sound of many waters. Wow, what is this describing? Let us first just focus upon the obvious fact:
- The sounds of the words from the mouth of God, are being compared directly to the sounds of many waters.
As you can tell, we are studying about the concept of the ancient Hebrew letter pictogram as it represents natural waters like a large sea. Now think about the basics of natural water waves and what voice sound waves are. The similarities of these two created realities are amazingly similar patterns of the same exact reality. In fact, the view of the Mem pictogram could very easily represent the picture of “sound waves”. Here is a picture of sound waves that will be included next:

Do you see any similarities between waves of water and sound? It should be obvious! But God further confirms this in His Word also. God never ceases to amaze us with all of the intelligent hidden information found in His Word. Read again Revelation 1:15. This verse ended with “His voice as the sound of many waters”. Then look at the Greek words for voice and sound. You will notice this is the same exact word G5456 “phone”. This is the word we get our “telephone” or “smart phone” from. What do these devices do? They take your voice and your voice sound waves, and transports them into radio frequency waves that move your voice to a receiver phone that can answer. Once connected, the two people are able to have a conversation like they were standing next to each other. All of this is a an amazing parallel to the movement of water waves.
God has established a remarkable direct connection of sound waves and water waves, using one Greek word “phone”. From the mouth of God comes sound waves and this voice sound is directly connected to be like water waves that make sounds. If you look up the Greek word “phone” you will find this word is translated as mostly “voice”, or “voices” 131 times. But it is also translated as “sound” and even “noise” in other verses. By God selecting to use the same word is a fact that water waves make sounds the same as voice waves. We are discovering how these two realities were specially designed to teach us a lot of hidden truths that we have potentially never seen before. Here is another connection where we can see this confirmation:
Mat 3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
This verse occurs after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river by John. Jesus had just come up out of the “water”, and the Spirit of God had just descended upon Jesus as a dove, and then God speaks. Here this verse says “a “voice” (Greek phone) was heard from heaven saying “This is my beloved Son”. Wow, talk about a long-distance phone call, this was one of the longest in human history. But the concept came forth and reveals that even the Spirit of God the Father in Heaven can produce natural sound waves that can be heard by natural humans.
Num 14:27 How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me.
God confirms to us that while He sits in heaven, He is able to hear everything that we speak on the earth. These children of Israel were murmuring against God at least 10 times. God judged righteously and said these people will not enter into my promised land. What we are learning is about a vastly profound heavenly connection. God’s spoken sound waves can come to us from heaven, and we are able to hear Him in our natural ear. And His ears are more than capable of hearing everything we say even when we think nothing of it. Sound waves appear to be a cross-over way of communicating between two realms of existence, being natural and spiritual.
Most will be able to see this connection to our letter Mem water pictogram. The concept of moving waters is duplicated in the movement of sound. Especially in direct relationship to God sending His Word to humans on the earth. But the title of this section was about God speaking words and His voice sound waves becoming creation. This occurs over and over in the Bible. We first see this in Genesis 1. 10 times in these verses it is written “And God said”. Then God lists what He said, and the manifestation of those words suddenly appeared in the natural realm. God begins with speaking “Light Be”, and then “Light Was”. This is the basic concept of how creation took place by God’s design and purpose.
What we learn from this is God spoke sound waves with His voice and these sound waves became what we can physically see, taste, touch, smell and hear around us. We will eventually discover that everything that was created came into physical existence this way. Every object that you can see is moving. Every object that you can see has a frequency and a vibration of movement. This can describe sound waves almost precisely. Sound waves have frequencies and movement and these God created frequencies are still in existence in His creations. We can further confirm creation was made from the Word of God by understanding the fact that God’s Word is powerful:
Heb 1:3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
Hopefully we can understand in this verse and by reading Genesis 1, that God created physical realities with His spoken Word, and this Word contained His power. Then we notice this word of His power is still holding everything together. This teaches us that sound waves are at the rudimentary level of all of creation.
Therefore, we have just learned that the elements of every created natural substance have a measure of the power of God’s word in them, and it is this power that is still holding them together (Heb 1:3). Humans have learned in the last 100 years to release this hidden power by splitting these atoms. These nuclear devices have become the world’s most destructive forces. But it confirms what the Bible teaches us is precisely correct.
God’s word is so amazing, and if this does not excite us to want to learn more about Him, then we are probably spiritually dead. Let us move to a new topic of Mem next.
7. A God’s Real-Life NOW Application of the MEM – Calming Life’s Storms
The essential fundamental spiritual concept of the letter Mem water picture, is “spoken words”. There are a number of applications that are found in this letter, that can be used for real-life situations. We have been primarily focused upon the concept of “Good” God Mem Waters for life and cleansing. These pure waters represent the Words of God! But there are very negative types of waters and waves that need to be addressed further. This is because all Christians have a spiritual enemy named Satan. He is an adversary that had illegally taken over the “god” role of this planet, until Jesus came into the world to take back this authority. Once taken away from Satan, Jesus delegated His Kingdom authority to everyone in the church (Mat 28:18-19).
We will begin this section of applying the Mem, with another confirmation review that water is a type of spoken word.
Pro 18:4 The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters, and the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook.
Did you notice what God reveals about human spoken words again? This was exactly what we saw in the Revelation 1 description of Jesus’ spoken words. The word translated as “waters” in this verse is our “mayim” Hebrew word representing the spelling of the “Mem” letter in word form. God directly connects spoken words to represent a likeness of physical “deep waters”. The physical deep waters produce waves, and spoken words produce sound waves. The parallels are incredible. There are several other verses in the Bible like this one, but for the sake of time we will only use limited verses in this section to confirm a human’s words are like water to God. However, we have seen other confirmations when we studied the spoken words of Jesus earlier to be like living waters.
Now notice another type of water that we were also introduced to earlier:
Psa 69:2 I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.
The Hebrew word translated as “mire” is literally describing “muddy” waters. That description of waters is NOT positive for human consumption to produce life. In fact, it appears to show these waters are designed to be used for death. Uh oh! Confirm this by observing the writer follows by saying, “deep” waters are about to cover me. Remember the Hebrew word “waters” is our spelled “Mem” letter Mayim. We can read in this verse the writer is being overcome by two kinds of waters called muddy, and deep. But these are not natural waters. In order to understand verse 2, we need to first understand what verse 1 said:
Psa 69:1 Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul.
David the writer of this Psalm is crying out to God for salvation from the deep and dirty waters mentioned in verse 2. But the area of attack is not directed at his body, or his physical lungs trying to drown him dead. No, this attack is spiritual in nature. We know this by God’s word mentioning waters are flowing to “come” unto David’s soul. The soul of man is comprised of their “mind”, “will” and “emotions”. This layer of humans is connected with the spirit. Therefore, we are learning this attack is of a spiritual nature.
Please notice the Hebrew word H935 translated as “come” in verse 1. This word is defined as, “to enter in to fill a void”. Now notice the waters in these verses are coming to fill an empty void. What exactly is the symbolic empty void that is attempting to be filled with symbolic dirty waters? We learned this area is found in the human soul. Then, remember the birth of every human from the first Adam? Every human enters the world with a mind that is an empty vessel at birth. A newborn child, has no knowledge, or ability to ever try to take care of themselves. God created mothers with the loving and caring gift for feeding and caring for their child with milk. The mother has a built-in feeding system containing the ability to nourish their new child. These loving mothers are the reason why any of us exist today. God designed every new human mind with a need to be filled with truth, and not garbage like we see being described in this Psalm. Good fathers and mothers perform this task of filling their children’s’ minds.
Therefore, in Psalm 69:1 we can see where someone is attempting to overwhelm David’s mind with waters (words) that he needs God to save him from. What does the modern massive news media attempt to do with their words today? They are attempting to flood our minds, with agenda motivated false words that produce “fears”. These resulting negative emotions then allow other powers to control your actions and words if you agree with what they have spoken. This is describing exactly what David is experiencing.
This type of warfare taking place in the life of David, is utilizing the spiritual weapon of symbolic water. This is a spiritual battle using the Mem type of “words”. David is crying out to the LORD because He is able to save him from these deep polluted waters that are desiring to kill him. What do deep polluted waters represent in the spiritual realm? These deep polluted waters represent massive numbers of untrue, unclean and impure spoken words mixed with a little pure truth. These types of waters are representations of any words originating from the devil.
Only God’s Words are completely pure without any possibility of filth. Therefore, unclean words represent words of distraction, deceit, untruths, deception, confusion, misdirection, or any other negative words that did not come from the Creator God! Also, not only do the words matter, but the motivation that caused them to erupt externally is a major contributor. If evil words come forth, it could be because of greed, hatred, revenge, or hurt. The number of contributing factors producing unclean words, are too large to mention them all. Just know for sure that any words spoken by God is because of His good plans and love motivations to help us.
The concept of “deep” waters, is a representation of massive amounts of “words” sent upon you to overwhelm you and to either carry you away from knowing God’s pure watering words, or to overflow you to get you to give up on God. Therefore, we are seeing how even God’s words can be diluted or polluted to kill us by overwhelming us to not hear correctly from Him (Mk 7:13). Let us look at an example of how Jesus dealt with situations like this in the Gospels.
There are multiple accounts of Jesus working with water that are significant. One of the major accounts was when He was sleeping in one of the big fishing boats when a large storm had risen against them to threaten their crossing of the sea. Read these verses very carefully:
Mark 4:35 And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.
Mark 4:36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships.
Mark 4:37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
Mark 4:38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
Mark 4:39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
Mar 4:40 And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?
Mark 4:41 And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?
This is a very informative real account of one “water” event in the physical life of Jesus living on the earth in mortal flesh. First, notice in this story that Jesus was never in fear! He knew that He was only scheduled to die on a cross (Tav). Therefore, nothing could happen to Him before that timed event. Jesus was in complete “faith” enough to go to sleep and rest. This is very similar to when “Peter” was placed into prison in the book of Acts. He was going to be killed by the Roman soldiers the next morning, and he too was fast asleep, not worried about it in the least. Peter must have learned this action of faith from Jesus in this boat full of water.
Notice that the disciples were in a panic. Several of them were professional fishermen, and had no doubt been through sudden night storms before. They completely believed this one storm was so bad that they were all about to die. Then they woke Jesus up and asked Him a dumb question. “Jesus, don’t you care?”. Of course, Jesus cared. The disciples could have asked a much better faith question, but letting fear dominate them they were about to get rebuked after Jesus dealt with their problem.
Nevertheless, Jesus arose and first “rebuked” the wind. Wow, let us stop right there and analyze this. The Greek word G2006 translated as “rebuke” can also be defined as someone giving a command to “forbid” something from starting, or continuing. This was a confirmation to us all, that Jesus possessed great authority even before He died on a cross. It is also our first indication that there was something that needed to be stopped that was coming against them to kill them. Wow! Jesus countered this plan of destruction with His spoken words that represent waters flowing from His mouth.
We can see how Jesus used His authority implemented with sound waves to cause the calm, by His choosing to speak to an unseen force of moving air, forbidding it to continue as the cause of the chaos. It is obvious that Jesus knew it was the wind that was the root cause of the problem. Ok, we just made another direct connection to the definition of the “Mem”. The “Mem” picture of a raging sea also contains the meaning of a state of “chaos”. This is the negative of the great potential of good usages for “water”. “Chaos” is the opposite of “Peace” which Jesus is calling for. Wow, this is really good. Let us look at a different account of Jesus rebuking something to cause a different kind of peace:
Mark 1:25 And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.
Notice in this context that Jesus is speaking sound waves again to an unclean spirit, that was inside of a human man. This demon was speaking to Jesus questioning His authority. But Jesus ignores the devil’s words and rebuked him by saying, “Hold your peace”. That was just a nicer way of saying “SHUT UP”. Wow, again! Notice the implied meanings here in this example, to when Jesus was seen rebuking the storm. The first priority is for us to notice that both situations were examples of Jesus rebuking the source cause of a chaos situation, in order to cause “peace” (calm, silence). But one was a silencing of a devil in a man, and one was the calming of a “wind”. Were these different things or are they actually the same termination of speaking spirits that were both causing the identical patterns of “chaos”?
The Greek word translated as “wind” can also mean a “breath of air”. Anyone speaking words from their mouth is exhaling air. It is interesting to understand that the demon possessed man was using the man’s own vocal cords and lungs to produce the words that were spoken to Jesus. Do you see the parallels to the storm? Therefore, the cause of the storm winds could be from the mouth of God, an angel, a human, or the devil. These are the only speaking spirituals beings that were created by God. But we know this storm wind was not being caused by God, the Father of Jesus. If the storm winds were caused by God, then this would have been Jesus the Son of God working against His own Father God, and that is impossible since Jesus said He could do nothing of himself, and only did what He saw His Father do (Jn 5:19).
Therefore, this breath of storm wind had to come from another spiritual source. Some may try to say this was just a bad natural weather event, but the reaction of the professional fishermen, seem to indicate this was nothing like a storm that they had ever seen. Please go back and read the story of Job in chapter 1 to help us confirm what is being taught here. God told Satan in chapter 1, that Job was in his power. The term “power” is the Hebrew letter “Yod” meaning hand. This simply meant Job was under Satan’s authority to do what he desired. However, God placed limitations upon the level of destructions.
However, in verse 19 of chapter 1 of the book of Job, we find where a very strong wind came from the wilderness to kill Job’s children that were in a house. This Hebrew word H7307 translated as “wind” can also mean a “breath”. Therefore, this powerful wind also had to be caused by Satan, since it was not God that was causing it in heaven. God is in the process of defending Job and speaking well of him, and it was only Satan that was present to accuse Job. What we are learning are the parallels to what happened to Job, and what was happening to Jesus, who was also spoken well of by God in heaven, are both from the same causing source.
We need to believe that both storms were caused by Satan. We know from John 10:10 that whatever happens that causes “death”, “loss”, or “destruction” is from the thief, a name for Satan. And Jesus said in the same verse that He only came to give us life. Therefore, rebuking the wind to preserve “life” came from God in the flesh, and He accomplished this by rebuking the devil’s attempt to kill them all and end the life of Messiah, and His disciples.
Then notice the second thing that happened. Jesus looked at the waves of the sea (Mem) and told them to “Be Still and to be filled with Peace”. That is interesting application for our study. It sounds like when David was seeking God to still the waters that were trying to overwhelm and fill his soul. Do you see the parallels? Everything that happens to Jesus in the Gospels is designed by God to teach us something that we need to apply to our lives in some way (1 Cor 11:1, Eph 5:1).
This sea calming, is Jesus sending a message with His command (Mem spoken word sound waves) to cause the wind to stop and the waves to be eliminated. Pay attention that the second demon silencing example, was Jesus doing the exact same things that He had done to the natural water waves. Jesus spoke in this situation to silence the demon spirit’s (breath, wind) voice producing sound waves, and that silencing would bring peace to the soul of the tormented human. But the parallels to Jesus telling the unclean spirit to “Hold its peace” are remarkable.
Let us also remember that it was the Word of God that created this “sea” body of water. This would indicate to us if God’s words could create it, He could still speak to change it, or even calm it instantly.
Now finally notice the problem that Jesus focused upon after calming the storm. Jesus turned to the disciples and said, “Why are you so fearful? How is it that you have no faith”. This was a clear divine disappointment and rebuke for their lack of action to do what He had just done. Jesus was claiming that they could have had faith instead of fear and they could have spoken to rebuke the situation and it would have obeyed them.
Do you recall that Jesus had given to His disciples the authority to cast out devils and to heal the sick, the same that He did? We can read about this authority being given to the 12 in Luke 9, and 70 others were given the same authority in Luke 10. Therefore, by the disciples seeing how Jesus operated in authority and them casting out demons personally, they had to have been introduced to knowing what to do.
It does not matter who’s mouth the rebuke of God’s word comes from, because the Word of God has the same power behind it, if the speaker has faith. Don’t believe me? This is what Jesus said in John 14:12. Also Jesus said this to His disciples after He spoke and cursed a fig tree, and it died:
Mat 21:21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
Jesus just taught His disciples that what He was doing by speaking with authority to a gale, waves, trees, they could also do the same. Why is this important to our subject of an ancient Hebrew letter picture of waves? This is because “waves” of water can be symbolic of evil words of the enemy of God, that produce “chaos”, “disorder”, “confusion” in the human life. The only answer to these attacks is for humans to counter these attempts to destroy them with words of authority that cause the source of opposition to become silent which allows the “peace” of God to again rule in our lives.
Ok, we need to see what we have learned so far, and make sure we understand it. The overwhelming storm waves were initiated by Satan, to cause the death of Jesus and His disciples. Jesus had already said “Let us go to the other side”. By declaring His faith to make it to the other side safely, He could rest in His spoken words. He then went to sleep expecting to arrive at any moment and He was unconcerned about any storm while resting peacefully, despite the coming overwhelming circumstances.
However, any waves are never present without cause, intentional, or otherwise. Someone, or something had to cause the waves. In this case of the sea storm, there were intensely strong winds that were causing the massive waves. We can still see the direct parallels to our verses of David in Psalm 69. Jesus’ solution in the Mark 4 sea example is to rebuke the “winds” first. Jesus was wise enough to know that dealing with the root cause is always the primary answer. Again, we see the solution in this case is for someone to speak words with their voice to produce sound waves that would cancel and still the wind causing the waves of the sea. We saw this happen again when Jesus rebuked the demon and told him to hold his peace.
These are amazingly confirmed in the Bible. The Hebrew word H1826 is the word “damam”. It is spelled “Dalet” + “Mem” + “Mem”. This is not a coincidence. This word and it’s spelling is a confirmation of what we have just learned in this section on how to bring about silence. We will start our confirmation with the ancient Hebrew “Dalet” letter first:
Psa 141:3 Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.
If we read in this verse, we will be able to confirm that our human mouth is a “door”. Perhaps you recall that the “Dalet” is a picture of a tent door. Our human bodies are the temporary tent tabernacle of the Holy Spirit and our mouth is the door to our internal spirit location. I have heard of more than one testimony of people that when they died physically, their spirit exited their mouth and stood up above their lifeless body to watch the doctor’s operation taking place. When they were brought back into their bodies, they came back inside by sliding inside of their mouth to fill it like a hand, slides into a glove.
That is very important to understand. We have the freewill choice to determine what we allow to enter this mouth door of our body to be consumed internally. But we also have the freewill choice to allow or stop what goes out of our mouth in spoken words with God’s help. We just read about one example of this in Psalm 141:3, when a man asks the Lord to help him guard his mouth. Never forget that when your voice is released, it can never be taken back. Jesus literally said in Matthew 12:26, that we will give an account for every idle word that we speak in the day of judgment. This literally means your naturally spoken words are able to be recalled by God in the spiritual realm later.
But this is where it gets exceedingly more interesting. Remember our Hebrew word for silence is a mouth door (Dalet) with two Mem waves of water. This appears to be saying that one mouth is speaking spoken words against another set of words that were already spoken from a different source. This indicates these words being spoken by this door mouth are being directed at words that were already spoken by an unknown or unnamed speaker. Wow, how many are paying attention? This word that has a mouth that is releasing words in expressed sound waves directed at another set of sound waves is translated as “silence”. This word can also mean to bring calm peace. Do you see how this word is a picture of what we just saw in the silencing of the storm and the demon’s voice?
The parallels are amazing! Do you understand the concept of noise cancelling headphones? They were designed by a man that discovered, if you reverse the sound waves being produced, that they will cancel out the sound waves that are being heard by the human without the headphones. This is very profound because this is exactly what Jesus was doing in both examples. Jesus in both cases of noise and disturbance being produced, spoke peace to it. In every case example the reality of a flat line realm of silence was the resulting end.
What have we learned? We have learned if the world is bringing you a storm to kill, steal or destroy you, you better open your mouth and speak to it, saying the opposite. For example, if you get a doctor’s report (voice) containing the words “You have cancer and only have a few months to live”, it is time to put the Word of God in your mouth every moment of every day saying “I will live and not die, and declare the works of the Lord” (Ps 118:17). If you are feeling extremely sick, ill or having no strength to get out of bed”, it is a good time to quote God’s word back at your situation. Say “No, you don’t in my body”, God has said “Let the weak say I’m strong”. I speak and say “I am strong in the LORD and in the power of His might”.
Your spoken words of God, can change your situation from death to life, from defeat to victory, and from chaos to peace. Praise the LORD! We will end this section with this message of how Jesus defeated the devil during His temptation. We learned at the beginning of this lesson that Jesus was tempted by the devil for 40 days in the wilderness. Forty is the gematria value of the “Mem”. This occurred directly after He was baptized in Mem waters of the Jordan. So, we are continuing to travel the path of waters and words.
The temptation of Jesus was Satan coming to Him with words. Notice the temptation of Jesus was a three-wave attack. We can see with each wave of temptation Jesus’ response was to quote God’s Word saying “It is written”. So Jesus canceled the wave of Satan with the wave of God’s words. Wow, this occurred three times and the devil gave up, went away, and the devil’s plan of attack bringing temptation to sin ended. Wow! This sounds really important based upon what we have been learning.
Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
God changed this analogy in this verse about words. It is still words, and waters, but now it is also a sword. This is the Hebrew letter “Zayin”. The letter “Zayin” is primarily a steel farming instrument, but it is also representative of any “steel” instrument like a sword. For example, a sword is a “Zayin” wartime battle instrument to defeat an enemy. But a “Zayin” plow is a peacetime seed sowing instrument. Both of these represent “words” of God. We must conclude that we should speak God’s words in both times of our lives, war or peace. But when we put the sword of God’s word in out mouth, this means we are in a spiritual battle or war. This war is not with physical weapons or fleshly enemies, but it is fought against spiritual enemies with spoken “words”. We fight this good fight with God’s armor and one piece of this ensemble, is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God!
8. The Mem Water – CONCLUSION
Joh 4:13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
Joh 4:14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Jesus speaking to the woman at the well said, “Whosoever drinks of the water that I give, will never thirst again”. Wow, what an amazing promise! Of course, Jesus is speaking spiritually and not naturally. The water that was being offered to everyone, is His spoken and written words! These words are powerful enough to do things most Christians have not yet imagined. The answer to every problem of life, is only found in the Word of God.
We have learned at least two functions for the use of pure water. One primary use is for internal consumption to produce and maintain life. The second is for external usage, created to cleanse. The first becomes a part of our internal spiritual life, and the second is used by God to cause a display of purity to others. There are also 3 realms where water of the word is evident. The first is the spirit of every human. By accepting the Word of God into our heart and confessing Jesus as Lord, we are born-again spiritually. This makes our spirit a new creation and one with the Spirit of God. Therefore, every real saved Christian, is completely pure in their spirit.
But there is a second internal realm called the soul, that is still filled with very unclean waters of worldly teachings and doctrines of devils. These are impure words that have been corrupted by Satan as a way of keeping humans from knowing God’s Words of life. This realm of the soul must be cleansed daily and continually with the pure water of the Word of God to renew our minds. Everyday living life in the world, we are hearing and seeing things that are trying to drive us away from God. This is the main reason why we need to continue drinking in God’s Word. But there are engrained things that we have experienced in our lives from our past that must also be cleaned away. The Word of God does this for us in our minds, and memories if we will allow Him to work.
The third realm of human existence is the external view of each human. This is the parts of life, where people see what we say, what we do and how we act. This realm of existence can only be changed by the first cleansing of the two internal realms in the order of mention, spirit first and soul second. The Word of God is the living pure water that can and will work to make us like Christ, if we will cooperate with God and receive Him.
Are you thirsty for more pure watering words of the knowledge of God and His Son Jesus Christ? God gives this amazing offer to anyone and if you have never drunk from this water, then you do not know what you are missing:
Isaiah 55:1 “Listen! Whoever is thirsty, come to the water! Whoever has no money can come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk. You don’t have to pay; it’s free! (GW)
We are learning in this lesson, that pure water was created by God to teach us of our total dependence upon drinking in His Word, to obtain eternal spiritual life. God provides us in this verse an incredible offer. God begins the invitation with seeking for those that are “thirsty” to know Him. Are you thirsty every day to know Him better than you did yesterday? God continues the invitation by directing us to come to His Mem waters to satisfy our thirsts. He says we can come and eat, and drink with Him and it will cost us nothing. God is offering you eternal life for free.
When we are not physically asleep in the natural realm, we can all be thirsty frequently. So it is, in the spiritual unseen realm also. But the majority of the unsaved world are ignoring this thirst as normal, primarily because they are asleep spiritually (Eph 5:14). When someone realizes this, and awaken from their spiritual sleep, they are driven by their spirit to thirst for a cool refreshing drink of water from the Word of God. But even saved Christians can become dry or hardened in their heart so that God’s word is unable to water the “seed” (Nun) of salvation that He has attempted to save them with (Mat 13:21). This is because these humans have become dull of knowing their own spiritual unseen part of them, and they are easily torn away from their beliefs in Jesus because of their trials, tests and persecutions that the enemy can bring. Without drinking the fresh pure watering Word of God continually, we are dominated with a past dry desert wilderness sensation, and do not understand what we are fully missing, that God desires to give us.
Notice God is offering us His food, water, milk, and wine, in Isaiah 55. All of these are symbolic types of the Word of God. God said in 1 Peter 2:2 to desire the “pure water” of God’s Word as newborn children desire milk. God’s spiritual food is a type of physical bread, like the daily manna that He sent Israel in the wilderness. Natural bread is made by combining grains that are ground into flour and mixing this with water. Then Jesus said in Matthew 4:4 that man cannot live upon bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. In Acts 2:13 on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were acting strangely and speaking in new tongues, and the people outside accused them of being full of new wine. In these verses most can easily see the connections of speaking words from God to the symbolic substances of water, bread, milk and wine. We will only review one other verse to confirm:
Amo 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
Here is a problem that is coming upon the world. There will be a time when God sends a famine upon the earth. But as you can see this is not a lack of bread and water, but rather a coming time when the Word of God will not be available to be heard. This is because the church will be caught up away from this world directly before the tribulation begins. What we can certainly confirm that bread, and water represent figuratively the Word of God. We will end this lesson with a verse describing the beginning of God’s amazing future new pure world that we saw earlier:
Rev 22:1 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
As we can see in the last chapter of the Bible, God has a plan to continue to supply His saved people with His pure waters (Words) of life. These words of God will continually flow out of His mouth and will produce a river that will satisfy our thirst to know more about Him and His ways. This is an amazing thought to consider. God has so much knowledge, understanding and wisdom that it won’t matter how long we will stand before Him to hear His words, there will not end the amount that He has to give us. Wow!
Hopefully this lesson was a great blessing to you and helped you to see and know God better. God’s Word is the most amazing book that I have ever encountered. I have noticed that there appears to be a never-ending supply of information, knowledge and application to us, just in this one limited big book, that we call the Holy Bible. This book as only around 750,000 to 800,000 words depending upon the translations. It has only around 31,000 verses. It has around 1000 chapters. It was divided into only 66 books written by around 40 different authors over the course of around 1500 years of human time. Yet with this large limited book is found an infinite number of truths and words of wisdoms written to help us learn about who Jesus is and who we are in Him.
Then notice what God says in John 21:25. God says in this verse, “that there are many other things that Jesus did, that if written the world could not contain the books”. That is the confirmation to show us how limited we are in knowing much about Him and what He is able to share with us throughout eternity. This simply means when we enter into His presence we will never be bored or thirsty.
God bless you immensely with the Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation in the knowledge of Him that loves us and gave His life for us. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for leaving your comments. Thank you for sharing these lessons with your friends and family to help us spread the good news of the LORD Jesus Christ. Amen.
Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Ayin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin Tav – Alef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)
Jesus in the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet Part 14 – The Mem Part 1 – the Blood
(Ver 1.1) This lesson is “Part 14” in the Bible study series revealing the Lord Jesus Christ, that had been hidden by the Spirit of God in His very intelligent design of the original Ancient Hebrew Alphabet. This is also “Part 1” of the individual letter “Mem” study. There is absolutely too much essential information to be placed in only 1 lesson. We are about to find that the letter “Mem” is a picture of moving liquid. It primarily represents two types of liquids. The first is “water”, and the second is “blood”. There are also several other figurative meanings found in the picture of the “Mem”. We will mainly focus on the subject of “blood” in this first lesson, but there are times when both will be mentioned.
This alphabet lesson on the “Mem” is another truly amazing subject uncovering extraordinary, veiled information in one letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This single letter has a massive amount of spiritual information pointing us prophetically to Jesus. The “Mem” is one of the most essential letters to understand of the entire 22. If you have not read this series from the beginning, it is recommended that you go and do so with the “Part 1 Introduction” first. There is just too much information that has been given in each lesson that will not be fully repeated in the others. But this lesson will stand alone for those that desire to see only the application of this one alphabet letter “Mem”.
Please also understand that these are “advanced spiritual Bible lessons” from the word of God and are potentially offensive to the unsaved, immature carnal, or newly born Christian. Therefore, before you read these lessons, please pray and ask the LORD should I even be reading this? Then analyze what should be my response if I do not agree with what is being taught about Jesus? Please accept a suggestion. No matter what your reaction, please walk in love, and please do not leave an unsolicited evil accusation about anyone or anything you don’t agree with. God is Love! And you only prove you don’t really know Him, by speaking evil of His children (Mat 12:34).
Today we will be learning only a limited number of subjects of the total amount of God’s important information about Jesus Christ found in the letter “Mem”. In fact, in this first “Mem” lesson, we will only cover the introduction to the letter “Mem” and the subject of it representing “Blood”. There are literally many volumes of books that could be written on each letter and how it applies to the work of God in Christ Jesus. Here is a quick list of the contents of today’s sections:
- Introduction to the Ancient Hebrew Mem
- Jesus’ BLOOD is One of the Foundational “Mem” Symbols
- Jesus To Die the Death, Another Prophecy Fulfilled on the Cross
- Jesus God’s LAST ADAM – The Blood of God Sacrifice
- God’s (Alef) + “Blood” (Mem) + “Cross” (Tav) = TRUTH
- Jesus the First and Last – Mem Water and Blood Prophecy Fulfillment
- The Mem Part 1 Blood Conclusion
Let us get started with learning this incredible picture of God’s “Mem” letter as being a representation of the Blood of Jesus Christ.
1. Introduction to the Ancient Hebrew Mem
The ancient Hebrew letter “Mem”, is the 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and has the gematria number value of “40”. The letter “Mem” can be spelled as a Hebrew root word with these three letters: “Mem” + “Yod” + “Mem”. The Hebrew root word H4325 (mayim) are these three letters, and this word is defined to be “water”. This Hebrew word H4325 is translated into “water”, or “waters”, over 500 times in the Old Testament. Therefore, the primary meaning of the letter “Mem” is “water”. This should be obvious by simply observing the pictogram of the letter “Mem”. Everyone should be able to see how this picture is of three waves. This wave concept has a far-reaching application to many designs within God’s creation. For example, here is a short list of waves that we encounter today all around us:
- Tidal Waves of the Ocean
- Tsunami Waves of an Earthquake
- Storm Waves of a Hurricane or Typhon
- Light Waves radiating from the Sun and Stars
- Sound Waves of a Concert
- Voice Sound Waves of a Preacher
- Microwaves heating our foods quickly
- Radio and Television Waves Broadcast from Towers
- Cell phone waves allowing talk, text and internet world communication
These are just a sampling of God created waves that are practically identical with the exception of substance, frequency and magnitude of the wave being generated and measured. The opposite of a wave is silence, calm, peace and this is important to know. We will only be focused upon the water wave movement concept in this introduction, and how this type of moving liquid represents blood and life.
There are many different types of “waters” in the world. As you can see by the picture of the letter, this type of water has the meaning of moving liquid by God’s designed picture of 3 waves. It is also noteworthy to see that the picture contains the implication of “continuance” or “continual movement” as the waves could never end, if the writer desired to continue to draw more and more waves. Also notice that this letter “Mem” picture looks a lot like the English letter “M”. But the English letter does not have the design of “continuance” as both ends of the letter are abruptly terminated with a straight line and not a diagonal line of the “Mem”. On the other hand, the English letter “W” does more closely resemble the design of the “Mem”, but with a pointing upward termination point.’
Let us get back to the concepts of waves and water briefly. Water is always a collective body contained within boundaries of limitations, The larger the body of water, the greater potential for more massive waves. The greatest waves on earth are the most powerful and potentially destructive. These normally occur in the earth’s oceans and could only occur naturally by a massive earthquake or an asteroid collision. We can clearly read about an asteroid hitting an ocean on the earth and killing many in Revelation 8:8-9.
In recent times we have already observed the activation of an enormous Tsunami wave on December 26, 2004, when an earthquake of over 9.1 magnitude caused a massive wave in the Indian Ocean, that killed over 225,000 people. Therefore, waves and their sizes, and their causes are very important to understanding this subject of the “Mem” designed picture more completely. For examples, all waves have causes and are a potentially powerful force that can be directed for good or for evil purposes. This is the classic scenario of “cause” and “effect”. If you observe a wave, we must stop and know there was somethings that caused it. Then we must begin to understand its purpose or intention for releasing this power. The concept of moving waves is definitely a picture of power being released and the larger the waves, the greater the power that caused them.
Just keep this in mind, for later when we directly study the next subject of “water” in a subsequent lesson. But it is important to interpret every verse in the Bible by God’s dividing line verse of good versus evil. In John 10:10, Jesus said the “thief” only came to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come, to give you life and that life in full abundance”. Therefore, if anything like a wave came to kill, it was from Satan, and all other waves that we can experience to gain pleasure those were from God as good.
Now let us observe some other concepts and details concerning water, because this is what the letter “Mem” primarily represents. The “Mayim” Hebrew word is plural, but it can be translated as being either “singular” or “plural”. Sometimes the contextual usage is only speaking of one body of “water”, and other times multiple bodies of “waters”. Liquid “water” is an interesting concept. One large glass of “water” could have the same amount of total liquid volume as two smaller cups of water divided. So, the word “mayim” or the letter “Mem” are not very specific to the amount or volume of the liquid that is being referred to. In other words, a body of water, could be a giant ocean, a major sea, a river, a lake, a stream, a pond, or a puddle, etc. They are all containers that describe limiting features of the content called “water” and “waves” can occur in each by the application of power and energy.
Let us now go much “deeper” into exploring God’s created elements and characteristics of natural water. The chemical make-up of water is “H2O”. This represents two parts hydrogen, plus one part oxygen. That is the concept of “1+2=3”. But these 3 are clearly 1 water molecule. Obviously, it takes three parts (plural) to make the singular one water molecule. Water can also be found on the earth in 3 forms, 1) vapor (air), 2) water (liquid) and 3) ice (solid). There are also three areas or realms of water on our planet. There is a lot of water particles in the atmosphere. These water particles produce varying degrees of humidity, fall like rain, and produce dew. Then there are the bodies of water on the surface of the planet. The amount of water on the surface is massive, but without it you would not be alive on this planet. The final area of water is under the earth’s surface. According to some scientists today, they estimate that there is as much water under the surface of dry ground as there is in all of the oceans. This is why even in the desert a well can be dug, to reach life sustaining waters. Did you notice all of the groups of three we just found in the basics of water? I wonder if this is why God placed three waves in the design of this letter?
This information teaches us that letter “Mem” represents an essential life source, and Jesus claims to be this source of life in these two verses:
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Joh 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
Hopefully, we can all begin to see how just these two verses apply to the concepts of Jesus representing “living waters” that was designed by God to produce human spiritual life. If you study this more fully you will soon find how essential “water” is to the existence of humans on this planet. Now apply that truth, to Jesus being this “water” symbol that came to give us spiritual life to enjoy here on earth, as well as to live eternally alive with Him.
There are a number of simultaneous applications of the picture letter “Mem” as water. One of the first things that is noticeable about the picture diagram, is that it is not a representation of a “flat line” body of calm water. Whenever water is especially calm it is observed to be motionless. Other words that could apply, are “idle”, “stationary”, “still”, “peaceful”, “passive”, and etc. The concept of a “flatline” is found in many other realms of created entities that are wave like in nature.
For example, the term “flat line” is very important in the medical field. Whenever a patient’s heart stops, their life monitor “flat lines” and this sets off an alarm for immediate attention. This is our first observation of how flowing blood is a representation of the “Mem”. It is when the blood in the body stops moving that death has occurred normally. This information appears to teach us, that flowing waters represent “life” if directed appropriately for this usage. The opposite of this would generally teach us that, no movement or waves could be applied to mean “death”. But was have already learned that “waves” or “floods” of waters to an extreme are also designed to produce death and chaos.
Most should already know that God is good and that He is the highest positive application of the symbol of the Mem “water” picture for “good” and “life”. The other negative side of the application is Satan, who is called God’s adversary (Zec 3:2). The name Satan actually means an opponent or adversary and he is the root cause of all “evil”. Therefore, good waters are from God, and evil waters are from “Satan”, and we do not yet know everything that this picture is used by God to teach us. All we know so far, is that water (Mem) can be a source for great good to produce life, and then it can also be moved to the opposite extreme, to steal, kill or destroy people (Jn 10:10). We can begin to learn this concept simply by observing the picture of waves. Please keep this in mind as we continue to learn. Here is the quick recap of what we have learned so far about the “Mem” pictogram meaning:
- The Mem is a picture of Flowing or Moving Water representing “Life” until taken to extremes
- The movement of Mem water waves has the “power” to move or change things
- Water is a plural word with an unknown quantity of total H2O molecules and all of these can be labeled or named as one collective body
- There is always something or someone releasing energy to cause the movement of the water that produced the waves
- Water can be used for either “good” and life or for “evil” to cause death
Now let us reaffirm the good nature of water. Our planet without the created waters upon the three areas of existence, the 1) surface, the 2) atmosphere, and the 3) under the surface, would be a lifeless planet like Mars. Water is one of the three major created components that make life available to our existence. These 3 components are called 1) water (Mem), 2) light (Qof) and 3) seed (Nun). Perhaps you may recall that all three of these essential components for continued human life are represented by ancient Hebrew alphabet pictograms. The water is our current subject of the “Mem”. The light is found in the subject of the letter “Qof”. And the “seed” is found in the letter “Nun” that immediately follows this letter Mem. It is interesting for us to see how God made the Mem (water), and the Nun (seed), so directly linked in the alphabet, because we will soon learn that they both are powerful natural representations of the same spiritual subject.
The next meaning of the letter “Mem” also relates to the subject of water. It should be known upfront that the human body composition is comprised of up to 50% to 65% “water”. This internal water content is absolutely essential for a healthy human life. Now for the real connection of water to our body. The “blood” in the human body can be up to 80% water. Therefore, blood and water are both representations for the letter “Mem”. This is further confirmed because our “blood” is not laying still, but is rather being pumped with every heart beat to circulate our “blood” over and over and over throughout our body. It is very easy to see how moving and flowing “blood” in the body is a picture of “life” and is a “good” God created designed representation for the moving liquid found in the letter “Mem”. Therefore, the moving liquid picture of the “Mem” represents “blood” and “life” in many verses.
We should know that taking water into our body for our healthy life is accomplished by “drinking” it with our mouth. Remember the letter “Peh” is a picture of an “open mouth”. It is amazing how all of the letters are tied together by God’s intellectual design. The water goes into our mouth, and is swallowed into our stomach and is used by the body in a large capacity of life’s functions. The human body can only generally survive without consuming water for 3 days. This is another interesting pattern of the number 3. The process of water is a cyclically repeated pattern necessary for continuing life on this physical planet. Therefore, we have the concept of moving natural water going externally from the body to internally inside the body for a good and healthy life
But what other good purposes does water possess externally? One of God’s key usages externally is for cleaning. Water has an inherit quality to have a dissolving nature to it. If we stir in sugar into a cup of water, the sugar substance is dissolved and the water becomes sweet tasting with no visible or observable indicators of this sweetness. But this quality design feature can also do the same with “dirt”. Whether we need to clean our clothes, our house, our car, our body or whatever, flowing and moving water is an essential created material for this usage. God knew this when He created it and He will apply this meaning to our study also.
Finally, it is noteworthy in our introduction to remember God writes of the blood of Jesus in 1 John 1:7. In this verse the Holy Spirit made a point to say it is the blood of Jesus that cleans us from all “sin”. We are beginning to notice that water and blood are used by God in parallel patterns. The water is used by us to clean our bodies and clothes and the blood of Jesus was used by Him to clean us to make us able to be with Him eternally. We have added to our list that the “Mem” represents the subjects of:
- The essential force for internal Life and Health
- And external cleansing agent from filth
- The cleansing blood of Jesus to remove human filth of sin
Ok, that was enough for a quick introduction to the “Mem” water and blood letter. We have seen how the letter can be either used for good or evil, but when applied to God who is always good, it is an essential element for cleansing us from all sinful unrighteousness externally and for giving us new life as a new creation internally in our human spirit. We will now turn our attention to the letter “Mem” and its application to represent “blood”.
2. Jesus’ BLOOD is One of the Foundational “Mem” Symbols
For all humans, one of the most essential hidden messages of prophecy found in the ancient Hebrew “Mem” pictogram, is the representation of flowing, living blood. Because the picture is of a moving liquid, it is very logical to associate this concept with the constant “movement and flow of blood”. As a saved Christian we should already understand how this living blood picture fits with the essential work of Christ in our human salvation. For example, without consuming the blood of Jesus, no human could ever be saved. Notice what Jesus said to us in John:
Joh 6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
These are difficult words to accept for many. It is important to understand that Jesus is not teaching cannibalism in this statement. This is a figurative representation for a far superior spiritual reality. Nevertheless, Jesus used the natural substance of Mem “blood” to help guide us for the need of His sacrifice on a cross (Tav) and without this substance no human would have any eternal life.
If you are not a Christian, you may not believe this yet. Those that received salvation could only do so, because of the willing sacrifice of divine blood of one God/Man named Jesus Christ. In a human male of about 180 pounds, he could have had at least 1.2 to 1.5 gallons of blood. It was this Mem image of flowing blood, that purchased out redemption out of a human sin debt, that could only be paid for by God Himself. This is why this symbolic meaning of the picture is by far one of the most significant meanings that is needed to be understood.
What we need to understand, is that there was a problem with every human born from the first created man named Adam. Because he rebelled, and sinned willingly, we all rebelled and sinned at that very instant having the death sentence passed upon every generation. We must understand that before sin entered into the world, Adam’s blood was created sinless and he was able to live forever. But after sin, his corrupted sinful blood was passed down to us all. Acts 17:26 informs us that God created all nations on the earth from “one blood (Mem)”. Because of Adam’s sin, the entire bloodline of every human descendant became corrupted (1 Cor 15:50). We see this principle again in 1 Corinthians 15:22 where God says, “For as in Adam, all die”. It was Adam’s DNA in his seed (Nun) that produced the next line of blood-stained generation of humans, and this continued even to today.
This is why we all needed a savior, even if you think you never did anything bad enough to be sent to hell for. Because God knew all of this, this is the reason why, Jesus brought into the world a “New Sinless Divine Blood”, that was not defiled or corrupted by the first Adam’s sin. We learn this fact from reading in 1 Peter 1:18-19. In these verses God says, “We were not redeemed with corruptible things, … But with the precious blood of Messiah/Christ”.
In this section, we are only focused upon the “primary” importance of the “Mem” representing the “blood” of Jesus Christ. In doing this, we must go back to Exodus 12 and establish God’s pattern of the coming Messiah by observing Him found in the blood of a lamb. Exodus 12:1 begins by saying “And the Lord spoke unto Moses”. The Hebrew word H559 that was translated as “spoke” is spelled “Alef” + “Mem” + “Resh”. Please recall the “Alef” is a picture of an ox representing “God in Christ as the strong servant”. Then recall, the “Mem” is a picture of “water” and/or “blood”. Finally recall the “Resh”, is a picture of a man’s head representing his chief “authority”.
Placing the meanings of these three letters together it says, “God’s (Alef) water/blood/words (Mem) of Chief Authority (Resh)”. Since God was doing the speaking to Moses with this word, we can certainly see the application of that description to what was taking place. We have only been introduced briefly to the fact that the “Mem” represents physical water and blood. But we will soon learn that this natural “water” symbol, can also represent spiritual spoken words of authority. We will get to this fact soon. Keep these in mind, because all of these meanings have an application to Jesus.
Now notice the named “Moses” also begins with the letter “Mem”. Most know the story of Moses. Moses was born during a time where all male babies were commanded to be thrown into the Nile River (Mem) to be drown (Exo 1:22). This river was a very large flowing “Mem” water supply of Egypt. Therefore, Satan was trying to use God’s created supply of water (Mem) designed for life, as an instrument of death. Do not forget later when Moses is sent to deliver Israel from Egypt that the first plague sent was God turning this water supply from water into blood (Exo 17:7). That is a major pattern of confirmation for the symbol of “Mem” representing both water and blood.
In fact, in Exodus 17:7, the word translated as “waters” is the word H4325, which is the word form of the letter “Mem” that begins and ends with the letter “Mem”. Then notice the Hebrew word translated into the word “blood” is H1818, and it ends with the letter “Mem”. We are about to discover how all of this is being designed and connected together by God as prophetical patterns of the coming Jesus. Let us get back to the story of Moses being saved by God from Satan’s River of death.
Most recall, that all male babies were commanded to be killed in the river. But Moses was saved by him being hidden for 3 months, and then being placed in an empty container translated as an “ark”. By Moses being placed above the waters of death, it was this “ark” that saved him. This Hebrew word H8392 translated as “ark” is spelled “Tav” + “Beyt” + “Hey”. The “Tav” we should know by now is the last letter of the alphabet a picture of a “Cross”. The “Beyt” is a picture of the “Tent House” representing the “Family” inside the house. Finally, the “Hey” is a picture of a man with hands raised, meaning “Look”, “Behold”, and “See”. Therefore, we can see how an “ark” of salvation is a prophetical picture for Christians beholding the revelation (Hey) of the cross (Tav) that is creating a new family of God to enter into (Beyt).
It was Moses floating above this water that saved him, when he was drawn out by a daughter of Pharoah’s house. Moses’ name actually means to be “drawn” from water. Remember, that it was this daughter’s father that ordered the Hebrew babies to be killed. Therefore, the enemy also became the deliverer for Moses, without fully knowing it. God is amazing, isn’t He? It should amaze us how God can use what was intended for evil to be used for deliverance. This is how the life of Moses was saved by God’s selection usage of water. We have also just confirmed the concept about water being of two opposing usages for good and life, or evil and death. That is an important factor or type, to not forget. It will reappear as we study this subject.
So far, we have just covered multiple applications found in Exodus about blood and water and we find them all as references to the letter “Mem”. Now let us move faster, or we will never get finished. Reading down the chapter 12 of Exodus, we find where Moses was told that every house (Beyt) must take a “lamb”. This Lamb must be without blemishes. It was to be taken into the house (Beyt) for 4 days, and then it was to be sacrificed on the 14th day of the month, when the moon was “full”. On that evening, the lamb was to be slain and its blood (Mem) was to be collected and placed on every post of the door of the house (a prophetical type of Tav). Let us stop there an learn more fully the word translated as “blood” that we were briefly introduced to earlier.
This Hebrew word H1818 has the sound of “dawm”, and it is spelled with two letters, the “Dalet” and the “Mem”. Did you notice these two Hebrew letters that are translated as “blood” are a picture of the first Passover? So, we have the major part of the story of Passover told to us in two letters that are translated as “blood”. That is not a coincidence. The “Dalet” is the picture of the Father’s house door posts where blood will be applied for his family to enter into to have every life saved. The “Mem” is obviously the picture of “blood” that is applied to the doorposts (Tav). This application to God’s heavenly house (Beyt) and eternal life, found in two letters translated as “blood” for Christ’s work on a cross to save us is amazing. What we are about to read in this chapter is a picture of God’s spiritual house. We will not get into this part of the lesson in depth today.
But for natural Israel, this act of obedience to place the lamb’s blood on the doorposts, is exactly what saved the children of Israel from the death angel coming to take the firstborn of each family house. That was the good news for the people. But the reversed bad news was for the “lamb”. The “lamb” that was slain on the first “Passover” had to die and its blood had to be placed upon wooden posts in order for no one inside the “door” to die.
This was called a substitutionary work for human salvation. Instead of the human in the house dying, the lamb died in their place. It was the outward display of a lamb’s blood that prevented the death angel from taking anyone’s life hidden in the house (Beyt). All of this found in Exodus 12, should be a clear picture of Christ’s death on a cross for all humans. It was because of His death that no other human has to die spiritually. You can read more about this in other lessons on this site. But we will observe a few of the obvious verses to confirm this:
- John the Baptist calls Jesus the “Lamb of God” in John 1:36.
- Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:7, that Jesus was the “Passover” sacrifice for Christians.
- In John 10:9, Jesus said “I am the door, if any man enter in, he shall be saved”.
- In 1 Peter 1:19 God says we were saved by the “precious blood of Christ, without blemish and without spot.
That was just a small sampling of verses written to the church about Jesus our Passover and His saving blood (Mem) sacrifice on a cross. There are many other references concerning the blood (Mem) of Jesus that obtained our human salvation. His blood did more than you have seen or know. But yet it is possible to learn more, by simply studying “Blood” verses in the New Testament about this subject. Hopefully, you can see how this picture of a “Passover Lamb” was fulfilled in the life and blood (Mem) of Jesus. Let us move to another part of the “Mem” blood subject.
3. Jesus to Die the Death, Another Mem Prophecy Fulfilled on the Cross
This was amazing when it was discovered recently during Bible study time with the LORD. The Hebrew word that is translated as “to die” (H4191) is spelled with 3 letters. The first letter is our study subject “Mem”. This “Mem” letter is joined with the middle letter “Vav”, and finally, the word ends with a “Tav”. Do you recall what these pictures represented? The letter “Mem” is our study letter representing moving water and blood symbolically. The letter “Vav” is the picture of a “Nail”. The letter “Tav” is the picture of a “cross”. This spelling contains the clear hidden prophecy of Jesus’ bloody death by Him being nailed to a cross. As you can see this is described by God in picture story telling form found in just 3 alphabet ancient letter designs. God knew this would happen when Moses wrote the Torah, and placed His death again, in hidden alphabet letter meanings for the word translated as “to die”. It was hidden right in front of us for many years. Let us look at the first verse in the Bible, this word is selected for us by God:
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Wow, if you only knew the hidden facts in this verse. As we can read this verse is God describing to the first created man Adam, that there was one tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he must not eat from. In this verse one hidden mystery that is profound occurs at the end of the statement. The words are “thou shalt surely die”, and these two words are really just the same word. They are the same word H4191 written twice. There are several potential explanations for why God wrote it this way. Some teach that when a word is doubled there is a major emphasis and this is probably a reason why the word “surely” was placed in the translation.
But I believe it is best to allow the Bible to interpret the Bible. For this reason, we can find Jesus speaking in Revelation 2:11 saying to the Churches, “He that overcomes, will not be hurt of the second death”. This literally means there are two types of death. The first is natural death, and the second is spiritual death. Most humans are only concerned about the natural death of their bodies, because they do not understand that they are a spirit, that will live forever.
Knowing the fact that there are two types of death, that are destined for some humans that do not ever repent to receive salvation to overcome the devil, helps us to understand why God placed 2 words “to die” in a row in Genesis 2:17. In one appropriate translation it could say, “in dying, you will die”. But it also appears that because the first Adam willfully disobeyed God, all of mankind was destined to die twice. Uh oh! That is the reason why this word is spelled the way it was. Jesus Christ chose “to die” twice in our place by placing His blood upon a wooden cross, to die physically, and simultaneously He died spiritually when He was separated from His Father in heaven, by spending 3 days and 3 nights in hell (Mat 12:40).
We can clearly see how Jesus completely fulfilled this prophecy of Genesis 2:17 for payment of all human sin by becoming our substitute. This is why God could say in 1 Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam, all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. Because Jesus shed His “Mem” blood hanging nailed (Vav) to a cross (Tav), God’s justice payment was satisfied, and no other human needed to go to hell. To be “born” twice, will insure only one physical death and for some saved humans in the end of the age, a “no death” exit. This message was hidden in the “Mem” + “Vav” + “Tav” Hebrew word translated as “to die”. Hallelujah, and all praise be to the merciful LORD.
4. Jesus God’s LAST ADAM – God’s Mem Blood Sacrifice
We are about to get into some more amazing hidden prophetical statements that were concealed in the Old Testament about who Jesus was. If you have read other Bible lessons in this series you should already know that Jesus is called the “Last Adam” in 1 Corinthians 15:45. In this verse Jesus is compared directly with the “first Adam” introduced to us in Genesis 1, 2, 3 & 4. Reading in Romans 5:14 God reveals a secret that the first Adam as a patterned type for the Last Adam. In all these verses, God says the first Adam was created as a living “soul” pattern, for the “Last Adam” named Jesus who would be made by God to be a “quickening Spirit”. That is an amazing statement of comparison. What we are focused upon is the fact that both men are called “Adam” by God. This name has a lot of major implications attached to it.
We are primarily concerned about the letters found in the Hebrew name “ADAM”. We are about to discover something very amazing hidden in this name. First, we must know that the last letter in the name is the study subject “Mem” representing both blood and water. The Bible word “Adam” is the Hebrew word “H121”. It is not a translation of the Hebrew word, but rather it is a transliterated pronunciation of the Hebrew letters “ADM” (Alef+Dalet+Mem), pronounced as “Aw-dawm”. The first letter of the name Adam is “Alef”, the strong ox representing God. The second letter of the name is the “Dalet”, representing the “door” of the tent tabernacle or the movement in or out through the opening where a son is born. The last letter is the “Mem”, representing our substances of water and/or blood indicating life.
Now let us remember what we have just learned about the word H1818 that is translated as blood. Please recall this word is pronounced “dawm”. It was spelled as Dalet + Mem and just so happens to be the last two letters in the name Adam. These two letters are symbolic of the human heart as a “door” (Dalet) that allows movement of the blood (Mem) throughout the body. Most humans are aware of the physical heart muscle that pumps the human blood into all the rest of our body. This physical muscle is named the “heart”. It operates by contracting and expanding automatically, in the conjunction with the opening and closing of valves as if the opening and closing of doors (Dalet). The physical heart figuratively represents your spiritual house, and the valves represent the doors of the heart house. It is the Mem “blood” that was placed inside of us by God to pass in and out of our beating heart. The normal human heart beats over 100,000 times a day in order to keep us physically alive. Most humans take this action completely for granted.
What we are about to find is that this physical “heart” organ represents an unseen spiritual state. The human spirit is also called by the same named “heart” in the Bible. It is this spiritual location that Jesus wants to enter into to fellowship with us all. For example, notice this verse in Revelation:
Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Let us stop and analyze an invitation that Jesus gave to every human on the earth. We will begin by first noticing the reference in the words of Jesus to a “door” (Dalet) that he is standing before knocking. Jesus is definitely the God servant Ox figure of the Alef. Therefore, we have the Alef standing before the Dalet. These are the first two letters of the name Adam.
You see we learned in the “Dalet” lesson that Jesus is our door for salvation, and by us choosing to enter into this door, we can be saved. But Jesus is not the only door that is necessary to be opened in order for us to become fully saved. Every human has a spiritual door provided for God access, that must also be opened by the human spirit in order to be necessary for their salvation to occur.
By a human opening their heart’s door, they are allowing the Spirit of Christ to come inside to give them eternal life by Him being their LORD. Both doors (Jesus and human) must be entered into by both covenanting partners and these acts produce a union of becoming one Spirit (1 Cor 6:17) in two realms of existence. Jesus wants you to invite Him into your heart, and He will enter your newly created spirit (2 Cor 5:17), to bring you into the presence of the Father in heaven. This is the LAW of marriage found in Genesis 2:24 for the first Adam that is re-applied by God spiritually in the Last Adam (Jesus). But this covenant of marriage is between Christ and His bride the church body (Eph 5:31-32).
Now that you know that, we need to get back to our Hebrew letters found in the name “Adam”. We just discovered the Dalet + Mem means moving “Blood” as if alive. Now let us add the first letter “Alef” and place it before the root word “blood”. Remember, that the first letter “Alef” has the most basic meaning of being a representation of “God”, who is the ultimate “beginning” and strong servant. The last part of Adam is “Dalet” + “Mem” (H1818) meaning “blood”. Combine these and we get “God’s blood” or “the blood of God”. Wow! That is pretty amazing information. God has hidden the fact that found in the very first human man, was His very own “blood”. That is pretty remarkable and we can confirm this by reading and studying more in Genesis:
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
OK, we can read that the body of the man was formed from the dust of the earth. But it had no life until God breathed into Adam His breath (Spirit). God is a Spirit (Jn 4:24). Therefore, God does not breathe created “air” (oxygen). What then did God place in the body of Adam to cause him to become a breathing human? What is God saying to us here? Notice that this action giving life is called the “breath of life”. That is pretty amazing based upon what God says in Leviticus:
Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
Did you notice what God reveals about the life (H5315) of a human body that causes it to be alive? God clearly reveals that it is “blood” that causes physical “life”. God had to place His “blood” in the body of the created man to cause Adam’s physical life to come alive. But that is not all of the truth necessary to know everything that happened to the first Adam when God “breathed” into his nostrils.
Jas 2:26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
Can you begin to see the direct connections being made by the LORD? God says in James, that a human body without their spirit is dead. Then in Leviticus God declares the life of a human body is in their blood. What did God just say? God just said, that if there is no human spirit or blood in their physical body, there is no physical or spiritual life present. This was the case for the body of Adam in Genesis 2. It was not until Adam received the breath of God that life came inside the body. Where then did Adam’s blood and spirit come from? Both of these could have only come from God.
There looks as if there is a new revelation appearing, about the fact that when God breathed (His Spirit) into the nostrils of the lifeless body of the first Adam, that He placed His personal life, inside Adam to give Adam a sinless blood and him a sinless living spirit simultaneously. Uh oh? This information could probably be causing a lot of religious minded people to potentially close their minds. But it is what the Bible says. Adam when created was in a form of a being that could have lived forever, if they had not eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was only after sin, that death entered into the world.
What we are learning is that the first created Adam, was created more like the Last Adam Jesus than we might have realized. But because God knew the end from the beginning, God also knew that the first Adam was going to sin and fail. And this fact is why God placed the “Last Adam” inside of the first Adam as a “seed” (Nun). By pre-planting the physical “seed” (Nun) of the “Last Adam” in the physical body of the first Adam pre-sin, God already had the solution for post-sin from the very beginning (Alef). God reveals this by calling Jesus the “Son of Man”. The Hebrew word H121 transliterated as Adam is the exact same word (H120) that was translated as “man”.
These Bible truths may or may not be a new revelation for you, that Jesus our Savior was designed by God into the foundation of the world from the very beginning. God implemented this strategy of making Jesus the pre-planned “slain Lamb of God” from the foundation of our world (Rev 13:8). We can understand that because God knew the end from the beginning (Isa 46:10), He already planned a solution implementation to pay the penalty of human sin and rebellion even before it became a reality need. We are learning that Jesus was not just a thought in the mind of God during creation but was rather a part of God’s designed solution implementation. God’s nature is to provide the solution before the problem is ever known. Nothing surprises Him in the least.
God provided a future body of the Last Adam Jesus the savior of the whole world, by placing His physical body seed “IN” the body of the first Adam when he was created. This is the truth, or otherwise Jesus could not ever be called by the title “Son of Adam/Man (H120)”. But there is a lot more challenging new information to combine with this one. For example, Jesus the Last Adam, is also called the “Son of God” as well as being the “Son of Adam”. That is a new mystery that needs further revelation. How can Jesus the Last Adam, also be a Son of Adam as well as the Son of God? And what else does all of this information about two Adam’s imply?
We need to discover another major new Bible concept, that God says the “first Adam” was also a “son of God”. That may be more challenging than anything that you have ever learned in the Bible. But we are about to discover why this is so important in relationship to our “Blood” Mem letter study.
Please remember in Luke 3:38 that the first Adam was called “the son of God”. I know the word “son” is not in the Greek text, but it is implied strongly by the reference of every pair of men being a father and son relationship that pass their “seed” bloodline to the next generation. Are you going to try to tell us that everyone pair is a father and his son, except the last pair, God and Adam? That would not logically make any sense. Patterns are prophecies of truth in the Bible. Remember this information was already confirmed by knowing that the three letters of the name of Adam meant “God’s blood”. Now notice what God says in this verse:
Act 17:26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
God has declared that all people from every nation on the earth, originally came from the blood of God that He placed in the body of the first Adam in Genesis 1-2. There are no races of people, no matter what the tone of the skin color or the physical characteristics. Every human has the same original parents named Adam and Eve and their blood could have only come from God. The fact that all humans came from one woman named Eve, is scientifically proven by observing human DNA origins going backwards from woman to woman until the single common woman that is called our mitochondrial-Eve by Wikipedia. Go read about it for yourself. This information was first published nearly 30 years ago.
What we are learning is very profound. We can begin to see the value that God places upon every human and why it was necessary for Him to come to the earth in person to redeem us. This is why God says in Hebrews 10:14 that it is not possible for the blood of created animals like bulls or goats to take away (human) sin. Why would this be? If man had been given the same kind of blood as animals, it would surely be possible for their innocent blood to pay the price for human sin. Or if God gave His blood to the animals like He did to Adam, that would make us all of the same type. But because humans were the only one that was given God’s blood, God required the same or greater payment to save us. Hebrews 10:14 is just one more confirmation. But let us look at other references in the first chapter of Genesis to further confirm God’s blood was placed inside of Adam:
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
The Hebrew word translated as “Likeness” in Genesis 1:26 is very important to our subject of the first Adam being God’s son, and having God’s blood. This Hebrew word “H1823” translated as likeness is made with combining 4 Hebrew letters. These letters are the “Dalet”, “Mem”, “Vav” and “Tav”. Wow, now let us place these meanings of each of these letters together to see that they say “Blood” (Dalet+Mem), “Nailed” (Vav) to a “Cross” (Tav). This was obviously God’s original plan for Jesus.
But another definition for this Hebrew word translated as “likeness”, has this meaning in the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon as; “A son from the blood of his father resembles his father”. What we have just reaffirmed is the fact that the first Adam was a son of the creator heavenly Father. This is what amazed the angels that observed God’s creation of the first man Adam (Job 38:7). God places His own Spirit life and blood inside of the body of His created man, and this made him different than any other creation up to this point. The angels in heaven could look at the created first Adam and see a direct family relationship to creator God. It is very much like people can look at my son, and see my characteristics in his looks, actions, characteristics, etc.
Jesus the second man, and last Adam, also possessed the singles pure blood (Mem) of God. It was the fact that Jesus lived His life without sin, that gave Him the right to pay the price of all of us human sinners that were born in the first Adam’s family blood line. Believe it or not this is the truth. God even tells us of this in the Hebrew word prophecy found in the letters of the word translated as “Truth”.
5. God’s (Alef) + “Blood” (Mem) + “Cross” (Tav) = TRUTH
One Hebrew word translated as “truth” is H571. This is an amazing word to our Bible study. This word is spelled with three letters. The first letter is the “Alef” representing Jesus the strong Ox servant. The second letter is our study letter “Mem” representing “blood”. The last letter is “Tav”, representing “the covenant mark of the cross”. Placing these three letters together God gives us the prophecy of “God/Jesus blood on the cross is ultimate truth”. Remember what Jesus said to us in John 8:32? In this verse of very profound revelation, Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”. Wow, do you see God’s connections to knowing who Jesus was, and whose Spirit and blood was found in His body, by His selection of the spelling of this Hebrew word translated as “TRUTH”?
Jesus just mentioned the word for “Truth” twice in this single statement in John 8:32. Within the context you can clearly see that Jesus is speaking to Jewish people. There is no doubt in my mind or heart, that He was speaking in Hebrew the word “Truth”. Remember that Jesus very plainly claimed to be the “Alef” and the “Tav”, four times in the book of Revelation. This word “Truth” is indirectly connected to that claim because of the beginning and ending letter of the Hebrew word. This would tend to teach us that Jesus also understood what the “Mem” in between represented as being His “blood”.
We have just learned something very significant about two Adam’s. Both of these men originally contained the sinless blood of Almighty God. The first Adam rebelled against God, and this did not faze Him, because He had already planned another Adam to save us all. Because God Himself became this second and last Adam, God could insure and guarantee our salvation personally. We also see why it was necessary for Him to come because of His original man being designated to be so valuable by God placing His own blood inside of his body.
It is the “Mem” spotless blood of Jesus that is the primary emphasis to our study of this ancient Hebrew alphabet letter. Without this blood sacrifice on a cross, we would all be lost and going to hell with Satan. That is the “TRUTH” (Alef+Mem+Tav). Hopefully, you are learning and seeing some new amazing things that were hidden in the spelling of words with God’s “Blood” in them. We will only go through one final section in this lesson, ending with a description of how the water and the blood symbols of the “Mem” were found in the life of Jesus from beginning birth to the ending death.
6. Jesus’ the First and Last – Mem Water and Blood Prophecy Fulfillment
Isa 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
We are beginning to wrap up this Mem blood study, by connecting the beginning and the ending of the physical life of Messiah Jesus. Never forget the basis of this entire series originates from the fact that Jesus directly claimed 4 times in the book of Revelation to be the Alef and the Tav, the beginning and the ending. From this information, Jesus implied He was also every other letter of the alphabet that fell between the first and the last. This certainly included the “Mem” water and blood letter.
What we are about to see, is how the life’s beginning and the ending death of Jesus were clearly connected and woven together by God’s designed plan using both of the major Mem symbols of water and blood. We are about to discover how both the beginning of the Jesus’ life and His ending physical death involved His human interaction with natural water and blood. Wow! This is impossible to be a coincidence. This knowledge simply confirms the infinite foreknowledge of God to incorporate every Hebrew letter into the life and ministry of Jesus. It clearly demonstrates God’s extreme intelligent design of every detail including the alphabet letter choices.
What we are about to discover is that the “entrance” of Jesus into the world involved the interaction of both Mem “water and blood”. Then we can notice the exact same two interacting components in the death of Jesus. Let us begin first with the birth of Jesus first using the above prophecy found in Isaiah 7:14.
Why was it necessary for the Messiah to be conceived within, and born from a “virgin” woman? God very specifically prophesies this plan hundreds of years before it was fulfilled in the virgin woman named “Mary”. Think about it? Any woman could get pregnant. Even Sarah at the age of 90, who was well passed the time of having a child normally, suddenly and miraculously had a God promised child. Sarah was a type of the mother of Jesus. Yet she does not come close to matching the profile of the virgin Mary, other than both being miraculous conceptions. It appears this birth of Christ was going to be even more miraculous than that birth of Isaac. In Isaiah 7:14, God reveals this birth will be for a “sign” (H226).
This Hebrew word H226 translated as “sign” is spelled “Alef” + “Vav” + “Tav”. The combination of these three letters reveals the meaning, “God nailed to a cross”. This word can also literally mean the “mark of a covenant agreement” between two parties. We all know Jesus claimed to be the “Alef” (beginning) and the “Tav” (End) four times in the book of Revelation. The joining nail in between these two letters represents a bonding connection. Placing this information together we can get another image of the “beginning” of Jesus being joined with His “end”, and amazingly this occurred in the Gospels very plainly. Let us examine why God selected a virgin woman first as the beginning for Christ’s physical birth.
1Jn 5:6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.
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.
1Jn 5:8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
These are amazingly parallel verses found in the New Covenant about our subject letter “Mem”. Notice the mention of “Truth” at the end of the verses related to the Spirit of God. Then notice that four times in these three verses, “water” is mentioned directly. Four times in these three verses, “blood” is directly mentioned. Therefore, there is no doubt that we are directly over the target letter “Mem” subject.
Remember in the introduction we were talking about three components H2O that were designed by God to describe one element called “water”. This pattern is found again here, being repeated amazingly in great detail. Let us begin by noticing verse 5 is describing the birth of Jesus. This is strongly implied by God’s usage of the Greek word G2064 that was translated in verse 5 as “came”. To come is a term indicating that a person has been in a previous place and has now manifested in the current location, representing physical earth.
This simply means that Jesus came down from heaven, being sent by His Father who was still there, and it was accomplished by the Holy Spirit overshadowing a woman named Mary. It is very important to note upfront that the child Jesus spent 9 months inside this woman before He “came” into the world. Then you better not forget how this time was spent? These 9 months were God as a developing child surrounded by “Mem” water. That is your first clue that God is about to reveal something more intense is coming.
We can learn all about this reading in Luke chapter 1. God the Father sent an angel to Mary to inform her that she is being favored by God. She is told that she would have a child. She asked the angel how this would be possible, since she had not “known” a man. This simply meant that she was a virgin. That was a great question. The angel then informs her that the Spirit of God would come upon her to cause this child to manifest. Again, we find the entire trinity in the conception of Jesus. The Father in heaven, sent the angel with the “Word” message, the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary, and the Son of God would manifest. That is all another amazing three in one interaction of God.
Ok, that brings us back to what is a virgin and how is this connected with 1 John 5:6? Notice in this verse of 1 John, God reveals Jesus was born with both blood and water being mixed together. How is this possible during child birth? Normally it is not possible. There is never any blood present during normal childbirth. But Mary was a virgin. This meant her hymen was still present in her birth canal. This little piece of skin was designed by God to produce blood flow when torn. Normally this occurs the first time the woman has sexual relations with her husband, but Mary had never experienced this until after Jesus was born (Mat 1:25).
Can we see what God is revealing here? Normal childbirth labor occurs with breaking of the membrane to release the flow of water in the womb. It was this Mem “water” that Jesus the Son of God grew in, until He could be born. When Mary’s water broke, the normal gush of moving fluid exited and was followed by the head of the baby Jesus. During the exit from the womb, Jesus had to have broken the hymen and that would also cause Him to pass through the blood of His mother. Do we understand that the sole created purpose of the hymen in a female, is to bond in covenant with her husband? That sounds a lot like the description of the Hebrew word “H226” that was translated as a “sign”. Do you believe this was a beginning sign for something major that was happening in one of the first works of God in Christ’s birth? Take a look at another verse of significant revelation concerning the birth of Messiah:
Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
As we can see, God sent His Son Jesus, by Him being “made” inside of a Hebrew virgin woman named Mary. Jesus spent the normal duration of 9-months to fulfill the birthing time. But please notice the major emphasis for why He was born of this woman Mary. According to God, Jesus was born of Mary because she was under the Law of Moses, and this fact made her child Jesus to also fall under the same LAW! Uh oh? Let us say this again. Because Mary His mother was under the Law of Moses, Jesus her firstborn son, also was placed under the full Law of Moses. Why was this necessary?
Some ask the question, isn’t it His law already? Didn’t God speak this law to His servant Moses directly? We are not able to teach this revelation as fully as is needed today. God had a problem in heaven after Lucifer sinned and rebelled causing 1/3 of the angels to fall with him. Did you know there were no laws in heaven when Lucifer rebelled against God? Did you also know that in Romans 4:15 God says where there is no law, there is no transgression? This is one of the main reasons why God created Adam on the earth.
God brought about a nation from Abraham that He could introduce His “LAW” through. It was this fact of being under His LAW, that Jesus, who was God in the flesh, manifested. By God placing Himself under the Law of Moses in the flesh, He placed all of His creation under the same LAW and this included Lucifer and every other angelic being, good or evil. Notice what God reveals to us in this verse about the LAW:
Rom 3:19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
God’s Law of Moses only applied to those natural people that were born under His law. This appears to imply that it did not apply to God, nor any other angelic being, nor any other nation that was not in the Old Covenant. This is very amazing implied information being given to us. God appears to be revealing to His saved church, one significant reason for Him being born on the earth, was to place Himself under His own law. What was the reason for this act? According to what we just read; it was to “silence” the mouth of everyone in the world. Who is the god of this world that needed to be silenced? 2 Corinthians 4:4 says Satan is the god of this world that blinds the minds of every unbeliever. Uh oh, we are learning some great new information.
Using this information and other verses in the New Testament we will find that because Jesus could live the LAW as a sinless man, He could pay the price to allow for human salvation, while simultaneously legally rejecting salvation for Satan. Jesus seems to have accomplished this condemnation by His death on the cross:
Joh 16:11 Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.
Notice what Jesus reveals about Himself and His soon coming crucifixion on the cross. This soon coming event of His Tav cross death, according to Jesus appears to be one of the final nails in the coffin on Satan. This is very enlightening information being given to us by God Himself. This is also a very eye-opening new way to look at the verse 1 Corinthians 2:8 for some. In this verse God reveals “If Satan would have known the reason for the life of Jesus, He would have never crucified the LORD of glory!”. Are you beginning to see why? Jesus living in the flesh under the Law of Moses, and never breaking the LAW, could have lived forever in His sinless state or existence. He would have never been able to die. If there would have never been a death, there would have been no burial. If there would have been no burial, there would have been no resurrection from the “dead” of anyone. But because Jesus was the “Firstborn” from the dead, He gained preeminence over Satan for eternity separating God from the realm of darkness totally and completely. This could all occur because God came into the world born of a woman under the law through His water and blood interaction.
We will not go through all of the other verses of 1 John 5 in this lesson today. It would take literally books of new information to reveal everything God is saying to us about the spirit, blood and water connections in the life of Jesus. What we should conclude is Jesus was intentionally born into the world passing through both “water” and “blood”, which are the two major meanings of the “Mem” pictogram. But now let us move to the end of the life of Jesus to see how these same two substances are again mentioned and joined together at His ending death. Please notice, that none of this is a coincidence.
It just so happens that one of the last recorded events that befell the natural body of the LORD Jesus, occurred while the body was still hanging on the cross. During this event there occurred the mixing of both Mem “blood” and “water”, that fell upon the ground. And this sounds like the birth of Jesus exactly.
Joh 19:33 But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
Joh 19:34 But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
Joh 19:35 And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.
Joh 19:36 For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
Joh 19:37 And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
This is really amazing how God accomplished this work. God by His infinite foreknowledge knew everything that would take place on crucifixion day including the exact time that it would occur. We are only going to focus upon verse 34 for our Mem study lesson. Soldiers were coming to every man crucified, to break their legs to speed up their deaths since it was getting close to 6 PM that began the new day Sabbath evening. Jews demanded that these 3 men, not be left on the cross to defile their Sabbath. Isn’t it interesting how the number 3 has appeared again. When the soldiers came to Jesus, they were surprised that he was already dead.
But for good measure to ensure His death, one soldier took a spear and with its sharp point pierced the body into the heart of the Lamb of God. Instantly after the spear was extracted from the body of Jesus, both blood and water flowed out upon the ground. Wow, that is both of the major symbols of the Ancient Hebrew Mem letter picture. This just cannot be a coincidence; it is definitely another major sign of the intelligent design of an all-knowing God.
Notice the connection in this passage again to 1 John 5:8. The Spirit of Jesus leaves His physical body, and the body is dead. Then the spear is placed into the physical body and the “water” and “blood” is poured out on the ground. What did John say in 1 John 5:8? These three agree in one, the spirit, the blood and the water. Did not all of these just leave the body of Messiah? What were the three witnesses saying in agreement?
- Without the “Spirit” the body is dead,
- Without the “blood” the body is dead,
- Without “water” the body is dead.
What we have just seen in this section, was the beginning birth process and entrance of Jesus involved by a passing through Mary’s natural bodily “water” and “blood” fluids. But before this natural birth of Jesus occurred, she heard the Word of God and believed it to receive it. Then the Holy Spirit comes upon Mary passing even to her spirit through her bodily fluids of both “water” and “blood”, in order to cause her to be physically impregnated in her womb. When this happened the Word of God became “Flesh” (Jn 1:14), and this grew a new manifestation of God as an unborn child called the Son of God, Jesus. God’s Spirit now lived inside of a natural woman in a sack of “water”, surrounded by her “blood” being fed by an attached umbilical cord.
Now consider this additional factor of Mem “water” and “blood” in this birth process. The union of Mary’s physical egg with God’s Word/Seed caused a baby to begin to develop. In as few as 5 weeks this God/Man baby had the basic structure of a heart that caused the flow of “blood” through the continuing to grow body’s circulatory system. Wow, this is amazing. Now we have a self-contained body unit inside of His mother’s self-contained body unit. Mary’s body being a daughter of Adam, Abraham, Judah and David had sin’s corruption within it. What allowed God in the flesh to be inside this sinful woman and her not to drop dead in God’s presence inside?
The answer is found in the previous stated fact that declares Jesus’ body to be a self-contained independent temple of God. The growing baby inside Mary’s womb, as we learned previously had the incorruptible blood of God, that was sinless and spotless. It was just one drop of this powerful blood that was immediately able to pay the full sin debt of all humans in the entire time of man’s history on the earth. It was also this blood that had allowed God in the flesh to touch the sinful woman Mary’s body, and her not fall dead instantly. In the mind of God, the Lamb of God growing inside Mary’s body had already been slain when Adam sinned. This is why Jesus could walk up to sinful humans and say to them in advance before His natural death, “your sins are forgiven”. He knew what was going to happen in just a short time.
That was a lot of uses by God, of Mem “blood” and “water” interactions. We will see even more examples of this in the next lesson that will focus upon the subject of “water” predominantly, the Lord be willing. But all of these cooperating works in agreement of God’s Spirit, Water, and Blood is what gave Him the legal right to be physically born as a human baby into the world (Jn 10:1).
Now combine the beginning entrance of Jesus into the world, with the legal witness of His exit out of the world. As we learned previously God’s usage of “blood” and “water” and His Spirit were witnesses to both situations. Did you know “blood” is a witness? We read in Genesis 4 where the blood of Able cried to God from the ground. This established the fact that “blood” speaks even after death as a witness to his murder. Did you know also, that the Blood of Jesus also speaks? In Hebrews 12:24, we find where God says “The blood of Jesus speaks better things than the blood of Able”. Now we have just learned some amazing truths.
We have also established a fact that both the birth and the death of Jesus were witnessed by three realities of the same substances. The first was the Spirit of God. The second was the “blood” of God, and the third was the word of God. I know you thought that was supposed to say the “water” of God. But in the next lesson, we will confirm this Mem “water” represents God’s spoken Words. We can already begin to see this reading in John 1:1 where God says, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God”.
Now combine John 1:1 with Genesis 1:1-3. “In beginning God (Elohim + Alef-Tav) created the heaven and the earth, and the Spirit of the Lord brooded over the waters, And God said, “let there be light”.
There appears to be an even greater usage of God of His water and blood hanging on a cross than we might have ever seen before. Remember that it is the blood that was poured out of the vessel of the body of Jesus that establishes the New Covenant creation of God. This is why Jesus could cry with a loud voice hanging on the cross “It is Finished”, speaking of God’s old creation containing Lucifer. The ending last natural work of Christ on a cross was for Him to supply an offering of His blood and water for the full one-time payment and cleansing of all human sin. That is amazing! Thank you, Jesus! It was the witness of these three elements, Spirit, Blood, and Water (Words), that gave God the legal right to raise Christ back from the dead, after the first Adam’s human sin penalty was fully paid for in three days.
7. MEM – BLOOD CONCLUSION
It was God’s powerful, wonderful and amazing Mem “Blood” that purchased us out of an eternity of spiritual death separation abiding in hell. It was God’s blood that caused every human sin to be able to be cleansed and removed from God’s judgment. We have been focusing upon the Mem “Blood” substance representing the blood of Jesus, our LORD and Savior. We have explored several Hebrew words that contain the “Mem” blood letter. We learned about Jesus coming to the earth “to die” two deaths that were revealed to happen in Genesis 2, if Adam sinned. God had pre-planned the solution to this problem by already establishing a pathway of blood for the Last Adam to be born as a baby child in Bethlehem.
We further studied the fact that the name “Adam” means “God’s Blood”. We further studied the Hebrew word translated as “Likeness” confirmed Adam had the blood of God in His body. This teaches us how valuable created man was to God from the very beginning. The first man Adam was made slightly lower than God Himself and certainly above the angelic class of beings. But He fell below them becoming in need of a great sacrifice to save us.
We also learned the Hebrew word translated as “TRUTH” is Jesus the Alef and the Tav joined with the “Mem” blood connector. We will always be eternally grateful to what God did to become a human to bring about a clean blood supply from heaven to pay the price of all of our sins. Thank you, Jesus! This was only “Part 1” of the Mem study subject. The LORD willing, we will learn the Mem “water” application to Jesus in “Part 2”. We appreciate your time in studying the Bible with us. Satan literally hates these lessons because they are blessing so many people.
Intro Alef Beyt-1 2 Gimel Dalet Hey Vav Zayin Chet Tet Yod Kaf Lamed Mem 1 2 Nun Samekh Avin Pey Tsade Qof Resh Shin Tav Alef-Beyt Chart (Series updated as LORD directs and permits)





























