Blog Archives
A Deceived Christian Example to Avoid Part 1 – Calling Good as Evil and Evil as Good
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 1 in a Bible study series focused upon how Satan can even deceive people who say they are Christians. Jesus speaking to the disciples in Matthew 24:4 warned them “take heed that no man deceive you”. There are preachers today that believe true and real saved Christians cannot be deceived to fall or turn away from Jesus. It is unfortunate that Jesus did not understand this belief or he would not have warned us that we could be deceived. This Bible study series will focus upon how we can find examples of deception taking place in the world today within the lives of people that say they are Christians. So let us get started with the first example.
I really do not enjoy criticizing other Christians and I plan to never name their names. I realize there are no perfect people in the world including me. But occasionally someone just stands out above the rest as the most incredibly deceived person that calls themselves a Christian that I’ve ever heard of. Yesterday while watching the evening news a story came across the network about a pastor who was going to battle Satan by holding a book burning on Halloween. At first glance this probably does not sound like a bad idea to many Christians, but I was floored when the news anchor started naming the list of materials that he was planning on burning. At first I thought the preacher was going to share about burning Heavy Metal songs, Punk, Rap lyrics, Cult Materials, Porn or other types of similar literature. However, the shocker came when they interviewed the preacher and he said he was going to burn Bibles. Obviously this is what got him on a major news network for public TV consumption. I really thought this man was joking at first. But I gathered from hearing this plan of this preacher that it was true and that he was dead serious on carrying it out.
According to this preacher and I use that term very loosely, only the King James version of the Bible was divinely inspired and came from God and all of the other versions of the Bible were works of Satan. I really don’t understand how dumb or blinded someone can become and still be called a Christian. How did this man arrive at such a foolish opinion. What would cause someone to think any Bible could not be used by God. That seems to be putting God in a box of severe limitation.
You know what I have discovered about people? It seems that the people who know the least amount of truth are many times the most vocal and opinionated against God. It sounds to be that this preacher has his head buried so deep that he doesn’t recognize the difference between good and evil. The Bible actually warns us in Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good and good, evil”. To burn any translations of the Bible and call it the works of Satan is an incredibly deceived action.
Satan is not in the business of helping people to read and understand the Bible. If Satan had his way there would be absolutely no Bibles available to anyone and obviously he has convinced at least one preacher to help him get rid of them. How many of you realize that there are no perfect translations of the Bible available in print? Did you know that every translation of the Bible has some slanted perspective and/or opinion of the translator mixed with it? The King James Bible while it is the one that I use predominately, I have found many problems with the translation. Obviously by me making that statement of truth, I just got on someone’s heretic and false teacher list. But we must all know that only the original Hebrew and Greek text contains the inspired (God Breathed) words from God’s mouth without errors. We should all just learn Hebrew and Greek and fix this problem shouldn’t we? I guess not, what we should do is just study to show our self approved a workmen unto God who rightly divides the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).
My guess is this man is also one of those preachers who claims “tongues” is of the devil. It is sad how Christian people have been so easily deceived into believing such untrue things. I’ve watched movies, I’ve seen fights, I’ve seen people in bars drunk, I’ve witnessed acts of violence and terror and not one time have any of these people in any of these places or acts have I ever seen standing up speaking in tongues with their hands raised in praise. I have also never seen or heard of anyone in a bar reading the NIV, NASB, NKJV, or other Bible while they were getting drunk. Isn’t that just a little bit troubling to you?
Every decent Bible translation can be used by the Holy Spirit to reach someone to get them saved. The Holy Spirit is NOT limited to reaching only people who can speak “King James English” of “thee”, “thou”, “thus”, “saith”, etc. When someone first becomes a Christian it is good to get a translation of the Bible that is on their level. Easy to read English words are much more easy to understand than the KJV Bible. Later as the Christian becomes more mature and spiritually aware, other Bible translations of literal translation can be used by God also to help that individual learn.
So here was an example of one deceived man, a preacher who calls a good book called the Bible as an evil work of Satan and obviously doesn’t know the difference.. Let us not take the same bait of Satan to fall into the same trap of deception. Let us avoid following this man as our example. Please join me in praying for this man. Let us pray that God will bless this man with a spirit of wisdom and revelation in knowing Christ Jesus, Amen.
A PERSONAL APPLICATION
LORD, I pray that you will help me to not be deceived. Lead me far away from anyone that is not proclaiming what you said in your Word and are saying today by your Holy Spirit. Help me to turn from following anyone that is not being led by your Spirit. Open my spiritual eyes to be able to understand your Word as I read and hear it and to discern between right and wrong, truth and lies, and good and evil. Thank LORD for your presence in me and your faithfulness to me in Jesus Name, I pray. Amen.
If you would like to continue reading in this series, please click “Part 2“.
Genesis 1:1 The Missing Word
Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 1 in the Series of Bible lessons on the first chapter of the Bible in the book called Genesis which means beginnings. I will be stepping through the chapter almost verse by verse talking about specific things that I found interesting. I believe Genesis 1 is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. I have read this chpater repeatedly and continue to see and learn new things that it says. In this series I will be emphasizing the importance of studying this information. I will further go into several important concepts on how to study this information properly. Finally, I will be addressing the significance in getting the correct interpretation of the information in order to understand correctly what was written. Genesis is the first of the five books of the law written down by the prophet Moses. All of the law was originally recorded in the Hebrew language. The law is often called the “Pentateuch” which is a Hebrew word that means “five books”. The name of the book “Genesis” comes from the Greek Septuagint which was the Greek translation of the original Hebrew text. The first occurrence of the Greek Word “Genesis” is found in Matthew 1:1 where it is translated as the “generations” of Jesus Christ. The book of Genesis is widely called the “book of beginnings” by the Holy Spirit and by many knowledgeable Bible teachers and scholars. The first chapter of the book of Genesis has been divided into 31 verses. Clearly the first chapter of Genesis reveals God’s personal involvement in the design and creation of our current natural world system. There is considerable hidden information found in this chapter and we will explore a significant amount of it in these Bible lessons. Before I start lesson 1, I want to bring in another N.T. verse statement that Jesus made speaking about the Old Testament verses that we will be studying to help you see what I just said about this hidden information:
John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
The first thing that I would like to point out about studying any book of the Old Testament is that these books contain one central subject theme even though this subject was well hidden on the surface text reading of the information as you will begin to discover in this lesson. What I am referring to is the hidden spiritual content of Jesus Christ, the concealed central theme found in every book of the Bible. If you do not understand what Jesus said in John 5:39, it is obvious to me that you will not understand the book of Genesis correctly. Jesus told us to search for Him in the scriptures. The implied statement found in that information is that Jesus was well hidden in the words that are recorded if it is necessary to search to find Him. What I am going to do today is to show you one of these hidden references to Jesus in the first verse of the Bible.
Today’s lesson is the beginning of the discussion on verse 1. Verse 1 is not a long complex verse, but like many other verses God can say a lot using a very few select words. There is an amazing revelation found in the first verse of Genesis that most have never seen. Unless you can read and write in the Hebrew language you probably have not ever seen what I am about to talk about before. The fourth Hebrew word of the original Bible text is omitted and not translated into English. We can only assume that translators didn’t know how to translate the word so they ignored it completely. You see the problem is that this word is not a word at all and didn’t spell anything that they were familiar with. However it says something that is very profound when you understand what it is and what it means. Genesis 1 is comprised of exactly 7 Hebrew words and seven is the number associated with God. The number 6 is a number often associated with man. Therefore the omission of just one word changed the meaning of the verse dramatically. This omitted word falls between “In the beginning” and “God” in the English translation. So it appears to be an adjective that qualifies the noun “God” which is the Hebrew Word “Elohiym”.
This word is made up of just two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The first letter is called the “alef” and second letter is called the “tav”. This still doesn’t appear to have any significance until you begin to understand that these are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet and that changes everything doesn’t it? The verse should read something like this in the English “In the beginning the A-Z God created….”. Who is the A-Z God? Well of course this A-Z God can only be Jesus Christ who created all things. Let’s find the key that unlocks the mystery in the New Testament:
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 should begin to see that the O.T. pattern discovered in Genesis 1:1 for the first time is now repeated and even explained to us in the book of Revelation. In the first chapter of Revelation and the 8th and 11th verses, Jesus makes the following statements: “I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the ending”. Jesus repeats this statement in Revelation 21:6 and in Revelation 22:13. Since it occurs 4 times in the book of Revelation, it must have some very significant meaning to somewhere else in the Bible. We can quickly see if we become familiar with the Greek alphabet that Jesus has just identified Himself as the creator God. The Greek letters of “Alpha” and “Omega” are the first and the last letters in the Greek alphabet. Being a Hebrew, Jesus would have spoken this in His natural language and said I am the “Alef” and the “Tav”. But, since the N.T. Bible was written in Greek, it was recorded as the “Alpha” and the “Omega”. Jesus has just informed us that nothing happened or started in the world without Him and nothing will end in the world without Him either. Jesus confirms He is the reason we exist and that He created everything that we see. Jesus was intimately involved in the creation everything that we have and can do in this world and nothing will come to an end that He has not already done. So the first verse in Genesis 1:1 should read something more like this:
“In the beginning the A-Z God created the heaven and the earth.”
Now we can understand that the God of creation being revealed in this verse was the Lord Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega! I find that very important, informative and quite comforting information that everything that we can find in the rest of the chapter was done by Jesus our Creator. Keep this in mind as we continue to study through the rest of the chapter. We will eventually find Jesus hidden in other verses in this chapter also, but we will get to those soon enough. God Bless!
If you would like to continue to read and study in the first chapter of Genesis you may go to “Part 2“.
The Agapegeek Blog 