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The Book of Ruth, The Marriage Proposal! Chapter 3

Jun 11

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.1) We have already seen in chapter 2 where Ruth has found favor in the eyes of Boaz her potential kinsmen redeemer and she has even eaten with him in resemblance to a covenant type meal where they have shared bread. We can tell that Boaz likes this woman and grants her grace beyond all others. Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law knows the law and has recognized who Boaz is. In this next chapter we will see that God has orchestrated the answer to Ruth’s problems because of Ruth’s faith. God has answered her confidence in Him beyond her wildest imagination. It is amazing what trusting God a little can do. If you have not read the first part of this series I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“. Now, let’s now look at chapter 3:

Rth 3:2 And now is not Boaz of our kindred, with whose maidens thou wast? Behold, he winnoweth barley to night in the threshingfloor.

Apparently, Naomi has some inside scoop on what Boaz is up to. Either Naomi is very nosy or Boaz has been dropping some clever clues in some obvious places. You figure out which one it is. Naomi knows that tonight Boaz will be working late in the threshing floor with the harvest. Of course all of this is symbolic and has meaning. Threshing in the Bible times was the harvest time activity by which the grain was removed from the husk. The husk represented the tares (or false grain) when it was separated from the actual usable good pieces of the plant. It really does not matter how this is done for this story, just the fact that it is being done is the part that is significant to what we need to know. If you study the words of Jesus you find that there is another coming harvest of people in the world in Matthew 13. Jesus informs us that the world is the field and that the wheat is the children of the kingdom of God. The tares are the children of the evil one. So we can see the Book of Ruth is prophetic in nature and speaking of something, an event that is coming soon. You should go and read Matthew 13 and find out the pattern of things to come. Then you will better understand the shadows contained in the book of Ruth.

Rth 3:3 Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking.

Obviously Naomi knows the law of Moses and tells Ruth to clean up herself really good and dress in her best garments and then to go to the threshing floor to meet Boaz. You can see that this is the picture of the church given to us in Revelation 19:7 where it says “his wife has made herself ready”. But, she tells her not to do anything until after he has eaten and finished drinking. It almost sounds like wait until the party is over and then do the following:

Rth 3:4 And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.

Here is where it gets complicated to understand. Maybe Naomi knows something I don’t, but Ruth is instructed to uncover Boaz’s feet and then to lay down and wait for him to wake up or return to a sober state and see what he has to say and then do what he says. The best that I have been able to figure out is that in Leviticus 18 God tells people not to uncover and make nude certain relatives for sexual purposes. God gives us a long list of individuals including your children and your grand children and says the reason why is if you see them naked, it is your nakedness that you are looking at because they came from you. What we can deduce from this, is that the practice of uncovering someone even partially is for sexual reasons and it is only OK for the husband and the wife. So in effect, Ruth is saying you are my husband, I have seen you naked. I know she only uncovered his feet, but it is a symbolic gesture that he realizes when he wakes to find her there at his feet.

Rth 3:7 And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of corn: and she came softly, and uncovered his feet, and laid her down.

So Ruth told Naomi that she will do what she has spoken and that is exactly what she does. Remember Naomi is the one that knows the law and Boaz is the one that is suppose to follow the law and fulfill his obligation to the dead. So Naomi is in effect speeding up the process and making it happen. It would appear that Boaz is either dragging his feet (figuratively speaking) and not doing what he is required or there is more to the story than we know right now.

Rth 3:8 And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet.

Now midnight comes around and we can assume it has been at least a couple of hours. Ruth must have went to sleep also at the feet of Boaz waiting for him to wakeup. Midnight is a very specific hour. It is the 6th hour of the night, the beginning of the 3rd watch of the night and represents the middle of the darkness. It is interesting to note that this is the hour when people are easily frightened and become scared. It was around midnight when the death angel visited in Egypt and killed the firstborn who did not have the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. It is also interesting to note that in Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the 10 virgins. It just so happens that the bridegroom shows up at midnight and 5 of the virgins had oil and 5 of the virgins did not and were called foolish. So there is some significant parallels being given to us. Jesus Christ is called the “bridegroom” and the church is His bride. We can again see the connection between Jesus and the man called Boaz.

Rth 3:9 And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.

The word that is interesting in this verse, is the word for “skirt”. This word actually refers to the wing of a feathered bird like an eagle and is translated like that many places. It is also used to refer to the hem of a garment or robe. The priests were required to sew tassels on the hem of their garments. Then there is this reference in Deuteronomy that seems to be in reference to an elicit sexual encounter.

Deu 22:30 A man shall not take his father’s wife, nor discover his father’s skirt.

You can see that the man’s father and his father’s wife are spoken of in terms of being one. By the son uncovering his father’s wife he is said to uncover his father. So obviously Ruth must have learned something about the law herself. Boaz wakes up and is startled and asks who are you in the middle of the night. Ruth tells him I am Ruth and you are my near kinsmen redeemer. Now here is the other part that you miss reading the English part of the translation from the KJV Bible. This word “skirt” also occurs in the previous chapter, but is translated in a completely different way:

Rth 2:12 The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

Reading this verse we can better understand what Ruth was trying to say to Boaz. Ruth was telling Boaz you are God’s answer to my problem, spread your wings over me and I will put my trust in you. If this is not a marriage proposal I do not know what you would call it. Wings are spoken of as a covering, and a place of safety in the O.T. Bible like in the Psalms. Many times this is God’s people under the wings of God’s protection. This is the picture of Ruth and Boaz as well as the Church and Jesus.

Look at this verse in Ezekiel and see if this is not what the woman Ruth is saying for her Redeemer to do to her.

Eze 16:8 Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

God says to Israel, when I looked upon you I spread my skirt over you. You can again see the reference to nakedness and being unclothed. In association with these words God says I have entered into a covenant with you and you have become mine by marriage. This is a very clear picture of Christ and the church. If you recall in the N.T. the church is said to be clothed with Christ. We wear Christ as a symbolic garment. This is a covenant marriage description when the husband covers his bride.

Rth 3:10 And he said, Blessed be thou of the LORD, my daughter: for thou hast shewed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich.

A reference to the kindness of Ruth is exemplified by Boaz. She is also portrayed to be a woman of character and integrity who is not doing things just for her on good. Her thoughtfulness and the fact that she followed her wiser mother-in-law’s instructions all proved that Ruth was a great candidate for a wife. We do not know how old Boaz is, but by implications given he is not a young man. Based upon him potentially being one of Elimilech’s brothers who has already died, we can assume that he is closer to Naomi’s age than to Ruth’s age. Nevertheless, Ruth is commended for doing what she has done.

Rth 3:11 And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest: for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.

Boaz says that the whole city knows that she is a virtuous woman. Of course remember we are in Bethlehem, the future birthplace of Jesus. The Hebrew word translated as “Bethlehem” means the House of Bread. Another symbolic term for God’s spiritual house. Boaz commits to Ruth to do whatever is necessary to accomplished what she needed to satisfy his Lawful duty. Boaz has committed to do whatever is necessary to make her his wife. This is a marriage commitment and a verbal contract. Boaz has committed to redeem his dead brother’s debts and to raise up an heir for him, by marrying his dead brother’s son’s wife. This is the law of God, but also the wisdom of God and a picture of Christ and the church.

If you would like to continue this series of lessons, you can go to “Part 4“.

Posted in Bible Study, Ruth

Tags: Bible, Bride, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, marriage, Prophecy, Revelation, Ruth, Truth, understanding

Are You Hungry Yet? Blessed are Those that Hunger After Righteousness!

Jun 4

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.1) God is asking you a question today, are you hungry yet? Too many times we in the world live in a state of contentment. Totally satisfied with who we are, what we know, what we have and where we are and being completely oblivious to wanting anything more in life. I am not talking about wanting more stuff, a bigger house or a new car or things like that. I am talking about being satisfied with what you think you know about the truth of God’s Word. We have vast numbers of church denominations in the world that are happy and content with everything they think that they know. They think they have arrived at a spiritual state of there not being anymore or any higher state of knowledge. I guess Christians like these have been deceived into believing they know as much as God. When in truth, they know little to nothing about God. People who sit in dead churches, eating stale bread of the doctrines of man and theological theories of seminaries are starving spiritually and they do not understand why. If you were in the middle of a desert where there was no fresh water around and you lived there so long that you were about to die, would you be smart enough to move? Clearly many Christians are not that smart. They live and die in a church that teaches nothing relevant, nothing new, nothing refreshing, nothing that satisfies the people’s spiritual thirst. People have become content with nothing and not knowing and thus live their life deceived.

Joh 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

Jesus himself speaking, says that He is the “bread of life”. Bread is a staple and a basic food group requirement. The spiritual lessons of bread are vast in the Bible and you should spend a long time learning about them. Jesus tells us that because He is the “bread of life” those who come to him will never go hungry. Jesus is speaking figuratively, symbolically and spiritually and not naturally. Those churches that teach the full truth of Jesus will give people something that feeds them spiritually. Jesus while he walked the earth taught some radically different things in a manner that people never heard before. Jesus taught these truths with authority and power. Jesus said some very difficult things that most churches ignore. There are some churches that only want to concentrate on salvation and getting people saved and ignore the rest of the Bible. While this is an important part of the message of Christ, it is not the complete message. Once you get people saved, then what? Are they supposed to go through life defeated?

Did you realize that eating is not something people do once in their lives and they are done with it? That is the attitude of many Christians and that is not right. Eating is a continual process, something we do multiple times a day, every day. Morning, noon and night we eat physical food. Is spiritual food suppose to be different? Did God give us these natural things to teach us about the Spiritual things? Too many times Christians want a to go to church on Sunday for a cold spiritual snack and they think that will carry them spiritually for the rest of the week. What you should do is read and study the Bible just as much as you spend time eating natural food. In this way you will be as strong spiritually as you are physically. Plus there is some great news, you can’t get too spiritually fat! It is impossible to eat too much spiritually. There is no extreme where you can have too much of the Word of God. In fact it is really much different than people think. In the book of Joshua, God told Joshua to mediate day and night on the Law of God and by doing this God said He would be successful in life.

Luk 6:25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.

So Jesus says something that is a warning to those that think that they are satisfied with what they know and what they have already learned. Because they think they are full now, they will soon become spiritually hungry. What does that tell you? It tells me not to be satisfied no matter how much I know and that we should make an effort to plan our next spiritual meal. Do not think that you know more than you do? Have you made yourself wise in your own eyes? Are you proud of what you can do, or what you have done? Do you place your confidence in your own ability and knowledge to solve your every problem? These are common traps of the enemy. Get people thinking like a teenager who thinks they know more than their parents.

Mat 13:12 For whosoever hath, to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.

If you read the context of this verse you will discover that Jesus is not talking about natural things, but clearly about spiritual things. The disciples had asked Jesus why do you speak to them in parables? Jesus said it is not for them to “know the mysteries of Kingdom of Heaven”. But, to you it is given. So Jesus makes a direct division between two different groups of people. Those who can see spiritually and those who cannot see spiritually. Are they both spiritually hungry? I would say yes, they are both in need of the same spiritual food from God. But, Jesus says not everyone will get it. What is he talking about? Jesus is saying that those who think they know everything will lose even what they think they already know. But, to those who are truly hungry for the truth, more truth will be given to them. That is exactly why there are so many people blogging on the internet who do not know anything, but yet they blog like they do. These are empty heads speaking empty words to people with empty spirits and nobody is ever satisfied or grows spiritually. Get hungry for the truth and the truth will find you. Be diligent to seek the Knowledge of the Truth and God will cause it to move in your direction and overflow your cup of knowledge with good things that only God can show you.

Are You Hungry YET?

Posted in Bible Interpretation, Keys to Understanding

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Prophecy, Symbolism, Truth, understanding

Blessings and Cursing from the Same Mouth, This Ought Not to Be!

Jun 1

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 4 in the series of very important lessons on spoken words found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start reading with “Part 1“. The Bible contains some of the strongest language on what people say. Either Christians are not aware of this or they simply ignore it and pretend that it does not apply to them. God says in His Word that it is impossible for Him to lie. We can obviously see that with men and women in the world this is entirely possible. In my earlier blogs on spoken words I talked about the sword of your mouth and how it cuts two ways. A double edged sword proceeding out of your mouths, is a symbolic representation that tells us words have spiritual power. You can speak good things or you can speak evil things. Speaking evil things is much more than just speaking lies, as well as speaking good things is more than just speaking the truth. There is an established precedence in the Bible that spoken words establish blessings and in the opposite realm spoken words can also establish curses. Today I will explore this subject in more depth. Let me give you my foundational scripture reference s from the Book of James, let’s read them carefully:

Jas 3:8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Jas 3:9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.

Jas 3:10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

You can clearly see that God is talking about your mouth, your tongue and the words that they produce. It is mentioned in verse 8, with the concept of the tongue being a potential poisonous serpent. That does not sound good, does it? Then in verse 10 it says your tongue can produce both blessings and curses. What are the blessings and cursing that this tongue produces? We are not talking about curse words, those 4 letter words that mature Christians do not normally say, although these could be a small part of what God is talking about. Let’s get a Bible example of cursing something. In the book of Mark, Jesus is visiting Jerusalem and traveling in and out of the city. One day Jesus on his walk, views a fig tree and walks up to it and finding no fruit on it, Jesus does the following:

Mar 11:14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.

Many people read these stories in the Bible, but ignore the point that is being made. Was the words of Jesus a blessing to the tree or a cursing to the tree? Jesus looks at the fig tree and does not find any fruit on it. I do not believe that Jesus is angry at the tree, but I do believe that He chooses to use the barren fruitless fig tree to demonstrate a very powerful spiritual life and death lesson to His disciples. Jesus does not pray, or ask anyone else to do anything. Jesus simply looks at the tree and speaks words directly to it. Please notice that these words were not positive. The negative words were directed only at the bare fig tree, but they were loud enough for everyone near Him to hear them. The next day Jesus and the same disciples are passing back by the same fig tree and Peter stops everyone and says this:

Mar 11:21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away.

Peter tells Jesus, that the fig tree which He had cursed was dead. Jesus had just spoken negative words to something inanimate and living and Peter remembered it and called it speaking a curse. Notice that Jesus did not dispute it or deny it. The definition of this word “cursed” in the Strong’s means to “doom” and to “execrate”. To speak words that have a very negative effect on something is a better definition of the word. Jesus spoke some very simple words and said “No man eat fruit from you hereafter forever” and that resulted in the tree dying within 24 hours. Of course Jesus was God and this does not apply to you and me, and if you think that is true then you are wrong. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God came to the earth in His omnipotent Godhead powers. In fact if we study and search the Bible we will find the opposite being taught to us. In Acts 10:38 it says God had to anoint Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost power to do miracles. If Jesus was God in full power of the Godhead, Jesus would not need to be anointed by God, would he? Then in Hebrews 2:17 it says Jesus was made like us, his brothers. Jesus was a natural man and the Son of God at the same time. Jesus Christ the God Man became like the rest of us and chooses to become like one of His creations:

Php 2:7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

Php 2:8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

These two verses in Philippians are very interesting. The term that Jesus “made of himself no reputation”, can be taken as He removed or separated Himself from His Deity power. Think about the “reputation of God” and then compare that with the reputation of Jesus Christ (the Anointed). These verses tell us very clearly that God became like a man. He looked like a man, he walked like a man, he talked like a man, he got tired like a man, he slept like a man, he ate like a man and went to the bathroom like a man. If God was here in his full deity power, you would not see some of the things that we see in the Bible. Jesus got hungry and thirsty, Jesus slept, Jesus wept, I mean look at the characteristics of God and see how they change in the life of Jesus Christ. While hanging on the cross Jesus said “I thirst”. Would God in his omnipotent power ever be thirsty? If Jesus Christ was here in the full deity power of the Almighty it would have been impossible to kill him physically, yet we see Jesus dying on a cross. Then there is the temptation of Jesus in the Gospels that I mentioned in the last lesson in this series. Jesus fasts for 40 days so he is obviously hungry and weak physically. Satan tries to get Jesus to do something simple for an Almighty God to do, by turning stones into bread. This is not something that is hard for God to do, is it? Why is this consider a temptation to God the omnipotent? It would only be a temptation if God had stripped himself of his deity power and was here on the earth operating within the limitations and constraints, like a normal human male. Do you understand this?

Heb 4:15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

How is it even possible to tempt an omniscient God? A God who knows everything is unable to be tested or tried like a human yet that is what this verse said happened. Therefore, we cannot believe Jesus was God in His full deity abilities or this would invalidate the truth found here in Hebrews 4:15. If God is God and has the power and ability to create whatever He wants, whenever He wants how is it possible to ever tempt Him? You see in this verse in Hebrews it clearly says that Jesus can identify with how we feel. Because He was tempted in the exact same way that we are tempted, yet He did not sin. Was it possible for Jesus to sin? If it was not possible for Jesus to sin, it would not be a temptation to Him. If He was here as God, it would have been impossible to tempt Jesus with anything. Do people understand that Jesus was tempted in every way just like we are? How is this even possible if He is here in His Omnipotent Glorious Ability? Obviously it is not possible, so what does that teach us?

There are just so many references in the Bible to the man Jesus Christ not being in His omnipotent Godhead power that I cannot give you them all. I will give you another couple of examples of Jesus healing the sick. Was there anything that hindered or kept Jesus from healing anybody? You see if Jesus was God in his omnipotent power, no one would ever not get healed, if that is what God wanted to do. Do you agree? However, we find some conflicts with this thinking in the scriptures. If you read the 6th chapter of Mark you find some very interesting things occur. Jesus is visiting his hometown and place where he was raised as a child. But, when Jesus tries to heal people there, this is what the Bible says:

Mar 6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

So it did not say that Jesus would not heal anybody, it said He could not heal anybody. A mighty work is easy by any of God’s omnipotent standards, yet Jesus is unable to do anything mighty here, so obviously we have a situation that is very hard to explain away. Either Jesus was not operating in His Godhead Omnipotent power or there is a force greater than God that kept him from it. What do you think it was? I do not believe there is any force greater than God’s power so Jesus must have made the decision not to use this power. There are many other scriptures that you should take note of, but I will stop there for now.

The Jewish O.T. Bible says “God is not a man” (Num 23:19), therefore, the majority of the Jews did not recognize Him when He became a man in Jesus. Today we have the same foolish philosophy and reasoning in the reverse being projected that says Jesus was God in His full deity power and this is how He did all the miraculous things that He did. People put God in their religious box and expect Him to abide by their rules and this is a major mistake. Is God still God? If God chooses to do something different than what you like to think about on how God is supposed to act, can He only do that? If God wants to come to earth in the form of a man without using His deity powers in manifestation, can God do that? Is it legal? Is it even possible? I believe it was God’s choice to what He did and how He does it without our input or consultation. Obviously we need to realize that we have a lot to learn.

So let’s explore the flip side of the coin and look at the blessings. A blessing like a curse is a word based expression that someone speaks out of their mouth that results in a positive outcome. There are a lot of examples of this in the Bible and I will give you only a few of them:

Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

There is an established pattern of words of blessings found in this verse in Genesis. Can you see how these words contrast with the example that Jesus showed the disciples when speaking a curse to the fig tree? By the law of first reference also called the law of first mention, we can discover that Spoken words from God can contain blessings. Blessing are what I will call “word containers” filled with love, favor, goodness and mercy within them. The words of curses that Jesus spoke were containers filled with poison. Uh oh. I believe we are now learning something very profound.

If God would have said nothing, there would have been no blessing from Him given even if He thought great thoughts about them. What we should realize is that silence is not always a blessing. I just like to call silence “Empty” buckets waiting to be filled. In many service times in churches people stand up for a moment of silence, thinking they are paying honor or respect to someone or something. I have not found a Bible verse to confirm this practice, have you? Could silence be something that Satan wants us to do instead of speaking a blessing over them? Could this silence simply be those empty containers awaiting to be filled with a positive expression? I believe that we can learn a very valuable spiritual lesson from this verse in Genesis. God speaks positive words as full containers of blessing to His children and the result was a positive God given outcome that occurred in their lives or we could also say this was God’s vision of possibility that was being transferred to his creation. I believe that this was the establishment of the spiritual law of either Blessings and Curses from spoken word containers being taught to us. God was teaching Adam and Eve by His awesome example, however, I’m not really sure if they got it.

Let’s move into the 27th chapter of Genesis and see the story of Isaac and his son Jacob. We know that Jacob became the Father of the natural nation of Israel. But, how did this occur, since he was not the firstborn son of Isaac? If you recall the story, I’ll shorten it in order to get to the part I need to get to. Jacob got Esau to sell his birth right for a meal. Later, Jacob’s mother helps Jacob implement a plan to get the blessing from his father Isaac. Isaac comes to his father when he was very old and he brings him a meal and some drink. Jacob is also dressed like Esau and smells like Esau.

Gen 27:23 And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him.

Isaac is tricked into blessing the younger son Jacob, thinking that he is blessing Esau.

Gen 27:27 And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed:

This is the beginning of the blessing, but not the end of it. What we again see is the established pattern of God being passed down upon the generations. Just as God blessed Adam and Eve with His words, Jacob is now getting the words of blessings of his father.

Gen 27:28 Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine:

Gen 27:29 Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

Jacob receives the words of blessings from his father Isaac. Jacob then goes out with the blessing and his brother Esau comes in from hunting and asking for the blessing. But, Isaac is very surprised saying “who are you”? Who was it that I blessed earlier?

Gen 27:33 And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.

If you read this carefully you will discover a principle, it is not as easy to take back your words after they have already been spoken. There are just a lot of Christians who do not have a clue what I just said and how it applies to them. If they say something by mistake they simply think it is OK to start over and do it again. It’s funny Isaac did not take this position or attitude. Isaac knew what was done was done. The blessing was given and it would not be taken back. Like I have said before, your words have more power and significance than you can imagine.

Gen 27:34 And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.

Esau pleads with his father for him to bless him also. But, Isaac says that it is too late:

Gen 27:35 And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing.

This chapter in Genesis contains some amazing information, if you learn to apply it to your life in the here and now. Words are significantly powerful and can bless others, transfer blessings, transfer authority and ownership, and they are a legal contract in the eyes of God. Like Isaac you should learn to be a man or woman of your word, stand up and stand behind your words. Mean what you say and only say what you mean. Esau did not get a blessing from his father, because the blessing had already been given to Jacob. This represents character and moral fiber that few have in our world today.

There are just so many stories in the Bible about the blessings of God, I’ll just give you one more example from the O.T. This next story is also from Genesis and occurs in the 48th chapter. Joseph brings his two sons to Israel to be blessed. Israel is presented the sons with the older son on his right hand and the younger son on his left hand. The older son is expected to receive the Right Hand of blessing and the younger the Left Hand of blessing. But, Israel crosses his hands over and speaks the blessing upon his grandsons. Again we see a principle that Words are the mechanism of blessing containers being transferred upon these children. But, the hands are also being placed here with great significance and meaning.

Gen 48:20 And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.

Joseph was not happy that his younger son got Israel’s right hand blessing. So there must have been meaning and significance to what happened. If it did not mean anything, it would not have mattered would it? The right hand of blessing is intended for the older son and Israel gave it to the younger. The net result was the younger son became a greater people in the eyes of God. So what you do and what you say matters and makes a difference in the life’s of your children. Learn the lessons from the Bible of the power of the blessing and then learn not to curse your children with your the words of your mouth and they will achieve and rise to level of what you have spoken over them. Words are seeds that grow in young hearts. If you tell your children they are nothing and nobody good, that is exactly what they become.

Mar 10:16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

People while Jesus walked the face of the earth realized the potential for the blessing still existed. People would bring their little children to Jesus for Him to bless them. There were those who tried to stop people from bringing their children to Jesus, but Jesus rebuked them and told them not to do this. Jesus said this is a spiritual law and a foundational way of the Kingdom of Heaven. To touch someone and speak positive words of blessings has a benefit that you probably do not fully understand. Children today are growing up and their parents put curses upon them rather than blessings. As a result the children grow up cursed. Your children will live up to your words, either positive or negative. What you transfer into them, is what they will achieve to. What you speak over them, is what they will become. It is a spiritual law found in the Bible.

If you like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 5“.

Posted in Bible Study, Understanding, Words

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Genesis, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding, Words

The Sword of Our Mouth! Our Words Cut Two Different Ways!

May 28

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 2.0) I have taught on this subject of the significance of the spoken words of our mouth a couple of times now. Today’s lesson will be Part 3 in the series and I will be talking about something that is completely new and different to many Christians. However, if you haven’t read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“. This lesson will be focused upon God’s usage of the symbolic nature of a “double edged sword” to describe spoken words. If you have read through the Bible you should already be aware of how God teaches us very clearly that Jesus has a double-edged sword coming out of His mouth. We will see verses in this lesson that describe Jesus is able to destroy those who oppose Him with this symbolic sword. This double-edged sword is widely accepted by theologians as a figurative representation of the power of God’s word spoken. If we do not understand this concept, I will attempt to expound next in this lesson on this subject to clarify it and to help us better understand the concept of the power of spoken of words. Let’s start by reading some foundational verses found in Revelation:

Rev 19:21 And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.

God is truly an awesome God! It shocked me a while back when I heard about a group of people in the U.S. that were getting together to form a militia to help God fight the coming Anti-Christ. They were gathering guns and ammo like it would be useful to God’s victory over evil. Where do people get these types of foolish ideas? I really have no clue. These people obviously do not know God, the Bible or understand the omnipotent power of God. This verse in Revelation 19 reveals to us that the LORD Jesus will be sitting on a white horse and He will be able to kill everyone opposing Him, simply by speaking some choice directed words at them. That is a clear example of the power of God in action. God says something and then it happens. Pretty awesome, isn’t it? You can learn concept this from reading the Bible starting in Genesis 1 and going all the way through to Revelation 22. God’s spoken words will always prevail and will always come to pass. Let’s examine some additional verses because the Bible instructs us to establish every truth in the mouth of two or three witnesses (Mat 18:16):

Rev 2:12 And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write; These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;

Rev 2:16 Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword¹ of my mouth.

Jesus speaking to the church in Pergamos, warns them to change or else they will also see the sword of His mouth come against them. We can easily understand that God is a Spirit (John 4:24) and that God is not talking about a literal physical sword coming out of the mouth of Jesus. We must therefore, conclude that this described sword is a symbolic representative for the spiritual force that exists in the power of God’s Spoken Word. I really hope that you understand this concept. Did you notice that God says this figurative sword has two edges? Two edges describes a weapon that can cut in either of the two directions depending upon which way a person swings it. Two edges could could also symbolically mean something else. The words of our mouth can be a blessing to someone or a curse to someone. There exists two possible realms of opposing types of words in the world. In the last Bible lesson we observed two types called “idle” or “lazy” words versus “working” and “productive” words. But there are others like “good” words or “bad/evil” words, “positive” words or “negative” words and words of “blessings” or words of “cursing”. All of these are examples of a sword that can be used for two different purposes.

I find it fascinating that the English word “sword” is the letter “S” followed by word “word”. I believe the letter “S” can stand for “Spirit” and we will learn more about this very soon. The power of any sword or spoken word is always the same. It is non-existent until used or spoken. Therefore the power of any weapon will forever be dependent upon the directed purpose of the user. In much the same way how a natural gun is used in the hands of the shooter, a spiritual weapon can be used for two completely different purposes. The natural gun can be used as a positive weapon to help feed or protect people or as a negative weapon to hurt or rob from people. These are parallel truths concerning the words of our mouth. What I would like to do is give some additional scriptures that help to confirm what I have just said so let’s take a look at these:

2Th 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

God is speaking prophetically in this verse about the coming events in Revelation. The wicked one described here is the future antichrist who will soon be revealed. The double edge sword we read about in Revelation in the mouth of Jesus is now called something completely new and different in this verse. The symbolic double-edged sword of Revelation is now defined to be the “Spirit of His Mouth”. This is still the same equivalent description of God’s Spoken Word that is infinitely powerful. God’s spoken word has ALL of the ability to destroy or literally consume anyone who is opposing Him. Do you understand that God’s spoken words are His Spiritual Power released? This is an awesome revelation of something that is found within the character and nature of God the Almighty. God is often described in the Bible to be omnipotent, but what is that makes God this way is what we will explore now:

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.

You can see a second confirmation that the Spoken Words of God are Spirit! This verse was Jesus speaking to us and He says that His words are this Spirit that quickens. To quicken is an old English term that means to give life to us. God’s words are declared to be a force of life to us. Because of what God has spoken to us we can live. Now recall, what we previously read in Revelation. In those verses God states His spoken Words are something that produces death. These represent the same spiritual power directed two different ways for two different purposes. This is an example of a double-edged sword. A knife can be used to kill someone or it can be used to save someone’s life if used in a wise knowledgeable way by a surgeon. Wow, these are very important lessons to learn and apply to our spoken words.

You will notice if you study the Bible, that Jesus chose His words very carefully and never shot off His mouth with random thoughts. His words were always focused, directed and had a purpose. Much of what Jesus said to people were words recorded by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. In John 12:49 Jesus said He was told what to speak by His Father in heaven. How many of us can say that? How many of our words come from the God in heaven? We should learn to become more like Jesus because, God’s words were always active, relevant and important. Now let’s look at what the Bible says about the Power of God?

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;

We can now see and learn from another verse about the Word of God. This time God reveals to us that “All” of His Power is in His Word. The Greek written here does not say “His powerful Word” it says “The Word of His Power” and that makes a huge difference. Some translators tried to change the meaning to “powerful” word but the KJV Bible stayed true to the original Greek and preserved it as an accurate truth. Here is the difference, does God’s Word have power or is it His Power? Can we try to think why this is important? If God said I am LOVE it would be completely different than Him saying I have love. I believe this principle is what God was saying to us in Hebrews 1:3 to His spoken Word. I believe that God is attempting to give us a revelation that His Word is His Power and His Power is His Word.

Therefore, we cannot separate God the omnipotent from His omnipotent Word or we could say His Word is God (John 1:1)! This is why John 6:63 said the Words that Jesus spoke to us were from God’s Spirit and they contain His life giving Power for those who received them. Always remember that God’s Words are Spirit! God’s Words are Life! God’s Words are His Power! As we have seen before they are also a weapon against His enemies. So we can all begin to understand that the Spoken Words of God can give life to some that will receive them and can take life away from others who do not accept the free gift of salvation. That is the nature of a double=edged sword. One aspect and application is always positive and the other is very negative. That was a summary of several foundational truths that the Bible teaches us about the Word of God and the Sword of the Spirit.

So how does this apply to us? What good does all of this information do me? Are there any benefits to speaking God’s Word for me? In other words what’s in this lesson for me? We all know that God is all powerful, so how does this power help me? Start by asking yourself this question. Why did God give us a huge book of His Written HOLY Words? Does the written Word of God have any visible power rising out from the pages? Obviously not! Therefore, these written words can only help me if I can learn to speak them. I beleive that only by learning to believer and speak His Word will it ever help us. I beleive this is “one” of the main reasons why God gave us His written Word. God gave us His Word so that we can put it in our minds (Eph 4:23). He also gave us the Word so that we could put it in our hearts (spirits) to believe it. Finally, I believe that He gave us His Word so that we can now choose to put it in our mouths to speak it (Mat 12:34).

Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than ANY two-edged 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.

Let me introduce you to a hidden secret, in the Bible it says God is not the only one with a “two-edged” sword in his mouth. In fact we do not have to think very hard or for very long before we figure out that every created human in the world can open their mouth and speak words either positive or negative. This also includes other created spiritual beings like angels, demons and Satan. All of these beings were created with mouths which emit words that come from their spirits (Mat 12:34). But, this verse in Hebrews says plainly that God’s sword is sharper and more powerful than any of the others that might exist. This verse clearly informs us that the other mouths have power in them, but implies that they are in a limited capacity compared to God’s spoken Words. Do you get this concept?

If man was made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26), like the Bible clearly says we were, and if God’s Words are sharp and powerful, then our words must have a limited resemblance to His. But, here is the major part of God’s contribution to man, God gave us His spoken words written in a book form in order to permit us to put them in our mouth to speak them. And the Bible says that God watches over His word to perform it (Jer 1:12). Wow, I hope you understand what I just said. The implications are far reaching if you can accept it and believe it.

Eph 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

In Ephesians chapter 6, God commands the church to put on the armor of God. Each of the armor pieces described to us is a symbolic representation of a spiritual truth of the completed freely given work of God to and for humans. In fact every piece of armor is something that God has already provided to us freely. It is now up to us to make the freewill choice to take each item and put it on. This aromor included the Shield of Faith, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Belt of Truth, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Shoes of Peace. God is telling the church that there is a spiritual war and we must get ready for it. So far all of the weapons of armor that I just mentioned were defensive types of weapons to keep us safe from the blows of the enemy Satan. But, then in verse 17 of Ephesians 6, God finally tells the church to take the “Sword of the Spirit”, which is directly defined to be “the Word of God”. How is this Sword of the Spirit going to help us? I believe very firmly that we now have the direct implied connection to our mouths! Can’t you see this? The only way that we can use the Spiritual Sword of the Word of God against an unseen spiritual enemy to our advantage is to speak it. Leaving the Bible on our coffee tables will do nothing to keep the devil out of our houses. This is a very powerful, spiritual Bible law being revealed to us. What you say is far more important than what you can possibly imagine or know right now. Take a look at this verse in Isaiah:

Isa 59:21 As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever.

God is prophesying an awesome new covenant reality that is now established with us in the church and God says that He will put His Spirit upon us and His Words in our mouth. Can you see the direct connection between our mouths speaking His spoken words with His Spirit?

God literally says that these words will not depart from our mouths, nor from the mouths of our seed. Who are those called the Seed of Abraham? We in the church are the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:29)! Who is the Seed of the Woman? You probably do not know this, but Jesus was the chosen Seed and we the church are in that Seed of the Woman (Rev 12:17). God’s Word will not depart from our mouths and we will overcome Satan by His Blood and His Word that He has given to Us (Rev 12:11)! I taught you earlier that this was a Biblical Spiritual Law being revealed to us. Let’s look at an Old Testament example of this.

Jos 1:8 This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.

The lessons found in the Bible through intense study are usually very deep and complex and have many hidden truths associated within them. Because we do not understand them completely we can easily just read over a truth and not grasp that these words apply to us and what we should be doing today. Here in the book of Joshua God uncovers the secret to a human’s success on this planet. It is a basic spiritual principle and law that is not very difficult to follow if we can understand it. God tells Joshua that He should speak His word both Day and Night. We could say that means constantly and continually or every waking moment. God was teaching Joshua about the Sword of the Spirit that will cause him to be a great success in this world. But, there is also an implied opposite truth found in this verse. God says by impled antithesis that if we do not speak the Word of God we will not be a success. Do we want to be prosperous and successful in life or dismal disappointed failure? God is telling us how to do both, right here! We have to make the choice. We are not forced to do either but usually being passive results in failure and this is many people’s wrong defaulted selection.

Remember when Jesus was tempted by Satan in Luke 4:1-13? Three times the enemy came to tempt him into a subtle trick. But, here is the lesson learned from this example. Every time the enemy Satan came with a temptation, Jesus brought out the Sword of the Spirit called the Word of God and said “IT IS WRITTEN”. Wow, that is extraordinarily critical to learn from and apply to what Satan does to us. You see the Bible says that Jesus was tempted the very same way that we are tempted (Heb 4:15). But, He was wise enough to use the sword correctly as a living example. I pray that this will be a benefit in your life today.

I guess I have gone long enough in this lesson and given you plenty of new things to think about. The sword of your mouth is either going to be a blessing or a curse to you and to those you direct it at. While your negative words will never be able to put a curse on me, they will cause curses to come upon you and your children. What we say is so completely important that it cannot be emphasized enough for us to think before we speak. If we do not have a Bible verse that backs up what we are about to say, we probably should not say it.

If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on spoken words you can go to “Part 4“.

Posted in Bible Study, Understanding, Words

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, man, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, Truth, understanding, Words

The Spiritual Family Structure of God’s Family. Part 2

May 26

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 2.8) The spiritual family structure of God is one of those Bible basics that every Christian should be intimately familiar. God is said to be a triune being. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Yet these three personalities of God are reflected in One True God. In my first blog on this subject I talked about Jesus starting a new family of God. I talked about Jesus being born into the world, a product of unique circumstances. Because, God was His Father and Mary was His mother, Jesus was both God and man totally and completely. That means Jesus Christ was 100% God and 100% Man. Jesus Christ was the only one that was both the Son of God and the Son of Adam. This made Him uniquely qualified to fix problems in both dimensions of the spiritual and natural realms simultaneously. Maybe you did not realize that there were things to fix in the spiritual realm, but you really need to stop and go back to read “Part 1” of this series first. Today I will continue to talk about the spiritual family structure of God’s family and I want to start with some things that Jesus said to us:

Joh 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

These are the Words of God coming out of the mouth of Jesus Christ. These words declare that Jesus and God are one in the same. Jesus very clearly tells us if we believe in God, we better believe in Jesus. Because, Jesus was God in the flesh, walking among us like He was one of us. This is the amazing truth of God’s word. It is also the only way to be saved, whether you like it or not.

Joh 14:2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

Jesus continues His discourse revealing great spiritual information to us. Jesus announces that where He came from was His “Father’s House”. A house is always a family structure with relatives and family members living within it. Now, think with me and see who is speaking, it is Jesus the Son of God on the earth. When you are a son on the earth do you live with your father forever? That is an interesting question. Here in the natural realm a man will marry a wife and usually establishes a new independent family and they normally do not live with their parents. What I am getting at, is that Jesus is inferring His Father’s house is not His house. The Bible contains some very complex truths in it and this is certainly one of them. It is definitely hard to understand since the Son of God on the earth is God. But, God’s intelligence is so far above our mind’s thought process that He can do some simple things in ways that are difficult for us to understand. What I want you to begin to understand is that Jesus does not call it His house and that is very important to see. You see Jesus is choosing His words very carefully and using extreme wisdom to reveal something that is far greater for us to know. What we need to do today is to start thinking differently about the family of God. Jesus tells us that He came from His Father’s house from heaven and we now need to figure out what this is or I should say was.

You see, in John 1:18 the Bible says no man has ever seen God. We also know that when Adam was created and his wife was brought to him by God, that God established a new family on the earth which was detached from God’s spiritual family in heaven. You see this truth when you study what God says in Genesis 2:24 “for this cause shall a man (Adam) leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife”. From this statement we can understand that God was Adam’s father that we are told that he left to be joined to his wife. But God is establishing a new type for a future pattern for the Last Adam (Jesus) to come into the world and leave His Father and Mother and to be joined to His bride. Therefore, the family of Adam is a separate earthly family from God’s existing family in heaven that Jesus is speaking of where He came from and this is a prophetic view into an event that was to come after the time that Jesus was speaking these words in these verses in John. Therefore this family of God where Jesus came from was not comprised of any of the men or women that were on the earth. Think with me and make a note that Jesus declares God’s family consists of family members that are not men, so who are they? We will definitely explore this information in the Bible later in this series, but for now let’s continue with what Jesus is saying. Jesus says if it were not this way I would have told you. Then Jesus makes this statement, “I go to prepare a place for you!” Jesus is talking to you and I and He is saying that He was going to be leaving this planet soon and going to build a new household for His new family. To “prepare” has an implication of a building project. I believe that it is not just a renovation of the old, but the creation of a new home that will be better the previous one.

Joh 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

Jesus continues to speak to us and tell us that where He goes we will also be going. Jesus tells us very clearly that He will soon return and “receive us unto Himself”. Have you ever thought about what those words mean? Why is Jesus receiving us unto Himself? So many Chrisdtians in the church like to call the church the body of Christ only. Then they ignore the rest of the Bible. If we were just the body of Christ, we would not need to be received unto Him, would we? I do not ever wake up in the morning and receive my body back to myself. Do you understand what I am saying? It would appear that Christians are now separate from Christ in order to be received by Him. It helps if you understand “Bible Covenants“. Since I have already done lessons on this subject I will not repeat the information here again. You should go back and read these lessons and learn what a Covenant is in the eyes of God. I will help you to some extent, Jesus is called the “Bridegroom” and He is in covenant with His Bride, the church. The church will soon be fully assembled in heaven for the marriage supper of the Lamb of God. During this time we will be fully and completely joined to Him and become one with Him forever. Jesus later tells us in John 14 that “He is the truth, the life, the way”. He also says that “No one comes to the Father except through Him”. Meaning there is no other religions in the world that will offer you salvation or an alternative way to God. That also means there are no other covenants of God that will save you either. God has sent Jesus Christ into the world to provide one way for all the people of earth to come into this new Family of God. We have already seen that God’s previous family structure was in heaven and had a very large location with many mansions in it, before Jesus ever came to the earth. Jesus then tells us that He was leaving the earth to go back to heaven to prepare places for us. So either God has a housing shortage in Heaven or the Heaven that we knew is going away and God is preparing a new place.

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.

Why is it necessary for God to build a new heaven and a new earth? I can understand the earth, but heaven is a tricky thing to consider to be something that is in need of repair. Man has done a pretty poor job of keeping the earth intact. But, come on we are talking about God in heaven now. Why is it necessary for God to create a New Heaven? Evidently, we can see that there was a major problem in heaven that also consisted of a heavenly spiritual war.

Rev 12:7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

If God’s wars are like our wars, there is always a lot of damage done to infrastructure and buildings. Now I do not mean to imply that God makes war like we make war, that is not what I am saying at all. After all it is God’s forces defending Heaven and not threatening to take it. It is Satan and his angels that are trying to overthrow God’s throne. God sends Michael and His angels to fight this enemy. What we have is some new things to consider. Why is Satan at war with God in heaven and what changed? You see in the Book of Job, Satan walks up to God without any conflict and discusses Job. By the time we get to the book of Revelation, we see that Satan is no longer welcome where he previously use to walk freely. Do you remember in the book of Daniel when Daniel prayed and fasted for an answer from God. Do you remember what happened in that story? It appears God sent an angel to answer the prayers of Daniel and Satan and his angels were in a spiritual battle that lasted 3 weeks, until the angels of God finally prevailed. The prince of Persia withstood God’s answer to the prayers of a man on the earth. That is an amazing story of why things can take so long when you pray and ask God for help. There is an enemy of God that is opposed to you and to God. He tries to stop your answers from happening. If Daniel would have resigned after only two weeks of prayer and fasting, Satan would have won. But, since Daniel did not give up, God did not give up and God prevailed and the answer came. Let me give you a picture diagram of the family of God revealed in the Bible as of Genesis 2:

Eph 3:14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Eph 3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,

Since we are discussing God’s spiritual family structure, I thought I would give you some more verses to establish that God has a family and then also describe the locations for this family. According to this verse written to the church God’s family is now in two different realms of reality. One is spiritual and the other is physical or natural. This verse in Ephesians declares God’s family to now be within the scope of both of these two sets of reality. We have one set that is found in heaven and one set that is on the earth. And God’s family is comprised of selected individuals from both of these places. However, do not attempt to be all inclusive and say that everyone in both realms has been saved and are in the unified family of God. That is what Universal Salvationists like to teach and project. They claim in error that God will save everyone eventually. They clearly do not understand that Jesus came to divide the good from the evil and not to change the evil back into the good.

Here is a graphical representation of God’s new spiritual family. God’s family now consists of members of two different set realms. In the previous diagram I showed how the two families were separate in Genesis 2. The first set realm heaven existed prior to the other set realm created on the earth. The earth is the natural temporary realm where we all live today. God created our current world system approximately 6000 years ago and turned the authority of His creation over to His created man Adam (Gen 1:26). Adam represented a new start and a new natural family structure of God’s spiritual family. Adam’s family was separate from God’s family that already existed in heaven. God did all of this for many reasons and I cannot get into all of the reasons in this blog because it would take a tremendous amount of time to explain. Today, man exists within the constraints and limitations of time and space. We are spirit beings created in the image and likeness of God, but limited to the confines of a natural body. Since Adam’s family was separate from God’s family, that is one of the main reasons that Jesus had to come to the earth in the form of a man. God’s new family established by Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Son of Man, consists of selected members of both of these set realms. Jesus was able to accomplish and provide salvation for man because He was a man as well as a division from His father’s house simulataneously by His death on the cross. Let’s look at the definition of the word translated as “family” in Ephesians 3:15.

G3965

As if feminine of a derivative of G3962; paternal descent, that is, (concretely) a group of families or a whole race (nation): – family, kindred, lineage.

This verse in Ephesians uses a word for “family” that is very interesting. You can see from the definition some widely applicable truths. God’s new family structure is a pattern of another previous structure that God did in the Old Testament. We are said to be a new nation of people descended from the Most High God. This is an interestingly different word that has a feminine connotation attached to it. Why would God put a female reference on the church? Because we are the bride of Christ. The church is a representative spiritual pattern of natural Israel. The natural nation of Israel was God’s wife in the Old Covenant. This was a pattern given to us for the New Covenant.

Jer 31:32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

You need to see what the Bible says and then interpret it using the Bible. God declares to the nation of Israel that I was your Husband. If God was the Husband to the nation of Israel that makes natural Israel the wife of God. A covenant is a marriage in the eyes of God. God proposed marriage to a nation of people and they accepted and entered into a covenant with the Almighty God. This is another example of God being a spiritual male in a spiritual family structure. We can clearly make many assumptions based upon this unlimited information. If God can marry one group of people, what stops God from marrying another group of people? Nothing really, except if you just marry a new group of people and you are still married to the other group of people you are now a polygamist by definition. There is a lot of men on earth that would like to think that God is married to multiple women, but you have not studied the Bible and therefore have put your thoughts into the mix where they do not belong.

Why did Jesus come to earth, being the Son of God? It is because Jesus Christ the Son of God was never married to anyone else before now. I know technically Jesus is the same God and He was married to Israel, but was that God the Father that was in Covenant with them or Jesus, God the Son? You soon realize how smart God is and how tricky He can be. I do not mean to imply that God is a deceiver, what God does is very legal, but yet very unexpected. Satan did not anticipate Jesus Christ and therefore, now realizes that he should not have killed him. Why is that? Why was the death of Jesus so detrimental to Satan? You should really give that some serious thought. You see you can learn from God by reading a clue given to us in the book of Ruth, when Naomi and Ruth are talking and Ruth says I’ll stay with you until “death separates me from thee” (Ruth 1:17). Death is a separating force. Death is a spiritual power that naturally divides one from another. In a marriage ceremony the husband and wife are said to be joined until death do they part. Marriage is a covenant relationship and God uses His death on the cross to separate Himself from Satan. Yes that means Satan was in covenant with God also. You should really study the Bible more, you might find all kind of new things in it, if you look for them. Let’s move on to a verse that helps to clarify what I was saying about Israel and God the Father’s covenant relationship:

Rom 7:4 Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.

This verse in Romans has some amazing information in it. God is writing this section of Romans directly to the Natural Nation of Israel. You can read the context and see this very clearly if you understand the wording. So while the context is talking about the law of marriage that was given to only natural Israel it then declares to them that they have been released from their previous covenant with God, by the death of Jesus Christ so that they can be legally married again. God says very clearly that they are now free to “marry” another, and then describes Him to be the Lord Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead. Did you ever realize that the Jesus who died was different from the Jesus who was raised from the dead? That is what God is saying in this verse. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and became the “firstborn” from the dead (Col 1:18). This verse now declares to natural Israel that they have been freed from the law of marriage with God the Father by the death of Jesus on the cross. The marriage to Jesus who is risen is in reference to the New Covenant and their opportunity to become the bride of Christ. Jesus confirms this reality in this statement:

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.

If the old covenant was a way to be saved then Jesus lied. The Old Covenant is not the New Covenant. We can clearly see that truth in verses like Hebrews 8:6 or Hebrews 12:24 when Jesus becomes the mediator of a new and better covenant. Any covenant called new is one that never existed before. All of this information that I am introducing you to will become clearer as the series continues and more scriptures are revealed to you.

Many like to think that God is a polygamist and is in covenant with natural Israel and the church simultaneously right now. While they do not call it Polygamy, that is what God calls it. However, once you realize that the Old Covenant was with God the Father, and the New Covenant is with God the risen Son, I believe that changes everything dramatically. It also means that God is not in covenant with Natural Israel anymore. I do not have time or space to explain that, but you can read my other blogs and find more answers, if you want to know the truth. The natural nation of Israel is able to enter into the New Covenant with Jesus Christ, if they want to. However, most of natural Israel has chosen to close their eyes and not to see the truth, so they reap the works of their own deceptions. There is more I could write and many other scriptures that we could explore, but I have gone too long in this blog. Hopefully I can continue this subject in the future.

If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons about the spriitual family of God you may continue with “Part 3“.

Posted in Bible Study, God's Spiritual Family, Understanding

Tags: Bible, Bride, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding

What Does God Think About Homosexuality? What Does The Bible Say?

May 24

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) This is “Part 1” in a series of advanced Bible lessons on the subject of “What does God think of homosexuality”. This of course is a hot topic and one that is fiercely debated, even in churches. There are so many controversial subjects that people just want to ignore, because they do not want to offend anyone. I never recall Jesus avoiding any issues that were brought before Him but, I also do not recall Jesus ever directly addressing sin in any area of people’s personal lives. People need to understand what Jesus said in John 3:17. Jesus claimed that He was not sent into the world to condemn the world but through Him the world might be saved. This of course, people are very quick to point out, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and I have even heard people try to accuse Jesus of acting like a homosexual. It is amazing how foolish people can become when they want to justify their erroneous ways and their sinful lifestyles. While Jesus rarely addressed sin, you will find that after He healed people, He would sometimes say, “now go and sin no more unless a worse thing come upon you” (John 5:14). To the woman caught in adultery Jesus said “go and sin no more” (John 8:11). So Jesus never said that sin was OK and acceptable. Jesus never justified sin, nor would He tolerate people doing everything they wanted to do. So it comes down to a question of the definition of what sin is and this varies tremendously from person to person. Some think their sin is better than someone else’s sin and thus they justify themselves to be righteous in their own eyes. The basic modern argument for homosexuality being forced down our throats is a statement that claims this is who we are. They claim that God created us this way. This is the only sin that I know of that makes these assertions. So that is why I am writing about homosexuality and not about adultry today. I have never heard someone caught in adultry say this is just who I am and you will have to accept me this way. Therefore, I am not here to discuss all types of sin today, I just want to focus in on what the Bible says about homosexuality and see if we can determine if God thinks this is a sin, based upon the Bible and not my opinion or yours.

While some people like to claim that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality they quickly forget that Jesus was God in the flesh and that He said plenty about the subject in many other parts of the Bible. While Jesus was walking the face of the earth in the flesh, you will notice that one of the only things that Jesus ever confronted was religious people who thought they knew more than He did and proclaim themselves to be better than everyone else. Self-righteousness still abounds today even in the church. We have church people protesting Homosexuals and Abortionists and in doing so, they proclaim themselves to be perfect. As a result Christians are portrayed on TV and in the news as the hate mongers. Christians are viewed as those who are hateful towards others and intolerant towards minorities. Is this what Jesus did? Didn’t Jesus tell the crowd of potential stone casters, “He that is without Sin, Cast the first stone”? I think you could legitimately change that to say, “To Him that is without Sin, Pick up your Signs and Posters and hold them up!”. It just doesn’t make much sense what people think is right to do, if you think about it. Christians should change and become more like Christ and less like those in the world. In Jesus’ lesson about fishing for men, you must conclude that you never try to clean a fish, until you first catch one. Too many people are trying to get clean fish first and then take them to God to be saved and this is not how it works.

What are Christians suppose to do? I believe that Christians should just tell the truth and that would be a great place to start. The truth is a very difficult thing to tell people sometimes, because it is not easily accepted by many who do not wish to hear it. The truth is often times rejected on purpose so as to deflect blame, shame or guilt away from their lives. While there are many who want to portray an openly gay life style with open pride today, there are equally as many who are ashamed of their ways. People do not like to tell about their childhood experiences, where a grown up abused them and did things to them that they should not have done. These are the areas of life that hurt people and cause emotional and psychological damage and people think that many times they are better left unsaid and swept under a rug somewhere. Because I do not know you, I cannot speak about you. I can only tell you about my personal experiences and you of course can believe them or not.

A male family member that I know of was molested as a child by an older male relative. I know this, because I was there. It was the middle of the night and this male relative tried to molest me too, but I was too big for him and I said leave me alone. Because I did not know what to do, I did nothing to stop him from molesting this other relative. As a result of this attack, this young male family member later turned to a homosexual life style. But, I know where it started and how it started and this was not how he was born. This is rarely talked about in the world, in the news media and on TV. That is unless it is committed by someone in the church. Then it is run up the flag pole like, look at these people who say they are Christians, they are just perverts who molest our children. Because people do not normally talk about these events in their young lives, most pretend that they never happen. What people do not understand, is many Gay men want sex with young boys and that is widely swept under the rug and never discussed. We can easily understand that being a pedophile is a sin, or at the least against the law. But we ignore the bigger problem, that there is a heart issue, a mind issue and an emotional issue that is not being addressed in the victims of these molesters.

As a teenage male growing up in America in the sexual revolution 70’s, I was targeted by older males. Satan also attempted to get me into this lifestyle. I was picked up and did not know what was happening before it happened. These guys were aware that I was under age and did not care. That is why they picked me to begin with. Being naive is both a blessing and a curse, you are kept from knowing what people really want, but when approached you are easily tricked into being somewhere you should not be. Because, I was young and naive, I was a candidate and an easy target for these predators. So how many Gays are talking about this kind of behavior openly, not any that I know of? I am very thankful to God that these creeps did not scar me for life or get me to change who I really am. I am also thankful to God for not allowing them to hurt me more than they did. People rarely talk about these kinds of things, and it is very difficult for me to even admit that I was there. I could have very easily been drawn into the deception of this wrong life style. I could have been deceived into believing that I was just like them. So I have given you my personal experiences with this issue. Gays would make sex with young males legal if they could get away with it. I would venture to say that most Gay men have been molested somewhere in their childhood and have been deceived into the lifestyle, but do not discuss it.

So the title of my blog is “What Does God Think about Homosexuality?” Just based upon what I have written, so far about my experiences what do you think that God thinks about what men do to children? Or even what women do to little girls? Do you think that it is OK, in the eyes of God? Is this how God created people to act? That of course is a very loaded set of questions. God loves everyone, but does not approve of everything that people do. It is not OK to do something’s, just because you are able to and you want to. There are many things in the world that are here, not because God created them for us, but because, man wanted them for their pleasure and self-indulgences. What does God think about “homosexuality”? Let’s look at what God says in the Bible and just see some of the examples of God’s thoughts toward the subject.

Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

Churches, who ordain gay ministers, must ignore vast parts of the Bible. Here is God speaking about women who are making a critical mistake. God calls it “vile affections”. These are women who have sex with women for their own selfish pleasure. God calls sex “natural”, but only between a man and his wife. The natural use of a woman is not to have sex with another woman. If you do not know how to read, you can obviously make up excuses and attempt to explain away what God says very plainly. The term “vile” means indignity, shame, reproach, dishonor and disgrace. Those are some pretty strong words for something that God does not look upon with favor. The term “affections” can mean “lusts”. I will talk about this word more as we look at the next verse in the chapter:

Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.

Now it starts to become much more more obvious to what God is talking about. God is definitely saying that sex between a husband and his wife is natural. However, God says that sex between two males is a clear “error”. The term “unseemly” in this verse means “indecency” . What is indecency? We have heard the term used “indecency with a child”. That means that in the eyes of the law, you are doing something that you should not do to a little child. This can include touching them inappropriately to speaking suggestively to them, or whatever. “Indecency” in the eyes of God is what happens when a man has sex with a man. God calls it something that should not occur. It is an abuse of the specifically designed sexual reproduction principles established by God. You have heard of drug abusers and alcohol abusers, well God is calling men who have sex with other men sexual abusers. God is saying sex has a purpose and was designed in a certain way to be between a husband and wife and anything else is abuse of the design. People ignoring God’s moral standards have sought to establish their own definitions of morality. The term “error” in this verse means to be “deceived”. God is saying that men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women have been “deceived”. Who is the deceiver? Of course the deceiver is Satan. Satan has caused men and women’s minds to be tricked into believing a false reality of who they really are. If you know how to read and to look up the definitions of the words in the Strong’s Concordance you will see that I am telling you the truth.

So now let’s discuss what God says is the reason for this deception and how it works. The Bible says that these men “burned in their lust” one toward another. What does that mean? What does it mean to burn? What is lust? If you look up the word translated as “lust” in Strong’s it is very interesting. Lust means “excitement of the mind”. I have often times heard it said that the mind is the devil’s playground. This is how he is allowed to work to deceive people. Do you know that it is illegal for the devil to appear to you and try to trick you naturally? I guess I won’t go there today, but Satan uses people’s thoughts to entice them into doing things that they should never do. You know that men who molest children or just have sex with other men do not start out that way, they have done it hundreds of times in their minds before they ever act it out in the natural. Doing wrong things outwardly are all just manifestations of inward fantasies, projections and thoughts. The reality of acting out a “lust” is always the result of a previous repeated fantasy of someone’s imagination. What you continually think about, is what you will eventually do. Think wrong things, you will eventually do wrong things, this is how God designed the human mind to work. If you put the right things into your mind, you will get more positive things to come out of your mind into your actions. But, if you put Garbage into your mind, you will always get garbage out of it in what you do. Why do you think the Bible says for us to put forth an effort to “RENEW OUR MINDS”? (Rom 12:2) The renewal process of the mind means a renovation or the replacement of the old previous thoughts in your mind to think new and improved ones from God’s Word. You could call it a mind thought upgrade to think higher spiritual thoughts. By replacing the old carnal thoughts, with new spiritual thoughts we can eventually change what we do. People wonder why we have such problems in our schools and never place the blame on the fact that we have taken God and the Bible out of our schools and are now are reaping the results of producing spiritually ignorant children without morals and standards. Ok, I got off the subject, I was talking about homosexuality and how people become homosexuals and told you about your mind being the cause and then went into schools. Sorry about that. I started this paragraph speaking about lust and I need to get back on track..

Lust is a longing for, something that is highly desired to someone. Did you know if you do everything that your flesh longed for, you would be in really bad shape? Lust is something that is a normal human emotional state, but what you lust after is always the root cause of every problem. The verse in Romans was talking about the unnatural sex between people of the same sex as being a result of unnatural thoughts that were acted out. So why do some men lust for men and others do not? Why do some men lust after alcohol and some do not? The Bible says we are all carried away with different things, there are many different temptations in the world (James 1:14). For the most part, it came about from something that happened in their childhood, their parents could have been alcoholics and it was passed down. This is a factor that you should realize. The sins of the parents are often times passed to the children. Let’s change the focus and go back and see if Jesus ever said anything about homosexuality:

Mat 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

Jesus asks a very basic question about creation and I wonder why Gay people do not see that He is talking to them. While some people say that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, I am about to prove them wrong. Jesus in effect is saying “Are you STUPID”, can’t you READ?” In the beginning did God create them MALE and MALE or FEMALE and FEMALE? Or did God create them Male and Female? Somehow, God must have changed His mind somewhere in the course of human history. I can only guess that this is that these homosexual proponents must think today! They obviously declare that God created me this way. I’m Gay because I was born Gay! The lies and the deception from Satan are very deep when it comes to this issue. People seem to think that God has changed somewhere during the last 6000 years, and the Bible clearly says that God never changes (Mal 3:6). So what do we do with Bible stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19)? In this story two men show up at Lot’s house and the house is surrounded by the men of the city. These men demand for Lot to send the men out so that they can have sex with them. However, these men were angels and they strike the homosexuals blind and later destory the city. I guess we just ignore these stories and pretend that they are not in the Bible and let these people continue with their lie. We are just all suppose to get along and become more open and tolerant and just look the other way and pretend that it is not happening. After all God must have intended to created Adam and Steve, instead of Adam and Eve, He just made a mistake.

1Co 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

People can be exceedingly foolish, sometimes. They think you have to have overwhelming evidence to the fact of anything in the Bible in order for it to be true. Just because some people cannot find 15 to 20 Bible verses about the subject of homosexuality, they feel it is not worthy of mention and deem it to be insignificant to their view of God. However, God does not view it this way. In fact God says we only need at the minimum, two verses in the Bible to establish any truth. If you can find just two verses it is an established truth from God’s perspective. That is the Bible law of interpretation and you can ignore it, if you want to. Here is another very clear verse in 1 Corinthians and it says something that is profound if you look up the definitions of all of the words. God starts by declaring that He is talking about the “unrighteous”. Unrighteousness is the opposite of being righteous. To be “righteous” means you are in good standing with God. The Bible declares that true Christians have obtain the righteousness of God, so we know that this verse is not talking about true Christians. The word translated as “unrighteous” means “heathen” and “wicked”. So the unrighteous are clearly warned that they will not inherit the kingdom of God. The verse then goes and defines who these unrighteous people are. Most of the descriptions of these next terms are sexually based. So right there we have a major problem being presented to the church. I’ll start with the word “fornicators” and that word means “male prostitute”. Isn’t that interesting? This is someone who sells their body for the sexual pleasure of others. This word can apply to homosexual prostitutes as well as heterosexual prostitutes. But I do not see the need for most women to buy a prostitute so this is not what God is talking about, is it? Now let’s skip to the word translated as “adulterer”. The word in the Strong’s carries the “male” gender for a word that is a derogatory definition of a “male lover”. Again this is not a good word for men. Now let’s continue to the next word translated as “effeminate”, we can already see the negative implications on this word. The Strong’s defines this word as a “catamite”. A catamite is defined as a boy that is kept for the sexual pleasure of an older man. This is the definition of a homosexual and you can ignore it if you want to stay in your sinful ways, but it does not change the truth. Finally, the last Greek word in the verse tops off the list with the most plain conformation and definition, this word is translated in the KJV as “abuser of themselves with mankind”. Already we see a pattern of definitions that is clearly not an endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle. This Greek word is defined in Strong’s as a “Sodomite”. This is just so clear that those who do not want to know the truth have been blinded by Satan to not accept what God is saying to them in a clear warning. Sodomy is male sex with a male. I mean give me a break, the only way a male has sex with a male is either orally or anally. Males are not designed this way and God tells you very clearly that it is an abuse of the original sexual design of humanity. So those who want to continue to be how they say they were created will probably not change no matter how many scripture verses I give them. Gay men and women will always ignore the truth for whatever they want to do. Either they will see the truth and change or they will encounter the error of their ways for an eternity. This is what the Bible says, so accept it or choose to reject it and die in your sins, it will always be your choice. I’m sorry if I’m being very blunt, but it is time to be plain, sound a clear warning and tell the truth.

1Jn 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

We have already clearly seen the relationship of lust to homosexuality, if you do not understand the relationship of the two, then you do not want to know the truth. What is homosexuality? What is the definition of homosexuality? It is the sexual relationship of two people of the same sex. So why do people do this? The Bible calls it the lust of the flesh. To lust after flesh is said not to be of God, but is said to be of the world. God is giving you some very clear information about homosexuality in a non-direct way. If you think that you can lust after a man and be a Christian man at the same time, God says this is not of Me.

2Ti 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

This is what churches are doing who let in Gay ministers. They ignore God’s truth and preach their own version of godliness. They do not want to have to change, so they change the Bible to fit what they desire. The subject of lust is widely discussed in the Bible, and you should be able to see how it applies to homosexuality. If you do not, it really doesn’t matter what God says to you anywhere, you have already made up your mind to stay where you are at. Did you know God will let you do that? God never forces anyone to change.

I could give you many, many other Bible verses on the subject that are far more direct and speak clearly on this subject, but I have gone long enough for now. I suppose I will hear some criticism about what I have written. I know there are churches in America that stand up and allow homosexual leaders to teach and preach and to be ordained as God’s chosen ones. These people have gathered together teachers who justify what they want to hear and have chosen to ignore the truth. Do not be deceived with them. If you are going to a church that promotes sin as something good, you are going to the wrong church. I always get amused at people who do not like what God says in the Bible. People like to attack the messenger and want to kill them for bringing them the bad news. God says certain things about homosexuality that will not be popular with those who wish to continue in their ways. I did give you enough information in this one blog to show you how you change what you are doing, if God is talking to you today. If you do not agree with what God says in the Bible, then I prefer not hear the words of fools and idiots, so do not leave me any negative comments. Take up your negative comments with God and not me, I did not write the Bible.

It is difficult not to have an opinion on this subject of homosexuality. We cannot go anywhere, where it is not thrown in front of us. If you have been on vacation to any of the popular destinations in our country, you have been confronted with homosexuality on every street corner. San Francisco has widely been held as the capital city of the Gay community, put we were confronted with it in Key West, Florida and even north in Martha’s Vineyard, then certain districts of New York City. We were in Orlando Florida at Disney World, one year and it just so happened to be the same time that Disney held Gay Pride Day or something like that. There are Gay Pride parades and events in every major city now and they dress up and cross dress and do as many perverted unnatural things as they want to call it all normal behavior. Very few places in the world are now not open to the blatant show of in your face sin. Almost everyone in the media, and on TV and in the Movies have come up with a direct homosexual agenda that is being rammed down the throats of God fearing Christians. The News media likes to put homosexuality in the same category as racial bigotry and hatred. I do not know how they can confuse the two issues and think we can lump these into the same level of intolerance. One is a Sin and the other is the color of someone’s Skin. Is there a difference, you bet there is. The homosexual lifestyle is portrayed as a valid alternative lifestyle on TV. Homosexuals have come out of the closets in droves in the last 50 years. Gay marriage is being pushed in every state as a violation of their rights. Acceptance and equal rights is the agenda of the Gay community. All calling for acceptance in who they say they are. This is the way we were born, this is how we are, it’s in our DNA, and so they would like to try to convince us. They are claiming to have been born with a Gay gene. Now having said all of that, I do not think Christians should go around and hold up signs, telling Gays that God Hates Them. That is idiotic and not helping anyone. Where in the Bible does it say that God hates Gays? Christians should not be in the Gay bashing or hatred realm of existence. We are to preach the good news, like Jesus did in a way that might help some. I believe that Christians are to stand up for what is right and base what we believe solely on the Bible. So have you ever read the Bible? What does it say about Homosexuality? I have not found anything favorable or tolerant about this sin, have you? However, it is still just a sin like every other sin and God views all sin in the same light, on the same level plane. One sin is not greater than another if you study your Bible, you will see that God does not rate sin in varying degrees like people do.

So if you are struggling with this issue and thinking there is no hope, you are wrong. You do not know the power of God to change the hearts and minds of people who want to change. If you want to stay where you are and do what you do, God will let you. I have given you enough information in this blog on what it takes to change. With God’s help you can do it.

If you want to go and read the next lesson in this series you may go to “Part 2“.

Posted in God, What Does God Think

31 Comments

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, homosexuality, Jesus, lust, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, sin, understanding

Learning and Following the Spiritual Laws of Bible Interpretation!

May 23

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 2.4) People generally do not like to follow rules. If the speed limit is 35 they like to push it 41 or 42 and see if they get away with it. Life is full of rules and we should begin to realize that these laws have benefits and reasons for existence. Laws should be viewed as positive things in the world. You live by them every day, they govern what you do and if you violate them, you pay the consequences. Without laws we would live in a world of chaos. There are natural laws, scientific laws, laws of gravity, laws of aerodynamics, laws of governments and these all provide structure to our world. When we abide with them and cooperate with them, we usually live in a world that is safer and generally a better place to exist. So do people not realize that the spiritual laws in the Bible are also given to us for these same reasons. By learning about the spiritual laws of God in the Bible we can better understand what the Bible means. By ignoring these spiritual laws, we have what we have a lot of today, we have a church of chaos, disagreement, contention, arguing, controversy, and the lack of agreement and harmony.

Without people following the laws of Bible interpretation, we have hundreds of possible interpretations available about what the Bible means. I’ve got bad news for most people, not every Bible interpretation is the truth. A lot of the teaching in the church is just someone’s opinion of what they think the Bible says and this is not how God intended it to be. If God was interested in your opinion, he would have asked you to write the Bible. Your opinion is not worth a dime, in the eyes of God. Your intelligence is so far below that of God, that it is probably humorous to God to hear what you have to say and what you think is right.

NO PRIVATE INTERPRETATIONS

So what are these laws of Bible interpretation that we should learn to follow? I hope you understand the importance of laws, for I will not expand that part of the discussion any further. Up until now I have just introduced you to some basic concepts of the usefulness of laws. Now I will talk about a couple of the major rules of correct Bible interpretation that not too many are following. The first law of Bible interpretation should be one that everyone knows, because I think it is the most important to know and use. I’ve already touched on it a little bit in the introduction and it has to do with keeping your opinion out of your interpretations. An interpretation represents a biased opinion of the facts given. People cannot interpret the Bible without putting what they know and have experienced into it. Your personal experiences, your prejudices, your upbringing, even the words of your pastor are all factors into how you view the Bible. What you see in the Bible is always slanted by the many complex factors of influece and these are sometimes very difficult for people to get out of their minds in order to see clearly what God is saying.

2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

God writes this as being something that we should know first. That makes it sound very important for us to know. Some do not know how God writes the Bible and therefore come to the wrong conclusions. God can hide the most important things in obscure verses deep in the middle of the Bible. I wish I could give you a good reason why God does some of the things that He does, but I’m not God and I do understand all of them, by far. I just do the best that I can with what I have learned so far, and you should do the same. Anyway, this verse in 2 Peter tells us very clearly that the Bible is not open to our private interpretations. In other words, God is not interested in your opinion or what you think that it means. If people would learn this one simple rule, it would help them tremendously. You see in the word “private” carries the meaning of “self”. That means that people are putting their own spin on what God has said. Instead of learning what God says about the subject, they want to ignore God’s words for what they think is correct.

What we learn from this verse in 2 Peter is that the Bible interprets itself. What does that mean? It simply means that God is smarter than you and I, and He has given us His own explanations on what He has said in the Bible. While this sounds good on the surface, it is also a challenge to us. Finding God’s explanations and definitions are not always as easy as you would like to think. It involves an effort and a level of work to study the Bible and find out what God has said. God could have made the Bible easier to understand, but He didn’t, so we work with what He has given us. We bow to His greater wisdom on the subject and submit to His design. If you do not do this you will continue to be lost in your mindless reality and you will miss what God has for you. So learn this first rule and it will change your perspective greatly. It will also cause you to ignore what other people think the Bible means. That alone is worth a fortune of your time and Bible study effort. People on the internet who do not give Bible verses, I very quickly just turn off and do not read. It sure saves a lot of time not to have to listen to the opinions of ignorant people.

Another aspect of what a private interpretation is, can be the use of any other book or source other than just reading the Bible. You see I talked to a guy on the internet the other day and he gave me his interpretation for some prophetic scriptures in the Old and New Testaments. His major problem was the fact that his interpretation was dependent upon information from history books, internet calendars and way too many sources that did not include God or the Bible. That is an obvious example of interpreting the Bible in error. Once you set foot outside of the Word of God you are treading on Satan’s realm and domain of deception. Another example of error is interpretations that name modern individuals, entities, governments, organizations or whatever else you care to interpret into the Bible. I have heard repeatedly the reference to the Pope being the antichrist and this is crazy speculation and a clear example of a private interpretation. The pope did not exist when the Bible was written, but Satan did exist.

Some like to read that God knows the end from the beginning and therefore in Revelation He can tell us of caoming things that do not yet exist like the Pope. While this is certainly possible we must still attempt to interpret the Bible with the Bible and the Pope interpretation is a major conflict with many other verses in the Bible that teach us something differently. Understand that the Bible does not contradict itself in the proper correct understanding of the words written. In other words one verse is not going to conflict with another vese so we must balance the correct interpretation between both truths given. First, God says there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc 1:9). The thing that has been is the thing that shall be again. That right there tells me that the Pope is not God’s enemy and to declare him the anti-Christ is in opposition to God’s Word that there is nothing new. Then there is this verse in the N.T. that says “While we look not at the things that are seen, because the things that are seen are temprorary and the things that not seen are eternal” (2 Cor 4:18). God is basically telling us if we are looking for natural signs and ignoring the spiritual world you are going to miss it. Can you see the Pope? If you can see the pope then the pope is not what we should be focused on. What God is teaching us in this verse is that we should change our focus and not be fixated on the external things and try to perceive the spirit behind the external visible person. Ok, do not misunderstand what I am saying. We do live in a natural world but we should be dominated with the Spiritual things of God and not the flesh. If the anti-Christ comes in the flesh, people are only going to be able to discern him with their spiritual awareness and not by looking at the outward appearance that will easily deceive many.

Therefore learn to change your perspective to God’s point of view and see scriptures and things in the spiritual realm first and then you will understand what is happening in the natural realm. Correct bible interpretation is not easy, but it is achievable by simply learning the rules and this was only one small aspect of the subject and it is impossible to cover it fully in this one lesson.

IN THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES

The next thing that I would like to discuss is often misused and ignored. This law is a law found in the Bible and one that God has clearly spelled out. However, I guess people do not apply it to Bible study and Bible interpretation. Did you know everything in the Bible is not plainly laid out? God gives us some very valuable information in some very minor scriptures. For example, the virgin birth of Christ, which is a basic foundational Christian theological position and critical to the identity of Jesus, is only mentioned a couple of times in vague references. You would think that God would talk about this more clearly and give us many more verses that told us about this, but yet He does not. I was reading a blog the other day and this very deceived man was speaking about “homosexuality” not being mentioned in the Bible clearly so therefore he concluded that it was not important to God and that he could still be a Christian and a homosexual at the same time. What people do not understand is that it only takes two verses in the Bible to say the same thing and that means it is an established truth of the Bible. Because this man only found two or three verses against homosexuality, he came to the wrong conclusion and said it is OK to stay in sin. This is what God says:

2Co 13:1 This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.

Did you see what God says in this verse? God says that if you can find at the least two references in the Bible to the same subject, then that establishes the truth that you should live by. This is a basic truth that our courts and legal system needs to abide by. If it is just the word of one against the other, then you will have a very hard time figuring out what the truth is. But, if you can find two witnesses who agree, then that establishes the basis of the truth. So we learn that we cannot just go read a single Bible verse and try to make it say something that it does not say. We are required by God’s design to get a corresponding and collaborating witness to every truth. Knowing this fact will change almost everything found in many church doctrines. That means the people who try to teach snake handling in churches have a major problem with what they teach. They do err in their interpretation of the Bible by selectively preaching a single verse out of context. I’ll go even further than that today risking offending someone in the Catholic church. The Bible does not teach we need a Pope. Peter was not the first pope that they claim that he was. They take one verse out of context and try to make a man-made doctrine to establish the office of the pope and this is a dangerous way to treat God and the Bible. You can make the Bible say anything that you want it to. There is proof of this in every denominatio of the church. However, if people would only read and study the Bible using the rules of God to understand what is written we would all benefit and come closer to a unified set of beliefs. Learn to search your Bible for at least two verses to establish the truth and this will help you tremendously in how you view the truth.

These are just two of the most important basic spiritual laws of correct Bible interpretation that you need to learn and put into daily practice. Once you finally do this, you will begin to see that there is a major difference between God’s Bible truth from what some people are trying to convince you is the truth. There is a conept from our history that applies to today’s lesson on God’s laws. The Law of aerodynamis always existed from the time of Adam, but no man knew or understood it so we did not benefit from it. Do you see the application that I am getting at and the importance of knowing about God’s laws? People who do not know that spiritual laws exist can never follow them or utilize them to their advantage to understand God’s Word. However, once you discover them and learn to use them they have great potential for the same dramatic change in our lives as the invention of the airplane. Just a short time ago no one knew how to fly and today it is a common occurrence that everyone participates in. This is why I am teaching this subject today so that we can all benefit and begin to use God’s laws to understand the Bible. Thanks for reading my Bible lesson on the Laws of correct Bible interpretation. God Bless!

Posted in Bible Interpretation, Rules

Deception the Greatest Weapon of Satan!

May 17

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 of a series of lessons on the subject of deception found in the Bible. Today I want to discuss how Satan causes people not to see the truth of God’s Word. It is a common practice in military training for Generals and commanders to study their enemies. By understanding an enemies strengths and weaknesses you are better able to defend against them or better yet to defeat them. The more you know about your enemies the better off you are. So does the church have any enemies? You must be an ostrich Christian with your spiritual head stuck in the ground if you do not see that we do. There is a spiritual force of evil in the world that is bent on taking the church down. They have specific tactics and tools that they use to try to defeat the church. We know that the Bible says that we “wrestle not against flesh and blood” so we know that people are not the source of our opposition, even though Satan does use people to try to get to us. We know that those forces of evil that we fight against are the “principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph 6:12). So just because flesh and blood comes against the church with accusations and verbal or physical attacks, these people are controlled by a spiritual force that we cannot perceive with our physical senses.

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

We can understand that Satan, our enemy uses “snares” to come against us. A snare is a trap, a trick or strategy that causes us to become captive or a prisoner. If every trap was obvious, we would never be caught. So these traps must be hidden or covered so that we do not see them clearly. I believe that Satan’s primary weapon is the deception of thoughts that are placed in our minds. What is deception and how it is used against us, will be my subject for today. Let’s start by defining the word “deceived” from the Bible:

G4105

From G4106; to (properly cause to) roam (from safety, truth, or virtue): – go astray, deceive, err, seduce, wander, be out of the way.

That is a very interesting definition for the word “deceived” found in the N.T. This word means to “cause to wander or roam from safety, truth or virtue”. If you have ever been hiking in the woods, you know that usually there are designated trails and established pathways. However, if you become adventuresome, and attempt to deviate and make your own way, this is normally where your failure and deception begins. Many times a path will have a fork in it and if it is not clearly marked you better have a good map. Sometimes walking down a path you encounter what looks like a good way to go and it suddenly turns into a dead end. When I was younger, my wife and I started climbing a mountain in Colorado. It took a good part of the day to get to the top. We did this on a whim and were not planning on being gone as long as we were. We took no food or water and on the way back down the mountain decided to try to take a short cut. If this short cut would have worked, we would have been back to camp in time for dinner. However, we ran into a cliff and a steep terrain that there was just no way to continue. So we ended up going back up the way we came and finally back the way we climbed up. This little analogy has vast spiritual implication on it. Jesus told us that he is the “Path”, “The Way” and He revealed there is no other way to God (John 14:6). So where did all of these other religions in the world come from? Who gave us these religions and why are they here? You do know there are well over 20 major religions in the world and within these 20 or more religions there are further divisions or sects and all of these just cannot be the truth. The variation in what they believe and teach is so radically different that there is no way they are even related. This is what I believe about these religions, and why they exist. I believe they are an attempt of the enemy to provide information overload. By providing you so many options and so many possible ways of thinking you are easily overwhelmed to know which one is right. How do you know which one to choose? So God comes to the earth and gives you the truth and tells you that Jesus is the way, but all of the other religions of the world say no, that is not right, we have the only truth. Wow, what a trick! What a major distraction! What a way to get people to not see the real way! Who is responsible for all these lies? The Bible tells us very clearly, that there is one individual, a spirit being that is responsible for this dissemination of invalid and false information and it is Satan:

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.

So we can clearly see that the “great dragon” who is called Satan is responsible for the deception that is being perpetrated upon the human race. People are being led down paths away from the truth and in directions that are directly opposite from the truth, into a realm of darkness and they do not even know it. These deceptions are being instigated at every level and every location on the globe. Satan is interested in deceiving everyone, because why? Is Satan just a really bad guy who does evil just because he can, or is there a greater motivation and purpose to his behavior? You should really think about that question and determine Satan’s motivation, since that is not my primary subject I will not try to elaborate on it for now. However, I will talk about a related subject and mention this:

2Jn 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

We have already seen that Satan is the chief initiator of all deception. However, as I said before, Satan uses people to get his messages out. Satan is a spiritual being that controls and manipulates natural people. So we have people, even in churches today that stand up and teach things that are lies. Here is one of the ways to determine if they are telling the truth or not. It would seem that Satan is highly opposed to letting people believe that God came into the world in the flesh, in the form of a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Why is Satan so opposed to this message? Did God’s presence on the earth cause something to happen to Satan that Satan wants to try to undo? Let me ask you this, if I said that the Holocaust never happened in Germany like some idiots try to say in the world, does that mean it is not true? No it doesn’t change the fact that it occurred just because you don’t believe it occurred, does it? But, what happens is it changes your perception of reality and therefore it changes your results and you lose any benefit of believing the truth, because you have bought into the lie. This is the net result of telling people God did not come to the earth in the man Jesus Christ. By telling people that Jesus was just a normal human male, you take away His ability to save you and forgive your sins. As a result you are lost with no hope of salvation and that is really bad news for you.

So this next part will not be particularly popular with some Christians, but yet I believe it needs to be said. Deception involves someone speaking false words. False words is a nicer way of saying lies. A liar is a deceiver. A deceiver is a liar. They go hand in hand. Where one is, the other is also present. They are the Siamese twins of Satan.

Joh 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Jesus speaking to the Jews reveals some very strong words of truth, and says they are of their father, the devil. Since that is not my subject I will not go there today. Then Jesus tells us that Satan is the father of all lies. That is just another way of saying that Satan is the initiator of lies. However, it is interesting to note that not everything that Satan says is necessarily a lie. Jesus said “When Satan lies” not “When Satan speaks”. There is a major difference. It also makes deception much harder to recognize. When Satan speaks 10 truths mixed with one or two lies, how do you know which is which? If you notice back in Genesis 3, when Satan spoke to Eve he said some things that were true, but then he also mixed in a lie. This is how Satan operates, mixing truths with lies so that you become deceived into believing the lie. Here is a definition of one of the Greek words translated as “lie”:

G5574

Middle voice of an apparently primary verb; to utter an untruth or attempt to deceive by falsehood: – falsely, lie.

To utter an untruth. In other words to speak a lie. What is truth? Truth is based upon the Word of God, because the Bible says that it is impossible for God to lie (Heb 6:18). So God only speaks the truth. What God says we can take as the truth. The Bible contains the truth of God, but not everything in the Bible is truth. That statement shocks some Christians also, but you have to understand when you watch the 6:00 evening news, is everything that they say or report true? What if they interview a known criminal and he says I’m innocent, I did not kill that woman. Should you believe it just because it was on the news? So it is with the Bible, not every recorded word or statement of men and women in the Bible is the truth. It is true that they said what they said, but it did come out of the mouth of God so why are we suppose to believe it all? Job said some stuff that God reprimanded him for and asked him, were you there when I made the heavens and formed the stars? If you read Job 38:2 God says “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”. That doesn’t sound very good for Job’s words, does it? We have the recorded words of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar Ananias, Pilot, just to name a few men who were not saved, nor were they prophets of God. So truth come from verses that say “Thus saith the Lord”. Truth comes from the Words in Red in the N.T. Also truth comes from the mouth of God’s prophets.

So a lie is an untruth. A statement not based upon facts or clear evidence. A lie is a statement of “fiction”. That is why I avoid reading books labeled “fiction”. They are the words of someone’s imagination, either based upon some facts or no facts. We are surrounded by Fictional movies, books and other examples of entertainment that challenge our Christian faith. There is so much of this in the world today that it is amazing we can think at all. Satan is the author and originator of “fiction”, “untruth”, “lies” and “deception”. That is why I debate the fact that some authors call themselves “Christian Fiction Writers”. To me that is just another oxymoronic term for a true lie. I told you this was not going to be popular, but we need to consider what we feed on. Just as we should watch we eat physically, we should also watch what we put into our spirits. Here is a scripture that confirms this:

2Ti 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

This verse is speaking about Christians who knew the truth at one time, but have now followed fables. The Greek word translated as “fables” means “myths”, “tales” and “fiction”. Do you see the danger of “fiction”? Satan can use it to lead you off of the path of eternal salvation back into a path of darkness. That just can’t be good, right?

1Ti 1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith:

We are again warned of the introduction of “fiction” into our lives that results in us questioning our faith. This verse tells us that truth “edifies” or “builds up our faith” and we can clearly see that “fiction” does the opposite.

2Pe 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Cunningly devised “fiction” will lead some into paths they do not want to go. To say something is “cunning” and “devised” means that it is purposely designed to lie to you and bring you down. In other words fiction is more than just entertainment, it has a purpose and a design intended to do harm to you and to deceive you. You can certainly see why this is not popular, but yet it is in the Bible, so what do we do with it?

So is deception becoming less prevalent or is deception in the world growing? Are there less options or are the number of possible lies being exponentially increased in our daily lives? I believe that with the advent of the internet and the information explosion era that we are living within, we are faced with an increasingly difficult levels of deceptions. Sometimes the false information is blatant and obvious, but other times it is subtle and very tricky to see. There is such a diverse set of false information on the internet and TV, that it is very difficult for most people to figure out what is real. This is what the Bible says about deception:

2Ti 3:13 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.

The amount of deception in the world is increasingly growing at a rate that is difficult to comprehend. The number of ways to be deceived, the number of ways that lies are presented are exploding on TV, movies, the internet and the other media sources, that there is no way to keep track of it all anymore. If a Christian wanted to discredit all of them they would not be able to. What Christians need to understand is that we are not called to teach against lies, we are just called to present the truth. Those who believe will be saved and those who do not believe, will not be saved (Mark 16:16).

Eph 4:14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;

Just as natural children are more easily tricked than adults, spiritual children are more easily deceived than mature Christians. We are admonished to grow up spiritually and to become mature in Christ. Otherwise we will be tossed around easily with the trickery of Satan. You do know that Satan has been around a lot longer than you have, don’t you? You do understand that he has more experience with what to do, than you do. So if you are depending upon your ability to deflect the lies that he will present you, you are already deceived. In this verse in Ephesians God tells us not to accept every teaching that is thrown at us. I found the word “sleight” of men to be very interesting when I looked up the definition. It means “dice”, or “a gambling cube”. The implication is given that these men are gambling with your lives and theirs. They are rolling their cubes and playing a game that is not easily won. The next term in the verse is that of “cunning craftiness”. This term means to be “subtle”. If you recall this is the way Satan came to Eve in Genesis 3. Satan used specific thoughts to deceive the woman and that is Satan’s only weapon against you. All Satan has to do is trick you a little bit, distract you from the truth by just a minor difference and you are now off the true path.

Rom 16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

This verse is so amazingly true to our world that we live in, that I am shocked at the reality of our current government. We seem to have a President who speaks “fair” words that have deceived the hearts of the simple minded people of our nation. He says one thing and does an entirely different thing. Simple refers again to those who are not mature, those who are not grown up. To those who are still childlike. It is amazing how many people qualify for this labeled description. It is a very sad statement to the condition of our nation.

Flattering Words, Cleverly Designed Fables, Subtle Words of Deception, these are the tricks of the enemy, Satan. He overwhelms you with information that is contrary to the truth that you have difficulty recognizing the truth. The tricks of the enemy are the same as when Eve was deceived, the words and the number of words is the only difference depending upon your situation and circumstances. Learn to recognize deception and choose not to be deceived.

If you would like to continue reading in this lesson series on this subject of deception, you can go to “Part 2“.

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

Posted in deception, Satan

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, Truth, understanding

A New Commandment I Give Unto You!

May 16

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in a series of Bible lessons on the subject of Understanding the Purpose of the Law of Moses. I covered a lot of new information about the Law already and I do not think that I will review any of what I have already covered. Therefore, if you did not read the first lesson, I would suggest that you go back and start your study with “Part 1“. I will say that in my last lesson I introduced you to the fact that the Law was a positive thing given to us by God. In other words I believe that the law was an intentional good thing designed for the benefit of the entire human race. Without laws we would not know or understand sin, guilt, punishment, consequences, to name a few things that the knowledge of the law teaches us. Laws give us guidelines, structure, organization and meaning or definition to what is right and what is wrong. Without laws we would live in a world of full of nothing but chaos. This would be a type of world where everyone would be doing what was right in their own eyes while ignoring the effects to what their actions did to those all around them. Today’s lesson will be an introduction to another brand new concpet. Are Christians in the church today under the Old Law, or under no law or under any new New Law? Many today believe that we are noy under any law and that is not actually what the Bible says. They base this belief on verses like Romans 6:15 which is an example of taking one truth and attempting to make it the only truth. This is just an example of not finding the complete truth of God’s Word on a given subject. Many are guilty of this and it is an easy trap to fall into. Just because we are not under the Law of the Old Testament does not mean that we are not under any New Law. That is the primary subject of the rest of my lesson today.

What is the difference between what is old and what is new? New sometimes can be a relative term. Is it new to you or is it new just because no one else has ever possessed it before you? New to me is definitely stated not to be the old. Old to me is definitely stated not to be the new. I view this concept in the same terms like the Old Covenant versus the New Covenant which are totally separate and distinct covenants of God. Both the Old and New Covenants bare a resemblance of characteristics and features, but they are totally and completely not the same. That was my introduction to the Law of the New Covenant. Let me now take you to some important verses in the New Testament and discuss this New Law of God.

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,

So I asked you a question in my last blog on this subject, did God put Satan under the law? This verse in Galatians is very clearly a clue into the answer to that question. Why was Jesus Christ born a man under the law of Moses? Jesus’ physical mother was a virgin woman named Mary, a direct descendant of David the King of Israel. We know that Jesus is therefore a natural born Jew from the tribe of Judah, by birth. Therefore, God in the Flesh being born under the Law is now bound to all of these laws, commandments, and statutes written in the O.T.. Exactly why did God do this? The God that was outside of the Law and who gave the law has now placed Himself under the law that He gave. That means whatever the law requires applies to everything that God can do and can’t do. Those are pretty strong words aren’t they? Why would God put any limitations upon Himself? Obviously God gave the law, so He must have designed the law to serve a specific purpose that would help Him to accomplish something of greater value. What was that something that God needed accomplished that only the creation of Law could do? You should really think about things like this and search for them in the Bible to see if you can find them. What you should take away from this verse in Galatians 4:4 is, if it was necessary for God to be born under the law of Moses, then it would be necessary for Satan to be put under the same law also. As I tried to teach in the first lesson, that laws only apply to those that are under them. No law is ever applicable to anyone not under the authority of that law.

Jesus made the statement that “I did not come to do away with the law, but I came to fulfill it” (Mat 5:17). So what did Jesus do while he was in the flesh walking under the law to fulfill the law? What did he accomplish to fulfill all of the Mosiac law? Was it just the fact that he did not commit any sin? Was this the fulfillment of the law? I do not think that is the entire picture of what that actually means. Did you notice that Jesus died on the cross? So being sinless under the law did not save Him, did it? We know from other scripture that the Bible says that “No flesh will be justified by God, for keeping the law” (Gal 2:16). So was Jesus in the flesh? Yes, then He was not justified or saved by keeping the law either. This is not what made Jesus righteous or justifed Him. We can discover some valuable clues by searching the scriptures and finding out God’s definition of what this means to fulfill the law:

Gal 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

We can begin to understand what the fulfillment of the law was in the eyes of God by reading this verse in Galatians. God tells us that all of the law is fulfilled in just one word. What was that word? That word was Love! This of course is not a human kind of love, but it is a God kind of love and that is totally different. Humans love Coke, pie, hamburgers because they make them feel good or do something good for them. That is not the God kind of love. God does not love us because we do something good to Him or for Him. Bible, love is not a feeling or even an emotional state. Love is a choice to do the right thing for others even when you do not feel like it.

Rom 13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

Here we have another witness to the fact that God says the law of Moses is fulfilled by the single isolated word of Love! To do the right thing for your neighbor means that you do not steal from them, you do not hurt them, you do not lie to them, you do not covet or lust for what they possess, and on and on we could go. Clealry God is defining a new definition for what the fulfillment of the Law represents to us.

Rom 13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

All of the law of Moses is summed up into the word “Love”. We can only comprehend the rest of the law by understanding what Love is in the eyes of God. This is why Jesus makes this statement in the Gospels:

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

If the Law was a negative thing God would be wanting to get rid of it. However, we have discovered that the law is a positive and good thing and that is why Jesus gives us a New Law. You do understand that we are still under the law being in the church right now? It is not the Law of Moses, but it is the Law of Jesus. Jesus initiated a New Covenant in His own shed blood and in doing so, He established a New Law. This New Law is significantly less complicated than the old law while at the same time including all of the Old Law in the single statement. It is amazing how complex the laws created by our government are. I believe the Health Care bill was a very thick stack of papers that are still being argued over to what they mean. Would you say that more laws are better than less laws or are fewer laws better than many laws? According to God less is better. God replaces a thick book of written laws with a single statement and calls it better. God is not opposed to the law, it is more what the law is intended to do and its purpose that God is most concerned with. By Jesus giving us the Law of Love, we are now required to follow ONLY one rule. When faced with a problem in the natural we should always stop and ask, “What would Love do with that?” Did you notice that Jesus said you must love like I have loved you? In other words we are not to love people like we love a can of Coke. I do hope that you understand this profound concept.

Rom 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

God says that by walking in the New Commandment of Love we now establish the law. Isn’t that an interesting concept? What all of Natural Israel was unable to do, God says that we are capable of doing. Why is that? For one thing we have God on the inside of us helping us to do it. Plus we are not worried about hundreds or thousands of rules, because God has simplified it down to just One Rule! That just makes it easier to follow doesn’t it?

If you would like to continue to read this series on understanding the Law you can go to “Part 3“.

Posted in Bible Study, Law, Understanding

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Law, Love, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Rules, Truth, understanding

Understanding The Bible Definition and Purpose of the Law of Moses! PT 1

May 14

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of Bible lessons on Understanding the Purpose for the Law. Why was it necessary for God to give Moses the Old Testament Law? The reason for these spiritual rules of do’s and don’ts are critical for Christians to understand. While Christians do not rely on keeping the law to be saved, they should still be intimately familiar with what they mean and the underlying reasons for God giving them to the natural nation of Israel. God says my People are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6), so the more we learn and understand the less likely we are to being destroyed in this world. So let’s learn about the O.T. Law and determine what it is and why it was given using the Bible:

Gal 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

God declares a truth about the law that is essential to understand. The O.T. law is based upon “Works”. Works is man’s attempt to do something that they think pleases God by doing without something that they really want to do. I hope you understand what I just said. Every religion in the world is “works” based. Man trying to achieve a state of self sacrifice in order to appear pious or worthy in the eyes of God. In some religions men beat themselves with whips and chains until they bleed. They think through this self inflicted pain and suffering that they have achieved favor with God. They have been deceived into stupidity and foolishness. This religion also teaches that life is like a balance scale and the good deeds that you do will be weighed against your bad deeds and if the good deeds outweighs the bad, you have earned your salvation. This is just another example of Satan’s deception. In Galatians 2:16, we see works being contrasted with true Christianity. True Christianity is based upon Faith in Jesus Christ and what He has done and provided for us. That is completely different than the law of works and the works of the law. This verse clearly tells us that nobody will make it to heaven based upon their works. That is not good news for natural Israel or the other religions of the world.

Rom 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

We can clearly see one of the primary reasons that God gave the law. God declares that No flesh will be saved by obeying the law. So we immediately discover that the law was not given to save us. We can take this reason off of the list of potential reasons for the law. Then God says that by the law is the knowledge of sin. What does that tell you? Before the law was given into the world, no one really knew what sin was. It was only because the Bible said “Thou shalt not commit murder” that you would know that this is not an acceptable thing to do. To know that there is a law that has consequences for doing something and then to do it anyway is the act of a fool. However, to do something that is still not right, but there is no law against it is still sin, but yet God said how would you know it. So one of the primary reasons for God giving the law is to teach everyone what sin is and that these sins have consequences. With the Law comes the Knowledge of Sin!

Rom 7:7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Here is another witness to what I just said. This verse clearly tells us the same thing and gives us another example. By God saying “thou shalt not covet”, we know it is a sin to lust after what our neighbor owns or possesses. So the Law is not an evil, bad or negative thing, but a good thing. It helps us to learn and know what is good and what is evil. The law helps to guide us into what are the right things to do.

Rom 7:12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.

So the Bible again confirms what I just said about the law. The law is Holy, the law is good and just. The law is a positive thing meant to teach us the difference between right and wrong. God gave us the law to show us that we cannot make up our own rules and think that we are good in our own sight. That is exactly what most people in the world do, they reason in their own minds what is good and what is right and they follow their own desires and God says that is wrong.

Rom 4:15 Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

The word “transgression” means violation. If you get arrested in our world, it is usually because you violated some law that was passed by the lawmakers of the city, state or federal governments. So again we see a principle being established for why the law was necessary. Without law there is no “violation” being committed. People in the world usually pass laws to make people stop something that is potentially harmful or hurtful to themselves or others. For example, driving too fast in a car can cause loss of life and property. So people have developed laws to limit the speeds that cars can go in certain areas. The speed limit varies depending on where the area is located, like it is slower in front of school zones. If you are caught speeding you are charged and if found guilty, you pay fines and there are consequences such as points on your license. So without laws, people could go 100 MPH through a school zone and cause great damage and loss of life and there would be nothing that the government could do to them. This is a key lesson of why God gave the law, so take note of it.

Rom 5:13 For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

Without laws in the world (physical, natural, spiritual and governments), the world would be in a state of chaos. Everybody doing whatever they felt like, whenever they wanted to, to whoever they wanted to and there would be no consequences legally speaking that they would ever be faced with. I do think that without law we would also see a vigilante retribution being enacted and people would be forced to come up with their own definition of justice. But, Romans 5:13 informs us that sin has been in the world, before the law existed. But, then it says that these sins would not be charged to their account without the existence of the law. When you read and learn verses from the Bible like these you should automatically think how do these apply to me? How does this apply to Israel? How do these apply to Satan? How do they apply to all of the other spiritual entities in God’s spiritual realm? If you do not think in these terms you will miss out on what God is trying to teach you. Let me ask you a question and get you to thinking. If it is as the Bible says and Satan was found with sin in him from the beginning, what can God do about this, if there is no law against it? I believe you can start to understand the problem that God had. Legally speaking there is nothing that God can do with Satan, unless he is put under the law. That is an amazing thing to consider and probably a key reason for why the law was given. Learn to think while you read and to ask questions and you will learn so much more than just reading it. I’ll get into this more later.

Rom 7:14 For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.

This is an interesting twist and is highly informative. God tells us that the law applies to the spiritual realm and not just the natural realm. We know that God gave Moses the law on Mt Sinai and that it was written down in the natural realm by a man. But, think about it, God is a Spirit and the words that He spoke to Moses came from the spiritual realm. God is clearly telling us that these words found in the law apply to all spiritual beings, including God himself, the angels, you and I and Satan and his demons.

Gal 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.

Here is a very scary statement about the O.T. Law. God says that anyone under the law is under a curse, if they do not obey all of the law. Do you know of anyone that has obeyed all of the law? For one thing I do not think you know all of the law and the other thing is you certainly can’t do it all consistently, I do not believe anyone on earth is capable of it. The law is more than following 10 simple commandments, the O.T. law is 5 large books of rules, commandments, instructions, and it is vastly not understood even by the Jews who read it every day. I may be wrong but I believe that this is one of the reasons for God giving the law, to show man that he is incapable of making a perfect score. It is impossible to bowl a perfect score in the game of life playing according to the rules of the “works of the law”. I assume natural Israel has not yet gotten the news yet, they must still think they are able to save themselves.

Jas 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

Here is a second witness to the reality that man is required to keep all of the law. If any man offends or violates a single commandment, this verse in James says that he is found guilty of violating every commandment. I am certainly glad that is not the way our courts work. We would have to have everybody in a prison cell and there would be no free people in the world. If you drove your car too fast you could be sentenced to life in prison. That is what God says about his law in the O.T. Too many times people like to rate and compare sins. This sin is bigger, or greater than another. This sin is just a little one and that isn’t as bad as doing this or that. But, God says every sin is equal, there are no big ones, and no small ones. These are very tough rules to follow. In fact they are impossible for man to follow.

Gal 3:24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

So God says that the Law was designed to be a teaching tool for mankind. An instrument that was intended to point them to Christ. Is this the way the nation of Israel views the law? Obviously not! Is this the way you should view the O.T. law, absolutely. You should use it as a teacher who is pointing you to a savior, the Messiah.

1Ti 1:9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient,for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

God tells us who the law was given for. To me every human would potentially qualify, but also this sounds more like Satan’s resume than anything else. You do realize that this is why our government passes laws, don’t you? If nobody did bad things you wouldn’t need any laws against doing them. So we pass laws to keep people from doing stupid, foolish things. This is another one of the key purposes of the O.T. law. Because, there are bad, evil people in the world, because there is a bad, evil spiritual force in the world, God was forced to enact spiritual laws. I hope you are getting what I am saying.

Let’s review briefly what we have learned so far and make a list of the key items concerning what the Bible says about the law:

Sin will always Sin with or without the existence of Law.
God’s Law is a Positive Thing that Helps us to see.
The Law is Works Based. Obeying the Law is man’s attempt at earning Salvation.
No Flesh can achieve Righteousness by the O.T. Law.
Therefore, no one can be saved by observing the O.T. Law.
However, Sin is not put on your account, if there is No law.
Without the Law, no one knows what Sin Is.
Without the existence of the Law there is no legal consequences for Sin.
If you violate even one Law you are guilty of violating EVERY Laws!
The Law given in the natural realm is Applicable in the Spiritual Realm.
The Law was designed to teach us we need a savior and to point us to Christ.
The Law was given because of the evil that existed prior to the law.

That was a quick synopsis of the information we have learned from the few verses about the law. We start to begin to understand what the law is and why it was given by understanding these verses. There is of course much more to learn about the law. There is different types of laws. Human laws, laws of nature, laws of science, and spiritual laws, just to name a few types of laws. Let’s continue this lesson with another verse found in Romans:

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.

This is one of the most outstanding and revealing verses in the Bible about the Law of Moses. It reveals some hidden spiritual principles that are critical for Christians to understand. The principle is given to us that the law only applies to them that are under the law. In other words Mexico cannot pass a law that affects me, because I live in the USA. Now, if I go to visit Mexico, then I am under that law system, but as long as I stay in the USA, nothing they do can affect me personally. That is what Romans 3:19 is saying. God tells us that the law is only effective over those that are under that system of spiritual government. USA laws do not affect Chinese citizens or companies unless they come to America. Think about that and ask the questions that I asked you to think about earlier. Does the O.T. law affect you? Does the O.T. law affect the natural Jews? Does the O.T. law affect Satan or any other spiritual entity? Is God bound by the Laws of the O.T.? These are all important questions to consider. You see if Satan is not under the O.T. law, then there is still no punishment for his sins that God can convict him of in any heavenly court. You need to consider these questions and determine, did God somehow put Satan under the Law in order to convict him of his sins? If you do not realize that God is a legal minded God who does everything in a fair and just way, you do not know God very well. God will not throw Satan into hell without him being found guilty and being convicted for his crimes of sin. If God did this, then he would be more like a foreign country that throws people into prison because they just don’t like the way they look. Think about the character of God and realize that God is the supreme judge of all spiritual matters. In the heavenly judicial system, there must be laws that can convict someone like Satan or God would be unjust. God says in Romans 3:9 that the law was given, so that every mouth could be stopped. You see if Satan was unjustly accused of God, he has a legal defense against such actions. However, if Satan is under the law and can see clearly that he is in violation and guilty, he no longer has a defense against such charges.

I think I will end this lesson on that note. I hope and pray that you learned something that was of benefit to your walk with Christ. I’ll try to continue this lesson in a future blog.

If you would like to continue reading this lesson, you can go to “Part 2“.

Posted in Bible Study, Law, Understanding

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Israel, Jesus, Law, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, Truth, understanding

The Abrahamic Covenant and the Promised Seed!

May 13

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.1) Today will be a little bit different perspective on a familiar old subject. This subject is widely taught in many different circles and it is interpreted very differently in most of them. We will look at some familiar verses using the light of the Word of God to see what they mean. Using the Bible to interpret the Bible, we will begin to see and understand the truth of the Word of God. The basis of our lesson today comes from the book of beginnings, Genesis chapter 15. As with many things written in the book of Genesis God uses symbolism to convey hidden spiritual information. This chapter of Genesis is certainly no different. In this chapter God tells Abram that he will have a son, who will be his heir. God tells him that the number of his seed will be as the stars of the heavens. In other words God declares that Abram’s descendants will be innumerable, more than he could count. While these words can certainly be taken completely naturally, I believe that God is speaking about spiritual things in a prophetic way. If you have not ever realized it, God is more interested in spiritual things than He is with natural things. If God can fix you spiritually, then you will do the right things naturally. That is the root cause of America’s problem and the rest of the unsaved world. People want to raise children and think they can do it without God and ignore the Bible and then they are surprised to find our prisons overflowing. You will never fix the sin problem, until you allow God to fix the spiritual problem within the hearts of man with His Word. Teach the Bible in school to your children and see if the world doesn’t change.

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.

We can learn much, by reading God’s commentary in the Bible. God purposely gives us clues in the Bible to what other verses mean. Often times these explanations are revealed in the New Testament. This verse in Galatians is very interesting, since our subject is the Abrahamic Covenant and I just mentioned the Seed of Abraham. We can now begin to see and understand that God was speaking prophetically and in a very tricky manner when talking to Abram about his seed. Seed is one of those types of words that can be either singular or plural and you can’t really tell the difference by just looking at it. However, God reveals that Abraham’s seed was singular and this was symbolic of the one man called Christ Jesus. So we know that Jesus Christ is the Seed being referred to in Genesis 15.

Gen 15:5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

What we begin to see is another example of a Biblical Paradox or Puzzle being given to us. How can one man, Jesus, the Seed of Abraham number beyond the number of stars in the heavens? That of course is a very difficult puzzle to try to answer in a single blog like this. Unless you start to think spiritually and consider what the New Testament reveals to us you will never understand it. Galatians and other books of the New Testament speak of the church as being the children of Abraham. The N.T. reveals that Abraham is the spiritual father of the many people who have come into the church. This is the beginning of understanding this spiritual paradox.

In Genesis 15:9-10 God instructs Abram to take 5 animals and kill them. God tells him to split three of the animals into halves. Now we have a bloody mess on our hands. God tells Abram to spread them out on the ground. We then discover that birds try to come and devour the animals and Abram has to drive them away. These are also all key symbolic references and they symbolize spiritual things. The bloody animals killed represents the covenants of God. The birds of the air represents the demonic forces attempting to prevent the covenant. Blood is always symbolic of the forgiveness of sins. Also in Bible covenants, the animals were split into pieces and they were saying, “thus it be done to me, if I brake this covenant”. So we see that God is revealing to us some very important information about Bible covenants. When two parties would enter into a covenant, they would pass between the bloody pieces of the animals and “cut an agreement” that was mutually beneficial to both participants. Both parties in the covenant were required to follow the terms of the agreement and to be faithful to it. If one party in the covenant had need of something that the other had in their possession, then it would be freely available to the other party. It is exactly like a marriage between a husband and a wife who now have joint ownership of everything. But, did you notice what happens in this covenant in Genesis 15? Who does it say walked between the pieces to cut the covenant with God?

Gen 15:12 And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.

After Abram drives away the birds, the sun goes down and it gets dark. It says Abram enters into a deep sleep and he is overwhelmed with darkness. Darkness never represents God, but the opposite of God. Darkness always represents Satan and his domain. God gives Abram some prophetic words about his natural children being in bondage for 400 years, but tells him they will come out at a certain time. These verses 13 thru 16, no doubt contain symbolism and information beyond the natural, but I will not attempt to teach what I do not know fully. So let’s look at verse 17, for it is really getting good with this verse.

Gen 15:17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.

As you recall Abram killed 5 animals and laid the pieces upon the ground. Now normally if this covenant was between God and Abram, God and Abram would now be walking between the pieces and cutting the covenant with God. However, we find that Abram is asleep on the ground and two different symbolic people walk between the bloody pieces to cut the covenant. What does this tell us? I believe that it tells us that Abram was incapable of keeping the covenant that God wanted to make, so God makes a covenant with himself. Did you notice what the two symbols were that passed through the pieces? One was a “Smoking Oven” and the other was a “Burning Lamp”. I really do not know how these two symbols can represent anything other than God. Both are God in different forms and using different descriptions. Much like God the Father and God the Son are one God but both are unique and separate at the same time.

In Hebrews 12:29, it informs us that God is an all consuming fire. I know this is not exactly a smoking oven, but you can get there mentally if you think about it. People in Bible days did not have electric power and they cooked with fire. If you look up the term translated as “Oven” you will find that it means a “Fire Pot”. So fire is involved in cooking with an ancient Oven. In Deuteronomy 9:3 God is again called a “Consuming Fire” who destroys. However, everything in the Bible has symbolic meaning if you can find it. In Deuteronomy 4:24 God is again called a consuming fire, but it then further stipulates why. God is said to be a “Jealous God”. That means God does not like it when His wife sleeps around like Israel was guilty of. It is very difficult to actually say that the smoking oven represents God, because we cannot find a direct reference in the Bible that says that. However, if you do a word search and look for the word “oven” in the Bible you will see that it more often than not, refers to a place where wicked and evil people are consumed. People who are consumed by the fire of God. God is certainly the fire, but the smoke could be the evil being burned up and consumed. So it is a little more complex than we can imagine right now to declare that God is covenanting with himself. We can look up the word “Smoking” and see what else it reveals in the Bible:

Exo 19:18 And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

It would appear the “Smoke” is associated with the Old Covenant since “Sinai” is mentioned in this verse in Exodus. We know that God gave Moses the law on Sinai. We know that this verse says God is again the fire that descended upon the mountain. The Smoke is equated to that which ascends upwards. We can again derive, that which is consumed by the fire of God is evil and whatever is left would be the ashes and the smoke, that which remains after God’s burning. Fire normally consumes, oxygen, fuel, oil, or whatever is placed in it. God is definitely the Fire, the flame, the heat, the light. But, the oven and whatever is consumed is a different substance than God. If God is the all consuming fire as we have seen in the Bible, the smoke would be representative of that which is burned up or consumed by God.

Psa 18:8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

God is again compared in terms of being a device that produces smoke, like an oven, a furnace or any other similar fire burning device. Out of the nostrils of God comes smoke from something that is burned up or consumed by the fire of God’s mouth. It is a very interesting symbolic representation being given to us.

Psa 37:20 But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.

You see the same terms being repeated in this verse of Psalms 37 and it says God’s enemies who are the wicked, shall be as the fat of the lambs, and they shall be consumed into smoke. Verses like these are helping me to see that God’s covenant in Genesis 15 is God walking between the pieces of animal flesh. So we have in a roundabout way identified one symbol that has been said to walk between the pieces and cut the covenant.

The Lamp on the other hand is more easily interpreted using verses in the Bible. We can find several good examples that declare that God is the burning lamp. A lamp of course is a light in the darkness or night. A lamp involves fire, oil and light. All of these symbols are used for symbols of God in the Bible. Let’s find some of these verses and review them:

2Sa 22:29 For thou art my lamp, O LORD: and the LORD will lighten my darkness.

This verse is exactly what I just said and refers to God as the Lamp that gives us light in the darkness. Darkness again represents the spiritual domain of Satan. People are born into the world that is ruled by Satan. The hearts of men and women are said to be in darkness until they are saved and Jesus Christ shines spiritual light into them.

Psa 119:105 NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

You cannot separate God from His Word, they are one in the same. God is light and in him is no darkness. God is also His Word! God’s word is a spiritual light unto our spirit man within us. By reading and studying the Bible we bring light to areas that have never seen the glorious light of God. God and His Word are the Lamp that is lit to show the way unto righteousness.

Pro 13:9 The light of the righteous rejoiceth: but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.

So many verses in the Bible are very informative and this one has hidden meaning within it. If God is the lamp and the light, what is this verse telling us? The light of the righteous will be GLAD, and the lamp of the wicked will be put out. If Satan is the evil one that rules the darkness, His light or lamp of God has now been put out. To put out a lamp means it is deprived of oxygen or oil or starved of any substance that causes it to burn. This involves any means of causing the flame to be extinguished. We can clearly assume that Satan use to be in the light of God, but God has now turned that light out. It also has spiritual implications to those in the world that refuse God’s salvation and they also walk in the same darkness of spiritual night.

Isa 62:1 For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.

God prophesies that a burning lamp will come out of Jerusalem. This lamp will burn with the light of Salvation. This very bright lamp will also establish righteousness. So who do you think God is talking about? This is a prophetic statement for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that was to be crucified in Jerusalem to bring salvation to the world.

Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Jesus speaking to the nation of Israel, says He is the bright burning lamp that contains the light of the world. But, Jesus then said that men loved darkness more than this light so they were unable to see the light. Jesus equates the evil deeds of men to be of the darkness of the world. God is therefore being contrasted as being the source of good, the initiator of kindness, goodness, grace, mercy, love and compassion, but the men of Israel as a whole, chose to reject these good things and to remain in their evil darkness.

Joh 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Jesus is again very clear in telling us that He is the Lamp that lights our spiritual paths. Jesus says that if we follow Him, we shall not walk in darkness. We could say in modern language that Jesus is the Flashlight of the present dark World. If you have ever been camping in the forest, with no electricity you better take a flashlight or two. To walk in the woods without one would be crazy. This is how people are in the world, without Jesus and the Bible. They are walking in spiritual darkness and they do not know where they are going or what they bump into or stumble over. The symbolism within the Abrahamic covenant is very powerful, the spiritual implications are very informative. We can see that God, the lamp of the world makes a covenant with the smoking oven that contains the consuming Fire of God. It would appear to me that God in His infinite wisdom took the place of Abraham in the covenant and made a covenant with Himself. In this way God could implement an agreement that both parties were capable of keeping. Abraham was a physical natural man and incapable of keeping the covenant at the level that God wanted to establish, so God made a covenant that He could keep in the spiritual realm with Jesus Christ who was the promised Seed that now establishes our eternal covenant with God. So what was God’s solution for man not being able to keep a covenant? The human race is sin prone, error driven, ignorant of spiritual things and God’s ways. How is God going to make a covenant with people who are prone to errors and mistakes? God’s solution is to became one of us, a man who is both human and God to implement an unbreakable covenant with Himself and His eternal man. We then can see that God has used Jesus Christ, the Promised Seed to bring the rest of the human race back into right standing with God. Everyone that accepts the free gift of salvation will be included. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, the door is open to all. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or if you are poor, the door is open to all. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, the door is open to all. Because of what Jesus has done, we have now have the opportunity of a life time being presented to all of us. I pray that you make the right choice.

The Bible is so complex that it is impossible to know everything that is in it and to comprehend what everything in it means is also impossible. So we do the best we can, with God’s help in figuring out what it all means. We would be lost without His help, so I am eternally grateful and I hope that you are too.

Posted in Bible Study, Covenants, Understanding

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, man, Prophecy, Religion, Satan, Symbolism, Truth, understanding

The Promises and Covenants of God are ALWAYS Conditional!

May 12

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.1) I want to discuss a difficult subject found in the Bible that is hard for many Christians to get their minds around. Too many Christians like to put everything on God’s back and make Him completely responsible for everything that happens to them. It is like when a major storm comes and blows their house down and they believe God is in control and He had a higher purpose for doing this to me. However, when you read the Bible and study it closely we find out some very surprising things that should cause us to begin to think differently.

When God makes a covenant with a People on the earth, you will find that God is always capable of keeping the covenant and to Him it was a forever agreement and arrangement. However, what we find in the Bible is that it is not all completely up to God and that you and I have a part to play in the relationship for the continued blessings of God to manifest. Let’s review the principle and then establish this spiritual law Biblically and learn what we can:

Isa 1:19 If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

In this verse in Isaiah, God puts forth a promise to His covenant people. But, this promise comes with conditions. In order for God’s people to eat the good of the land, they must first, be willing and obedient. These sound like two little requirements that are placed upon God’s People! But they really are larger than you think. If people fulfill only one condition such as being willing but not obedient or being not willing and obeying does that match the conditions necessary to eat good? Obviously not, they fail and do not eat the good of the land. This is the basis of a spiritual law, that I call the “IF YOU DO THEN I WILL DO” law! “IF” “THEN” is a popular computer programming construct that is widely used in programming languages. There is also a converse or inverse part of the law that goes something like this:

IF YOU DO THIS

THEN I WILL DO THIS

ELSE THIS HAPPENS!

God knew about IF THEN ELSE computer programming constructs before we knew there were computers. God uses this construction in the Bible in the promises that He makes with humans and the Covenants that He implements with the People. If we apply this construct to the verse we just read in Isaiah 1:19 we can see it more clearly:

IF (YOU ARE WILLING AND OBEDIENT)

THEN

YOU WILL EAT THE GOOD OF THE LAND

ELSE

YOU WILL NOT EAT FROM THE GOOD LAND

This is some very basic Computer Logic applied to the Word of God and yet so profound! If you understand what I have said so far, then let’s go through some other verses in the Bible and determine what else God says about conditional requirements.

Let’s go back and review some words spoken to Natural Israel by Moses from God. These are the Words of God spoken directly to them, but if you look closely they are also prophetic and we can easily notice that they are very conditional:

Exo 19:5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine:

What does it mean to be conditional? If I said I would give you $1000, if you would stay silent for 24 hours, is that $1000 conditional or automatically yours? No, it not guaranteed! We can see that conditional means, if you follow the instructions and rules you will get the $1000, otherwise you do not. The key word is “IF” you satisfy the requirements! Pretty simple concept isn’t it? However, Christians I guess do not understand these concepts, especially when it comes to God and the Bible.

When we read a verse like Exodus 19:5 and it says to Israel that “you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me and above all people”. What was the requirement for this to happen in the natural realm? God clearly said, “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant”, then I will do what I said and make you above all others. So when did natural Israel ever fulfill any of these requirements? If you searched your Bible and could not find it in the Bible, I have to admit that I couldn’t either. It would seem to me, that Israel has a major problem. Let’s continue with the next verse:

Exo 19:6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.

Exodus 19:6 continues to demonstrate what God will do, if Israel obeys and keeps the covenant. What we see in these two verses are a discovery of the fact that God’s blessings to Natural Israel are conditional. In order for those in covenant with God to obtain the best that He has for them, they must do something to qualify for them. Did any of the words in these two verses ring any bells to you? Did you see any parallels or glimpses into another reality that God is prophesying about? To me it was obvious, but to others they miss it, because they may be slightly dull of spiritual eyesight. These key words are echoed in a verse found in the New Testament:

1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

Peter writes to the church and declares to them that they are these “peculiar” people, the holy nation unto God, being priests and kings of the Most High. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? Of course God doesn’t do anything by accident and this verse is put here to show you who the church really is. I know I haven’t introduced you to this concept yet. Many Christian people do not like to think or believe that the Church is a spiritual version of the natural nation of Israel, but yet it is so prevalent in the Bible I do not know how people miss it. This is based upon the concept of natural patterns that point us to greater or higher truths within the spiritual realm. Let us read another verse:

Rev 1:6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Again we see John this time writing about the church and to the church, calling them the kings and priests of God. That qualifies the church as being these royal rulers of the spiritual domain of God. That makes the church a new spiritual priesthood unto God. This is of course difficult to fully accept for many believers. Please do not let it offend you. I will not be offended if you believe something else.

Heb 8:9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

So as we have seen, the blessings of God are conditional. The human continuation and participation within the covenant of God is also conditional. People want to put all of the responsibility on God to whether or not a covenant is valid and that is not what God says in the Bible. You can always depend on God to be faithful and He will never fail you, but that does not relieve you of your responsibility in the relationship.

What if you are married to a spouse and you are the one that is faithful and they are not. Will that work for very long? I know my wife would not put up with it. If you think you can then you are a fool. Is faithfulness a two way street that is required of both marriage participants? Of course it is! So do not put all of the responsibility upon God, God will not fail the covenant. God is eternally faithful. However, humans are imperfect and fail, people make mistakes and God will forgive us. But only if we ask for forgiveness. Repentance is an essential and valuable key part of any Christian life. If we are not sorry for how we how we act and the things we use to do, we are not a Christian. We are just someone who doesn’t want to go to hell.

Hebrews 8:9 clearly tells us that God disregarded Israel, because Israel did not keep their covenant. The Bible says this, God says this and I did not write the Bible. Is God anti-Semitic? That is what some will try to call me for saying something like this. So you can accept it for what it says or you can attempt to explain it away. Covenants with God are always Conditional! Let’s review another Old Testament example of these conditional promises of God:

Deu 28:1 And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:

The key word “IF” is given to the nation of Israel again and God tells them that “IF” they would diligently follow the Word of God that “THEN” God would make them above all nations. There are very specific requirements to the blessings of God and if you continue to read down in this chapter you will also find that there are very specific curses for not following these instructions. This is a Bible principle and a spiritual law being established by God. This is how God works and this should inform us of our responsibilities to listen and obey. We start by recognizing that we have some responsibilities and then we go about finding out what they are and how to follow them or fulfill them.

Jer 4:1 If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, the shalt thou not remove.

You see in Jeremiah God says to Israel, if they would return and put away their abominations, that God would not remove them. There is a very strong statement with very direct consequences being made to the Natural Nation of Israel. There are just too many verses in the Bible like this that declare God will do something if you first do something.

We cannot pray and ask God for something and then when it does not come, think that God said NO! Many times things like praying for specific answers in the Bible have specific conditions and requirements attached them. You have to base your prayer on the Bible promises that provide the answer, pray the right way, believe the right things, do the right things, say the right things, act in the appropriate manner and then God will do His part. This is a staggering concept to many Christians, but yet it is in the Bible if we look.

God always tells us what to do and then expects us to do it. Then God will always step in and do the rest. Read the Old Testament very closely. Notice things that God instructs Joshua when taking Jericho and other such examples. God would always tell them to do something very specific and if they did it, God would come through and do the rest. When Moses went to God with a problem, either about Pharaoh or the children of Israel, God would always tell Moses to do something with very specific steps and requirements or conditions. If Moses followed and obeyed, God would always do His part faithfully. The Bible is full of examples like this.

Jer 31:36 If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

I guess many Christians cannot comprehend that God would require humans to do anything in order to obtain God’s Grace. It is almost unimaginable that Israel could do anything that would cause God to end their Covenant. I have read in a few Bible lessons from other teachers that some people think that God’s love and all of the blessings of His Covenants are unconditionally guaranteed and nothing that anyone does can cause God to back out of it.

We should go back and reread the Bible and look for how many times the word “IF” is used in verses concerning Israel. We will discover that God has put conditions on many of the things that He has given to His people. God placed responsibility of the continuation of the covenant into the hands of those who He was trusting to do the right things and be obedient. If you study carefully you discover that Israel did a very bad job of fulfilling their end of the bargain. What a bargain they had, they had the fastest and most direct way to the Messiah, they had the first choice at Salvation, they were the keepers of the Holy Word of God and they blew it.

NEW COVENANT CONDITIONS

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.

Just as the Old Covenant was conditional, entrance into the New Covenant is also conditional. There is no such thing as Universal Salvation. There is no such thing that everyone is saved automatically, because God wants them to be. God always requires action by man. People need to realize that God has already done everything that He needs to do to get all of the people on the earth saved. However, that does not mean everyone is saved or will be saved. Jesus tells us clearly in Revelation that He is standing at the door of the heart of man, knocking and that clearly indicates that He wants to come in. However, the conditional part of the verse clearly states that the Man on the inside is required to hear the knock and open the door to let Him come in. There are conditions to people getting saved. People are required to act appropriately and let Christ in. There are also specific conditions to staying saved. I really do not want to get into this subject any deeper for I have touched on this subject in other lessons. Realize and understand that the Old Covenant of God with natural Israel was a conditional agreement. It was very clear in the Bible that in order for Israel to remain in Covenant with God, that Israel was required to be faithful to God. Just like in any natural human marriage contract, God’s covenant works this way also. Both parties are either faithful to the vows, commitments and conditions of the agreement or the agreement is terminated. If one party is faithful and the other party is not, the agreement is terminated. There are many very difficult things like this in life and they are also revealed to us in the Bible. Recently in national news several prominent men have been caught being unfaithful to their wives. They have discovered the hard way that there are consequences to their actions in life. Israel may learn very soon that she has also encountered the consequences of her actions.

Then pay attention to things God writes to the church in the New Testament. Why would Jesus and God say so many times a warning for us not be deceived? There appears to be some unseen consequences for being deceived. Perhaps a Christian does not live a long life. But perhaps the Christians finds out like one of the 5 foolish virgins that they were not really known by Jesus. Remember in the 10 Virgin parable there was a need to have oil for the lamps. This sounds like a major condition for entering into the divine wedding feast.

Thank you for reading this lesson. I know there are a of other Bible verses that come to mind that teach this concept that I did not get to include. I appreciate your time reading and I also appreciate your comments, and questions. If you have a prayer request, please leave it and we will pray for you and add you to our prayer list. God bless you until next time.

Posted in Bible Study, Covenants, Understanding

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Israel, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Truth, understanding

Speak to Your Rock! Pt 2 – Do Idle Words Keep You Out of The Promise Land?

May 5

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.6) Today is the second lesson on the subject of the significance of our spoken words. I know this is a very controversial subject and one that many Christians do now subscribe to believe in. However, regardless of what we believe about it, our beliefs do not change what God and the Bible says and the results that we get from the God’s established Spiritual Laws that are found within the Bible. In the last lesson on this subject, we learned about “Why Moses Didn’t Enter Into Promise Land”. God said it was because of Moses’ unbelief, He told him that he would not be able to lead God’s people into the promised land that He had already given to them. Unbelief is one of a Christian’s greatest enemies in receiving a promise from God. This can include the unbelief of what the Bible says or the unbelief of what the Spirit of God is leading us to do. It could even be the unbelief of what a Bible teacher teaches us from the Bible. I am not saying that I am anything important personally in you hearing from God, unless I say what the Bible says and that should make what is said important. All we need to do is read the Bible and see what it says and then believe it, to see that what is written is true or not (Acts 17:11). People should recognize that there are crazy people on the internet doing the same thing that I am doing to help people, many automatically discount what is said as being the same crazy ramblings. By automatically dismissing what someone says, many people at times miss what God had wanted them to know. Not everyone on the internet is crazy, and some of them have some very profound deep things to teach if we are open to them. Learn to judge every teacher by the Word of God and remain open and prepared to change your thinking and beliefs. God is doing some really great things in the world today and those who are open to them will enjoy their benefits. If you would like to read this series from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1“.

So today I want to discuss more about the Bible topic of “Spoken Words”! But not just any spoken words, let’s talk about those that Jesus called “Idle Words”. What are “Idle Words”? Let’s start by reading the lesson’s foundation Bible verse.

Mat 12:36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

Wow! That is an amazingly strong statement from Jesus. Jesus is obviously directing our attention at our spoken words. But, not just any spoken word, but rather one specific type. God tells us personally that the “idle words” that we speak will be judged by God on judgment day. I mean that could be a very scary statement for some people to even think about. Obviously I can see too many people do not believe what Jesus said or either they do not understand what the verse means. Otherwise, they would probably keep silent more often. In today’s world idle words are all around us, on our cell phones, on our tablets in our emails, on internet websites, on Facebook and Twitter on TV, on radio, raining down from our satellites, printed in our magazines, news papers and fictional books. I mean we are bombarded by idle words coming at us from a multitude of different ways. How many of these text messages that we get or send can be considered idle words? Try to examine your Facebook experience and see how many words are crossing your path that can be called idle words. I know of some people and I won’t mention any names that appear like they are never quiet. To hold a phone conversation with them is impossible, because they are the only one speaking and you just have time to say “yea” or “uh?” occasionally. Some people spend hours and hours on the phone talking to everybody about everything. How many of these kind of people do you know? I pray that you are not one of them. It would appear on judgment day that we may have to sit or stand around and listen to everything that people said on this earth for a very long time. Doesn’t that sound fun? No! I do not think any of us will be very happy on judgment day.

I am generally a quiet person. It has been my personality to listen more than to speak. If you knew me, I believe that you would agree. I know many Other people are different, I know that and I do not fault them for being different. But, nevertheless I believe we need to learn what the Bible says about the definition of “Idle Words”. These are the words that God says we will personally have to account for, so what are they? It would appear that we need to learn to avoid these types of “idle words” like the plague. But that can only begin with us first learning about what they are. Here is the definition of the word from Strong’s:

G692

From G1 (as a negative particle) and G2041; inactive, that is, unemployed; (by implication) lazy, useless: – barren, idle, slow.

The concepts given to us in the Bible can so easily go over our heads. Because we don’t understand them, we may simply ignore them. This Greek word G692 means “unemployed” or “inactive”. That is a concept that most Christians do not have a clue what it means. The Greek word is the combination of the negative particle combine with the Greek word G2041 that literally means to work or toil.

I’m not going to do any jokes right here either, because that would be an example of more idle words. You see idle words are contrasted to be opposite to “employed” words “productive” words, “active” words or “working” words. These are all employment, work and job related terminologies but now they are being related to us in association to what we speak. God is saying that our words ought to be working for us and not just be idle or lazy. What we should learn are working words change things. God used His working words to change darkness to light in Genesis 1. Does God expect us to do the same? The answer is Yes! So how do we get our words work for us? Working words are a concept found in the Bible word “edification”, where we use our words to build up like as in a construction project. In the last lesson about Moses’ big mistake, God told Moses to Speak to the Rock and this is an example of working words. Instead of obeying Moses spoke to the people and called them rebellious. God said to Moses to speak to the Rock and get the answer and instead Moses spoke the problem and did not enter into the Promise Land. If you did not read this lesson you should, it is one of the best ones that God has given to me up to this time. What Moses did was an example of “Idle Unemployed Words”. Instead of using his words to work for him and get the answer, Moses spoke the problem and failed to enter into the promise land.

So we can start to understand now that God says every, lazy, idle, useless, unemployed, inactive,and non-constructive word that we speak we will be judged for all of them. How many words in the course of day do we “employ” that are “productive” to get good “results”? The clear implication to this verse is for us to change what we say to words that “work” for us! As Christians we should become aware of the words that we speak. We should think about what we say before we say it. Just because a thought comes into our mind, that doesn’t mean that we should speak it out. This is a common trick of the devil. Satan gives people thoughts in an attempt to get them to speak them out. Why is this so important for Satan to do this? Believe it or not your spoken words gives Satan entrance to come in and kill steal and destroy from you.

People do not understand what God said in Numbers 14:28, that whatever I hear you say that is what I will do to you. People do not realize that God is listening to what they say. People do not realize that God does to them whatever comes out of their mouths good or evil. That is very strong! Many times people like to think that God is in complete and total control of everything that happens to them. In their thinking they do not believe that they have anything to do with what happens in their lives. They believe that it was either bad luck, or just a coincidence, or an accident or just an unfortunate set of circumstances that they are faced with. But, God has established and given to us spiritual laws in the Bible and this is one of them that every believer needs to grasp immediately. You can very easily discount what God says and what the Bible says. But, if you do that it still does not mean that what happened to you is not something that you at least contributed to making it happen.

Let me give you another New Testament verse that repeats what Numbers 14:28 says. This is a Bible verse that is obviously very controversial and hard for many believers to grasp and believe. This verse is found in Mark chapter 11:

Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Jesus gives us the spiritual definition of Numbers 14:28 and clarifies a few details that were not clearly given to Moses. Many times we will learn that God teaches things in progressive stages. He will give us a little bit in one place and let us take it in in small parts and then He will give us a little bit more as we are able to chew and swallow it. This way we are not overwhelmed or choked with too much of the new Words of God. Paul taught this way also. Paul told some I wanted to feed you meat but you were unable to partake and I fed you just soft milk (1 Cor 3:2). So God teaches us a few meaty things in Mark 11:23 about how the spiritual law of spoken words work. I guess I should start by giving you the context of this verse in Mark 11. Jesus was traveling through the countryside and He sees a fig tree with leafs on it. Jesus then goes up to the fig tree looking for figs to eat. Finding none, Jesus speaks to the fig tree to curse it and the disciples heard Him. The next day they all walk by the same fig tree. Suddenly one of the disciples notices that the tree was withered and dried up from the roots upward. So what was Jesus doing? Was Jesus just mad or upset at the tree because it didn’t have any fruit on it? No, I do not think so. Was Jesus showing off and saying to them “look what I can do and not you”? No, I do not think so. Did Jesus say “This happened because I’m God and you are not”? Again, No, I don’t think so. Or was Jesus teaching them and all of us an object lesson on the spiritual law of spoken words? I believe that Jesus was telling them a spiritual secret and demonstrating the spiritual law of spoken words to His disciples so that they would learn a valuable lesson in life. You’ll have to make up your own mind in what you believe and figure it out if Jesus was talking to you also. I would personally pray and ask Him to show you what it means. Jesus is no respecter of persons and what He did for one he will do for everyone.

You can see that a “disciple” of Christ is a word that means a student, a learner, a pupil. Are you one of these? Maybe you think you know everything and you are the master? If you do you are in trouble and being covered and blinded by your ignorance. If you are a Christian you must be a Christ follower forever, a student of Christ forever, or in other words His disciple forever. Only He knows everything and we don’t. So whatever Jesus says to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, I believe He is talking to you and I also! Please do not think that you know more than they do. Learn what Jesus was trying to teach them and we will become what He wanted us to become, more like Him.

So what was the lesson of Mark 11:23? Jesus told them and us that if we would speak to the mountain and believe that what we say would happen, we would get exactly what we say. There are so many lessons to learn from this one verse that I cannot teach them all, nor do I claim to know them all. A mountain is a symbolic representation of a negative situation or set of circumstances that we are facing, possibly an obstacle, either physical, mental, spiritual, financial or whatever we are faced with that appears to be a challenge. Jesus told us to speak to it and tell it to be removed and it would obey us, if we believe. Why is it necessary for us to both speak and believe? What we say and what we believe represents us putting our faith to work. That is the opposite of being idle or unemployed. All people both speak and believe either positively or negatively about things that around them. They either speak an expect good things to happen or speak and expect bad things to happen to them. Speaking and believing involves a decision that we make that even though the problem looks big and impossible to move, Jesus said that it would have to obey us and what we said to it would have to be done!

How many Christians believe this truth? I can see there are a growing number, are you one of them. If you are not one of the ones that believes the LORD JESUS then begin to notice what you say and believe and see if it is not what you get eventually. This principle works for you or against in the positive or the negative, because it is a spiritual law! I know this boggles the minds of religious unbeliever who do not believe what Jesus said. You see I did not write these verses in the Bible, I’m just a news reporter doing my best to show them to you with a greater emphasis of importance. These verses have been in the Bible for hundreds of years and people have just ignored them. We are responsible for the information that they say and how they apply to our life. God told Moses in Numbers that the Rock would obey his spoken working words, but Moses spoke to the people and called them “rebels”. God told him his words would bring the answer and he ended up enlarging the problem. Moses didn’t believe God and didn’t enter into the promise land and this is definitely a lesson for us all today.

Let’s look at some more example verses with the Greek word G692 translated as “idle” just to obtain a greater subject knowledge. This Greek word occurs only in 6 verses and is only used 8 times in the N.T. Jesus used this word in describing the man in the parable that went out to hire workers in his field. He goes to men and asks them why are you idle? They answer no one has hired us and then they go to work for the man. It is self-evident what the word means by studying this parable in Matthew 20:1-6. Not working is the definition of “idle”. Therefore, here is another verse in the N.T. that contains this same word:

2Pe 1:8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Greek word for “Idle” is found in this verse in 2 Peter 1:8. However, it was translated as “barren” in this verse. “barren” might mean the basic same thing as inactive or unproductive. But, I believe that God is seeking that we should avoid this situation of unemployed word from occurring in our life. I know it does not directly say “words” in this verse, but think about what the verse is saying, “in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus”? Isn’t that words? Isn’t “knowledge” obtained by words and we can’t say anything unless we have knowledge to do so” Also it would seem that “Idle” could be considered to be synonymous to being “unfruitful”. God is telling us in this verse in 2 Peter that we should not be either of these. You see to be “barren” can also mean to not bear any fruit. Jesus cursed the fig tree in Mark 11 because it was barren. Do you think he was symbolically giving us some valuable clues to spiritual things? It is also interesting to see the context of this verse. Let’s look back at a preceding verse:

2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

The promised land, symbolically represents these “exceeding great and precious promises” that God has given to us in His word. As this verse says, that these promises have already been given, we are now required to possess them. To become a partaker is the same as to become a possessor. God had given Moses and Israel the promise land and told them to “partake” of it. They did not believe God and therefore failed to obtain what was freely given. The promise land represents the blessings of God. The promises of God also represent the blessings of God. Because Moses did not believe he remained in the curses in the wilderness and died there. This is a powerful type and shadow of what we have facing us today. There are giants in our spiritual promise land today trying to intimidate us and keep us out of possessing it. How do we do this? We speak only words that are “useful”, “employed”, “working”, “productive”, “active”, “positive” and “fruitful” words. Then we avoid all spoken words that are “idle”, “unproductive”, “inactive”, “negative” and “unfruitful” words. This is the lesson of Moses found in Numbers 14 and Jesus and the fig tree in Mark 11. These are the words of Jesus found in Matthew. Avoid these “Idle Words” and you will be very glad when it comes to the judgment day and you have a much better opportunity to possess the promises of God in your life today. Thank you for studying the Bible on this website and please leave a comment if you would like to share your experiences in this area of life. God Bless!

If you would like to continue to read this series of lessons on spoken words, you can go to “Part 3“.

Posted in Bible Study, Understanding, Words

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, Truth, understanding, Words

Many Will Be Called, But Few Chosen! Predestination Debunked!

May 3

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) This is Part 2 in an important series of Bible lessons addressing the erroneous belief of extreme “Predestination”. If you did not read “Part 1” I would highly recommend that you start there and come back to this lesson. Today I will address the erroneous philosophy of “predestination” again using the Bible. In my last blog I talked about how some believe that God intentionally hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that God could work great signs and wonders in Egypt. I guess some people think that God was just wanting to show-off! I do not know how people can get such mixed up ideas, but I guess it takes all kinds. In this blog I want to talk about another “hard saying” found in the Bible that appears on the surface to indicate that God has preselected some people and others He has purposely rejected. It appears to me that some even take it and twist this message to say that God has predestined some for salvation and others for damnation. This of course to me is clearly in error and it violates the character of God and it turns Him into something that He is not. If this was true, it would make God the Great Nazi Deity in the sky, who kills the inferior races and only selects those who are worthy or superior enought to be saved. Isn’t this what Hitler did? Is God the same as Adolf Hitler? I do not think so! What we have is a classic example of what I call “taking ‘a’ truth and trying to make it ‘the’ truth”. This is a widely popular error found throughout the church body where men choose to wrongly divide the Word of Truth in order to believe in their incorrect interpretation of the Bible. People need to realize that there is more than one truth found in the Bible and in order to correctly interpret any verse you have to take into account all of the other related verses. This of course is a very challenging problem we all face, because none of us knows every related Bible verse. Bible study is like building a house or a building. You must start with a basic firm foundation of Biblical truths to begin. If you try to build on anything else your house of interpretations will fall down too easily. So what we do is learn everything that we can about the basics and then start to build upon what we know and correctly apply these things to the new things that we learn. That is the best that any of us can do. Truth always builds upon truth yielding a sound and tight fitting construction, which will result in a structure that is not easily blown down. True Bible Interpretation is not a house of cards that can be toppled easily. So let’s look at one of these Bible verses that seem to indicate “predestination” on the surface.

Mat 20:16 So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Here we have Jesus, God in the flesh speaking to us directly and you can very easily take it the wrong way. You can use your limited human mind to conclude that God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient and therefore, whatever God wants is what happens to everyone. You can take this statement by Jesus to mean that God has chosen some and others He has rejected. I mean on the surface it really looks like this is what it could be saying. However, if you think about it more closely you will see that interpretation is a house of cards. You see why would God call “Many” and only choose a “Few”? If God was only going to select a very few, you would think that God would already know who was going to be selected and not bother calling those that would not be selected! Don’t you think that makes logical sense? Why even call them if they are not being selected? That would make God a teaser and a tempter. Hang some bait out in front of someone and then yanking it away right before they get to it. Sorry, you were not selected! Is that your God? That is not my God, so either we have different Gods or one of us is deceived! However, there are other hard sayings found in the Bible that are equally hard to accept on the surface and here is one of them:

Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

This is a difficult verse on the surface. How can God choose one son over another? You could take this as a predestination act of God, if you wanted to. The verse before this one says that while the children were still innocent and were even still in the womb, that God said the “elder shall serve the younger”. What people do not realize is there is a major difference between “predestination” and “foreknowledge”. There is a major difference between causing something to happen and knowing what will happen. God clearly tells us that He makes known the end from the beginning. Is this because God has predestined the end, or is this because God lives outside of the dimension of time and can forsee the end results. I personally believe that God can see the end and this is what He reports, especially when it comes to the knowledge of what people will do like Jacob and Esau. God already knew the character traits of each child and what they would do and what they would not do. However, “predestination” would dictate that God predetermined what each child was purposed for and preselected one and rejected the other. In other words in the “predestination” theology man plays no role in who God selects. I talked about God being the great puppet master in the sky, pulling everyone’s strings making them do this or that depending on what God wants done at that time. This is a common religious philosophy that is widely taught in some churches. These people subscribe to a “no fault” religion. They believe whatever happens to them in life, it is just not their fault! They did not do anything to cause it and they could do nothing to stop it! That is very ignorant to believe like that, but many people do it any way! After all it relieves them of any responsibility or accountability for what they do.

So why would God choose Jacob and not Esau? If you recall Esau ended up selling his birthright. Jacob probably did some unethical tricks to get his father’s blessing but nonetheless Jacob has became the rightful heir to his father’s name and fortune. You also have to realize that Jacob and Esau and this story is a spiritual foreshadowing of events to come. This story has parallels in the natural that are patterns and types of what God was going to do in the spiritual realm. Jacob is a type of Jesus Christ. I believe Esau is a type of Adam, Jesus Christ’s older brother. But, I know I do not have time to teach this and I probably already opened a can of worms that is causing some readers to draw back, so I’ll stop there for now. What we must realize is that Jacob was selected by God, because of what Esau had decided and the actions that he had chosen. People play a role in what God does through people more than most people realize. What people want and desire, what people think, what people say and do all play a key role in whether God is able to use them. If you want to live in sin and be mightily used by God, guess what, God is not going to hesitate to look for someone else. You are the determining factor to whether God is able to use you!

So why would God hate one son and love another? What does God hate? Let’s look in the Bible for the answer to that important question:

Deu 16:22 Neither shalt thou set thee up any image; which the LORD thy God hateth.

It would appear that God hates it when people serve false gods and idols. Hate is a very strong word. If God hates something it must be very bad. Do you think that Esau could have been involved with another god or idol? Do you know that it is exactly possible, here is another verse that speaks about Esau found in the New Testament:

Heb 12:16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.

This verse in Hebrews is interesting, isn’t it? The verse is talking about “fornicators”. In the Greek this word means “male prostitutes”. Because Esau compramised his integrity and sold his birth right God selected Jacob. You should use your Bible search program and go through and study the verses you can find out about “Esau” for there are many references in the Bible to him. He is a natural type of something in the spiritual realm that God hates. But, also look for verses that refer to “Edom” for this is the nation of children that came from Esau and see what God says about them. It is a fascinating study. Maybe after you read all of these verses you can begin to see why I believe that Esau represents Adam and Satan.

So let’s move on to some verses found in the Bible that directly challenges the theory of “predestination”. These verses will cause a conflict that must be resolved in order to correctly interpret the Bible. I’ll start with one in Proverbs:

Pro 24:23 These things also belong to the wise. It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment.

You see on the surface you ask, why is this verse related to our subject and that is why the Bible is so difficult to understand for many. They just don’t put the pieces of the puzzle together correctly so they end up confused and wrong. This verse ends in a statement that a judge should be fair to everyone. If a judge gave one man a 10 year sentence and let another man off for no time for the exact same crime, would that be fair to the one that got 10 years? Does God have mercy on some people like this and others He does not let off the hook and throws them into hell? Isn’t God the Supreme Judge of the Universe? So does God judge differently than you should? Why do you think that God came to the earth in the flesh in the first place? I believe it was to set an example that we should follow. So we should be attempting to become just like God? I believe that we are. So if God tells us to judge without respect to persons, God is already this way! Do you get it?

Act 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

So God tells us what Peter the Apostle discovered. Peter says that God shows no “respect of person”. This Greek word has the following definition from the Strong’s:

From G4381; to favor an individual, that is, show partiality: – have respect to persons.

This Greek word is pretty clear in its definition. To be partial to someone means you look favorably towards them. It means you place a higher preference or priority upon one than the other. It means you esteem some and look down upon others. This is the Bible definition to having “respect of persons”. It is clear that this is not an attitude that we should possess towards anyone. But, that doesn’t mean we should accept everyone as they are either. If you do, you will have to let your pedophile teachers, teach your Sunday school classes and that would be crazy wouldn’t it?

Rom 2:11 For there is no respect of persons with God.

Unless you are spiritually blind you cannot read a verse like this and still believe in the philosophy of “predestination”. This verse clearly says that God does not show favoritism towards anyone. God does not play favorites. God does not grant favors to anyone. God is fair and treats everyone the same or God is being unfair. You of course can ask a lot of questions and refuse to believe that this applies to God, but you would be failing to see what God is saying in the Bible and that is a huge mistake. So God has said for us to be fair towards everyone, because I am fair to everyone. So what is the determining factor of why God chooses one and not the other? As we saw with Jacob and Esau, it had more to do with what they did and not so much with God forcing the decision. Here is another interesting verse that is certainly relevant to our subject of “predestination”.

Luk 10:42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Jesus is at Mary and Martha’s house teaching and Martha comes to Jesus and complains that her sister is not helping fix the food for everyone. What was God’s response to this question? Did God say, “Mary I have chosen her and not you, I have done all of this for a purpose and a plan that you do not understand”? You see that would be a true “predestination” theologian’s viewpoint. Fortunately for us God did not say this. But, God says “Mary has chosen to hear the good things and I will not take it from her”. It appears that Martha could have chosen the same thing that Mary chose and asked Jesus to feed them when they all got hungry, but she didn’t do that. Jesus seemed to think that Mary’s choice was better than Martha’s choice, can’t you see the difference? Did what Mary choose to do affect her personally and the results that she got? Did what Martha choose to do affect her personally and the results that she got? The answer to both of these quesdtions is, YES! The decisions people make are directly involved in God’s ability to use them and that determines what they get. People have more to do with what God does, than they can possibly imagine.

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.

Apparently God wants to come in and have dinner with you! If God wants in the door, do you think that God is not powerful enough to come in? Why would the omnipotent God be standing on the outside knocking if He really just wanted to come in to eat with you? The answer to that question is because God is a Divince Gentleman. God will not force anyone into anything. They must choose to open the door to let Him in. Do you see how ignorant people can get with their invented religious ideas that God is in control of everything that happens to a man, to his house and him opening the door to let God in? If God was in complete control He wouldn’t be knocking and waiting for someone to let Him in would He? God is God and He is all powerful, but He does not violate your freewill choice. God will not force you to open the door to your heart and let Him in. You have the responsibility to open the door and invite Him in. If you do not do this, God is a perfect gentleman and will not kick the door down like a thief or a robber.

Let me end this blog with this new and different perspective to the subject of predestination. Many times people do not think when they read the Bible so here is something new to consider. If God only chooses some why does this Bible verse say what it says?

Psa 69:28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

You see you can very easily read a verse like this and completely miss what it says and think that it does not apply to anyone or anything. However, Jesus thought it was important enough and says this about it:

Rev 3:5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

So what does this have to do with predestination? It is because you do not see, that you do not understand. This verse says everyone’s name was written down in the “Lambs book of Life“, but that some of these names have now been blotted out. In other words, God expected everyone to be saved, but obviously there are many who did not accept the free gift. You see God did not write your name in the “book of life” after you got saved. The Lamb’s book of life had every name of every human that was supposed to be here on this planet already enter into it. We can therefore conclude that God wanted everyone to be saved and those that overcame are the only ones that their names now remain in the book. So if God predestined anything or anyone, God predestined everyone to succeed and to be saved, but some chose to reject God’s plan and do their own thing. The word “Blot Out” means that the name was already there and removed or covered over using “God’s Whiteout”. People who are young do not understand the concept of “whiteout”, but those who are older do, before computers were around people would type pages manually and have to cover mistakes up with a white liquid paper product. I think you can still buy this product, but I doubt if it is very widely used for anything. This is however, the concept given to us in Word of God. God writes every name in the Lamb’s book of life and then depending upon their actions and decisions, God is forced to remove their name, if they so choose. It is truly amazing what the Bible says when you can see it! God Bless you and may you be blessed with the knowledge of Him that freely gives us all things!

If you would like to continue to read about this subject you can go to “Part 3“.

Posted in Bible Basics, Bible Study, God, Understanding

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

Apr 29

Posted by agapegeek

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

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

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

BIBLE FACT 1: ONLY ONE GOD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRIUNE = THREE IN ONE

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

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

CONCLUSION

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

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

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

Posted in Bible Basics, Bible Study, God, Understanding

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Salvation, Satan, Truth, understanding

The Sin Unto Death! Part 2 The Unpardonable Sin!

Apr 28

Posted by agapegeek

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

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

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

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

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

THE UNPARDONABLE SIN

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

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

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

G987

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, death, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Satan, sin, Truth, understanding

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

Apr 27

Posted by agapegeek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Col 1:27 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

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

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

Posted in Bible Study, Covenants, Understanding

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Covenants, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Satan, Truth, understanding

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

Apr 23

Posted by agapegeek

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

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

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

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

Take Your Rod.
Get Your Brother Aaron.
Gather the People before the Rock.
Speak to the Rock.
Give Everyone a Drink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Moses Lifted His Hand.

6. Moses Smote the Rock.

7. Moses Smote the Rock Again.

8. Moses Gave Everyone a Drink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted in Bible Study, Understanding, Words

129 Comments

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, man, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding, Words

Traps and Pitfalls, Common Mistakes in Bible Interpretation!

Apr 9

Posted by agapegeek

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

NO PRIVATE INTERPETATIONS

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

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

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

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

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS AND MAKING WRONG ASSUMPTIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THINKING YOU KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING

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

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

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

INTERPRETING VERSES OUT OF CONTEXT

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

Posted in Bible Interpretation, Mistakes

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Knowledge, Prophecy, Proverbs, Religion, Truth, understanding

Understanding God’s Spiritual Family Structure!

Mar 30

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 2.1) This is “Part 1” in a series of very important advanced spiritual Bible lessons that will change your life and outlook on God and His Holy Word if you permit Him to do so. Do you know what a family is? How do we define a family in the modern world? Satan is diligently attempting to pervert the family definition and corrupt God’s original design but these lies still do not take away from God’s truth. Reading the Bible we can very clearly see that God created a specific family unit system and a very specific designed family structure here on the earth. Was this family design something brand new or was it patterned after something in heaven that already existed? Please let me give you a verse of great importance as a foundation to this entire series. It is found in the Book of Luke and is understood to have been spoken directly by Jesus quoting from an obscure minor prophet name Micah:

Luk 12:53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother-in-law.

Ok, this is the mystery verse that initiated this Bible study series. I have given it to you first to help you anticipate where God is taking us. When I read this verse a tremendous curiosity to what God was speaking of filled my heart. I just had a great desire to go and search the Bible to find out the answer to the mystery being spoken of by the Lord Jesus. I prayed and asked God to help me to understand and step by step over several years He taught me so very much about His Spiritual Family. After this study. a lot more of the Bible came into a much clearer focus and was so much more understandable than before.

Let us remember that it was that God created the first human family in our present world system, and this event is described to us in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Take a moment and read these verses again. You should be able to observe that this created first family unit only consisted of one man called the husband and one woman called his wife. It is also important to note where the woman came from. The woman came from the body of her husband and was not created or formed separately or independently from her husband. This truth will become more important as you learn what this represents in the family of God. This earthly created family grew and expanded into numerous children and eventually became very large in numbers. In the terms of the current estimated human population on the earth today, the family of Adam has now grown to and exceeded nearly 7 billion people. We must therefore conclude from this very solid scriptural information that a real family by God’s definition and design is comprised of a single man, a solitary woman and at least some children. Does God have a spiritual family like this? Did God ever have a spiritual family that was the pattern for this created family of Adam? Here is a new question to also consider, what will the family of God look like at the end? Will the ending spiritual family of God in Revelation 22 be the same pattern of what has already come before? If you did not know it yet, God had a family exactly like this in heaven prior to creation and this is exactly how it will end up in the final chapter of Revelation. Therefore, the original design of God’s family in the spiritual realm will be how the final family of God will also be patterned in the eternal spiritual realm after this world that we live within is completed.

God in the Bible is defined to be an eternal Spirit being but, the natural universe that we are now a part of, it had a created starting origination point also called a beginning (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1). Therefore, I believe that whatever God created here in the natural realm must have originated from the pre-existing spiritual realm. I believe from years of Bible study that whatever was made manifest here in the natural realm had to be patterned from that which already existed in the eternal spiritual world. I know that you may not yet understand patterns and I will give you a good introduction to pattern concepts before I continue this lesson on the spiritual family of God. Can we at least begin by agreeing that the spiritual realm existed prior to the physical/natural realm? Surely, we can understand the concept of patterns by reading Genesis 1. Lets talk about light in Genesis 1 and where it came from! God is defined to us in the Bible as “light” where no darkness exists (1 Jn 1:5). Using this information, we can go and look at Genesis 1:2 and see that there was no light found to be present on the earth and darkness covered the face of the deep. However, remember that the Creator God was called a spiritual light and He definitely pre-existed in heaven before creation took place. In Genesis 1:3 God said “Light Be” and light then came into existence within the natural realm. What was this natural light patterned from? If God was the spiritual light found in heaven, then it must have been patterned after God. How do I know that? Well if you read the end of the book you will see in Revelation 22:5 that we will have no need for the sun, moon or stars or even candles because God will be our source for eternal light again. What I have tried to demonstrate is how light had to exist in the spiritual realm first and was then made manifest in the natural realm from a pattern of the spiritual dimension and then will again finally be transferred back into the completed spiritual realm of light in the end with no need for the natural anymore. Did you understand that? It is so important that you fully grasp these cycles of repeated pattern concepts.

What we are trying to do in this introduction of the subject is to establish that patterns were created by God for us to learn about hidden new spiritual things from the Heavenly. Spiritual Light had to eternally exist in heaven originating from God prior to the creation of the natural light here in this dimension. God in heaven had to be their only source for light because that is how it will end up in the end. Do remember what Jesus said? Jesus said, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev 1:8). Jesus was saying that how it was in the beginning is how it will end up at the end because the Lord changes not (Mal 3:6). We also learn from reading in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that God says “the thing that has been is that which will be again…” In this verse God claims there are repeated patterns. Therefore, what pre-existed in heaven has now come into existence on the temporary earth in natural terms and after this age is completed the spiritual light of God will again be our only source for light.

I pray that we all understand these essential concepts. We have just learned based upon the verse in Revelation 1:8, Malachi 3:6 and Ecclesiastes 1:9 that how it was in heaven before the earth’s existence is at the least potentially how it is designed by God to be in the end and if not, then God has changed and must have lied to us in His word. So let me ask you this “Which came first, the spiritual or the natural”? If you answered the spiritual you would be correct. Then let me ask you “How will it end up”? Do you understand what I am trying to teach here today in this introduction? It is very much like the old human question which came first the chicken or the egg? In this classic human debate, people ask how can a chicken arrive on the earth without coming through an egg? Then the argument goes into a circular debate, how then did the egg get here without a chicken to lay it? What people fail to understand is that there was a more intelligent God than they are that was also involved in the entire process. That is a key point to remember in reading the rest of this lesson series. This more intelligent Creator God has some pretty amazing things hidden in the Bible that reveal many of the answers to the questions that we have all had at one time about things in the Bible and in the world around us.

I hope that you are beginning to see some new patterns revealed in the Bible how God teaches us that certain specific things existed in heaven before they ever existed here on the earth. Perhaps I should regress and speak briefly about what humans use patterns for in our natural world. A seamstress will use patterns to create new dresses, shirts, pants, or other pieces of clothing. Each usage of the pattern replicates the original design using whatever fabric or customizations that are desired to produce the final product. To the untrained eye it is often difficult to recognize several products that come from the same pattern. However to the expert it is usually obvious. This is exactly how the Bible is also, what I see as an obvious pattern will often be overlooked by a novice Bible student. Where do you think man learned the use of design patterned concepts in what they create in the natural? Since man was made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26) it is clear to me that what man does that is successful and beneficial here in the natural must have originated from what God has previously done in the spiritual. People use patterns in almost every manufacturing and building process. It is a dominant business working model and best practice for success. Therefore, learn the lesson of patterns because I will be talking about them a lot in this lesson series.

I could give you many other verses to help establish the pattern truth in the Bible, but I am going to skip most of these verses to keep this lesson manageable and give you a couple of examples that are directly related to what I am trying to teach about this subject on the spiritual family of God. Begin today in this lesson by understanding that God created the natural things found in this world to give us insight into the unseen pre-existing spiritual things. What God created and how God created it reveal things that have been hidden since the foundation of the world. Another way to say this is that God created natural things as a vision, or view or a window into the unseen spiritual dimension. Here is a verse that might help you to better follow what I am saying:

Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

This is an amazing verse of truth being presented to us from God. It speaks clearly and directly about the things that God created in the beginning. God said that the hidden qualities of God can be clearly observed within the views of our current natural creation. This would include the design, the components, the systems, the laws, the organization and the structure of our planet, the world and the universe around us. That is some highly informative information. God says that you can look around you and find the hidden characteristics of God in the things that surround you everywhere. This of course does not mean that we worship creation and ignore the Creator and that is what many in the government, Hollywood and TV do. What God is telling us in this verse is that the most isolated men in the darkest, deepest parts of the world who have never heard the Gospel preached are without excuse. Meaning they could easily find God, if they only looked closely around them and saw Him. This is technically only possible if the natural realm contains patterns from the spiritual realm. In the book of Hebrews chapter 11, God speaks to us about Enoch who walked with God and was taken because of his extreme close relationship with God. Let’s read this verse and then consider what it teaches us:

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.

Did you ever think and consider that there were no preachers, no churches, no Bibles, no witnesses to the truth and nobody to talk with to confirm that there was a God when Enoch was alive? If you do the calculations from the dates and times of birth you will find that even Adam had died when Enoch was taken up to be with God. Thereofre, even Adam who talked with God in the garden was no longer avaliable to consult on the existence of God. In fact, in John 6:46 Jesus teaches us that no man including Adam and Enoch had ever seen God directly. How then did Enoch find this God and know Him so very well? I think that is a really good question to consider. Is this type of relationship with God still possible today for men to know God in this level of intimacy that God still takes us up? If you did not know it, it will happen very soon again and you could be possibly left behind like those in Enoch’s day. I believe it is possible for you to know God exactly like Enoch knew God and even greater! So let’s get back on the subject of God’s Spiritual Family Structure and prove this concept using the Bible that God had one of these in heaven.

Mat 10:25 It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?

Here in this verse in Matthew, Jesus is speaking to the disciples. This verse has great information within it, as long as you do not overlook what it says. Jesus is calling himself the Master and the Lord. He then tells the disciples that if the Jews said that the Master of the House is “Satan”, how much more will the servants and the members of the household be also called “Satan”. There are two very important key words found in this verse of scripture. First, is the word “master of the house” and this Greek word means the “Head of the Family”. Jesus is the Head of a New Family of God. The next key word is “household”. This Greek word means “relatives” and those that live in the same “house”. It implies a close relationship between the “Head of the House” and those who are part of His family.

So apparently God does have a spiritual family, with family members, relatives if you please that live in the same house. These relatives are us, the church now and here is another important verse that confirms this statement of truth:

Eph 2:19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

We can clearly see two contrasting groups of people being spoken of in this verse. One group of people are called “strangers” and “foreigners”. Have you ever been to a family reunion and not known some of the people there? Usually you know everyone that is present at the family reunion. However, if you come from a really big family you might sometimes not know every new child that is born since the last time you have gotten together. Then other family members marry new spouses and the family continues to grows and it can be challenging to keep track of everyone all the time. Nevertheless, what would you call someone who just shows up at your family party that no one there knows? They would be called a stranger to everyone. This was the exact way of God’s spiritual family when we were not saved, we were once foreign strangers to God’s spiritual family. Until we were saved, we were not members of that spiritual family, so something must have occurred for us to be known by God’s family. This verse in Ephesians ends with a statement that we (the church) are now in the “household” of God. Again this Greek word, means that we are now a member of the family and even a close relative of the same family or household. Something changed or happened to put you into this family of God. Do you remember what that was? If you do not you are in trouble. If you have not been saved, you are not a member of this spiritual family. These verses imply that not everyone will be saved, so those that teach Universal Salvation have a major theological problem that they must just ignore.

Now I am going to introduce you to a verse in the Bible that I have already alluded to. Maybe you did not realize it, but Jesus has established a new family of God. Why do I say that? Because the Bible seems to imply that the Old family of God had some significant problems with it.

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.

Here we have another important verse that has great revelation if we choose to see it. Jesus Christ the risen Son of God is said to be the head or master of a new spiritual house (family). Did you know the Hebrew word for Son (H1121) is “ben” and it literally means a builder of the family name? Therefore, Jesus being a Hebrew walked the face of the planet and called Himself both the Son of God and the Son of Man. What we discover from this new information is that Jesus is a unique product combination and the manifestation of a son from two separate and distinct dimensions. One dimension was spiritual (Son of God) and the other dimension was physical (Son of Man) and Jesus embodies both of these realms simultaneously as a qualified Family Builder and name extender. Wow, I do not really know if you heard what I said but it was important. Therefore, only Jesus was capable of rebuilding a new family and restoring the natural family of Adam after he sinned and the spiritual family of God to create a brand new family that consists of chosen select members of each of these previous dimensions, while omitting and leaving out those that God does not desire in. That is very tricky and extremely intelligent, if you ask me.

Did God have a pre-existing spiritual family before the creation of Adam and Eve? Did this family have a wife? Was God her husband? Who were the spiritual children in the previous Family of God before the creation of Adam? What we must do is look at Revelation 20, 21, and 22 and see that if God has a bride and children there then He must have had those also before our world began or God has changed and we know that is not possible. There are so many questions to consider and answer. The Bible reveals a lot of information on this subject and I will continue it in another future lesson. Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible with me and I pray that I helped you to see a new spiritual perspective of an old familiar subject. God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading this series, please click here “Part 2“.

Posted in Bible Study, God's Spiritual Family, Understanding

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, Family, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, man, marriage, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding, woman

Understanding the Bible is the Word of God!

Mar 27

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) If you are reading the Bible like it was just a book of fiction or a history book or a text book, or even a reference book or an encyclopedia, you are probably missing the most important thing that you need to know about the Bible. Hopefully, you are already a Christian and already know God and understand that this book called the Bible was God’s handbook and personal letter written for you and to you. The Bible is by far the most unique book that you will every encounter. It is written in a complex and unique style like no other book that you can imagine. This book written over a vast amount of time by numerous men who were given the task of recording it, is unique in quality and content. One of the most important things to remember when reading the book, is who the author is. If you are not a Christian, this will not matter, but if you are God is the author of the entire book. Just because God is not here physically, does not mean God is not here spiritually and that He has chosen to use people to give us His message of hope.

2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

You can clearly see that this scripture in 2 Timothy claims that the Bible comes directly from God. This verse informs us that God inspired the writers what to write. The Greek word for inspiration actually means “divinely breathed or spoken”. That means the words came out of God’s mouth before they went recorded into the book. If you do not understand the significance of that statement you should read it a couple of hundred times until you do get it on the inside of you.

Jer 30:2 Thus speaketh the LORD God of Israel, saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.

Here in this verse in Jeremiah we can again see a verse of scripture that claims the words that Jeremiah wrote were the sayings of the Lord God. God tells Jeremiah directly what to say and then Jeremiah takes God’s words and writes them down for the nation of Israel to read and hear. This is a spiritual message delivery system that God created and utilized extensively. It is a mediator concept where a man is selected by God to be His messenger. God anoints this man for the job and then speaks to him to give him the message that He wants spoken to the people. We can clearly see that these words came out of the mouth of God before they ever were written down. God spoke them, men heard them and then finally wrote them down for us to read. God is a Spirit (John 4:24)! God is invisible to the natural eyes of man! God’s face has never been seen by any man in His spiritual form. So how would a spirit being talk with natural beings? I suppose he could just talk to men from the clouds like a giant loud speaker. It seems that when God did this when Jesus was baptized that some men heard it and others thought it thundered (John 12:29). So this does not seem to be the most effective way of communication. God could go around to everyone individually and give each one a dream and then everyone would have to figure out if it was the pizza they ate last night or if God was trying to talk to them. God could do any number of things, including writing on the side of a mountain using giant letters like a God sized bill board. However, whatever God does to try to get your attention, it would have be something that could possibly be interpreted as being something else also. If God did not do this He would violate your right of choice, if He presented you with any overwhelming evidence to His existence. So God gave His Words to a single man at a time. They were each given specific message pieces and specific words to write down. These words were then supposed to be distributed to the rest of the human race. This was God’s divine system of delivery. Hire a messenger, give them the message and we are supposed to do the rest.

While the Bible has multiple scribes or men that were given the task to record the words of God in book form, we must realize that all of the words were given and inspired by God. This book says nothing that God would not want you to know and to understand right here and right now. It doesn’t say anything that God wouldn’t say to you if you could stand before His throne in heaven and ask Him questions directly. This book contains the commandments, laws, thoughts, warnings, feelings, ideas, knowledge, understanding and wisdom of God in word form. It is a direct and personal letter full of valuable spiritual information that is designed to help you to know the author and to know who you are and your importance to the author. You should approach the Bible with this attitude of reverence and read it with the expectation that you will be hearing something directly from the mouth of God. When you approach the Bible in the right way with humility, God will not let you down and He will speak to you. I know this for a fact and you can also! God Bless!

Universal Salvation, Is Everybody Going to Be Saved?

Mar 22

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.3) The is Part 1 of a series of important Bible lessons countering the lies of the enemy being taught in churches called the doctrine of “Universal Salvation”. I know it takes all kinds of different people to come up with some of the stuff that I have heard being taught from the Bible. They probably have a lot of help from Satan to invent these concepts, but that is just how Satan works. One of the most obscure and ridiculous things that I have heard being taught from certain nameless individuals is that everyone on the earth will be saved eventually. This would include mass murders, terrorists, rapists, and everybody else that you can think of. People base their beliefs upon a limited number of scriptures that seem to indicate the possibility of this occurring, but they also ignore many other scriptures that directly contradict and conflict with their beliefs. This is a classic example of how some people read the Bible and have taken “A TRUTH” and have exalted it to become “THE TRUTH”. People make this mistake all the time in many Christian denominations. It is a very dangerous practice, but yet one that is found widespread in almost every church. This type of teaching is what I call extremism. They will take a truth to an extreme while excluding all conflicting verses they do not agree with. However, the only correct way to interpret the Bible is to review all truths and all scriptures on a subject and then balance them all together.

People who teach this philosophy of Universal Salvation, start with believing in the complete saving power of the shed blood of Jesus, the stated love and mercy of God and the divine sovereignty of God and these are actually all very good truths to believe in. They claim that the Bible says Jesus has paid for everybody’s sin by His death on the cross and by His shed blood He has purchased or redeemed us all from any future eternal torment. They are at least partially right in those beliefs, but yet still mostly wrong misapplying them that everyone is now saved. They embrace sover very basic Bible truths and then jump to some incorrect outrageous conclusions. You see there is more than “One Truth” in the Bible! If you only take a few of the truths and ignore all of the other truths in the Bible you are only partially right, meaning you are mostly wrong. No lie from Satan is based upon completely false teachings no found in the Bible. Every very good lie is based upon a lot of Bible truths with mixed in human reasoning and lies making them much more difficult to see. Here is another popular verse that these teachers like to use to promote their idea of Universal Salvation:

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.

God being an omnipotent God says that He is not willing that any should perish. Omnipotent means of course “all powerful”. Since God holds all power, whatever He desires is what happens, according to these religious people. These types of teachers have concluded that God’s will, will prevail over all others. They can even claim that everything that happens in the world is always the will of God and therefore they justify all of the evil in the world as being something from God also. So in their minds that have determined or reasoned that if a man like an Adolf Hitler has killed over a million Jews it was the direct will of God that this occurred. So the universal salvation peddler says that Adolf Hitler will eventually be saved like all the rest of us. It is really a crazy belief system and one that makes no logical sense to me. However, I do understand how they logically arrived at their state of deception. I believe many people have wanted to believe this teaching because of their close relatives or friends that they knew who have died without knowing Jesus and they do not know what happened to them and they do not want to think of them being tormented eternally. Therefore, they embrace a false sense of hope in order to believe this person made it into God’s family.

People who believe things like this usually do not believe in an enemy or an unseen opposing evil spiritual force like demons. They purposefully close their eyes so that they do not understand that there are two different spiritual forces at work in our world today. These two spiritual forces are in direct competition and opposition to each other for the souls of the people in the world. One spiritual group is called those of the “Day” and the other spiritual group is called those of the “Night”. The Bible says that those who are in or of the “Day” have the light of Jesus Christ shinning in their hearts or spirits (2 Peter 1:19). Then those in the “Night” are those without the light of Jesus and are they that dwell in the darkness controlled by Satan. Two separate spiritual divisions. one of Light and the other of Darkness (Acts 26:18)! Here is a scripture that has great significance to our subject:

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.

Universal Salvation teachers like to think that God is an all loving God and a God who is full of mercy to everyone. After all, what loving, all powerful God would allow any of his innocent creation to go to a place of eternal punishment? It is so amazing that the Bible tells us that Satan has deceived the whole world in Rev 12:9. That is a pretty broad statement and an all inclusive term. However, Christians we know are in the world, but not of the world so we can see that Christians have not generally been deceived. What we must discover and get others to see is the fact that Satan has deceived a lot of people into not believing the truth. Then people need to understand how Satan has accomplished this deception.

What is Satan’s motivation to deceive people if everyone is going to be saved? Have you ever asked your self that question? I mean come on and think with me for a change using your brain for change. If you continue to read in Revelation 12 you see that Satan is very angry and has great wrath towards the human race and those that are in the church, because it says that he knows his time is short. Satan can clearly see that things in the spiritual realm is winding down to a final conclusive point of time. He can see what is happening in heaven the spiritual realm, the church and the physical world. He is trying to cause what God said in the Bible that is soon to occur, not to occur. This is the key motivational factor for why Satan is trying to deceive you right now. Satan’s only hope is to destroy the nation of Israel and to eliminate the Church or at least keep the church divided. If Satan can do either of these, he thinks he can change his eternal fate and destiny. At the very least he thinks he can put it off a little longer and delay it from happening so fast.

There are many who struggle with the fact that there are many religions in the world today. Why would a loving God create or allow so many possible ways for man to better themselves and to achieve a higher state of being, they were not all legitamate paths to travel? Many people have concluded that God loves people so much that he made many ways to achieve salvation. However, I believe, that the primary reason God has allowed this to occur is for many compolex purposes, but it all goes back to the fact that God gave every man the right to choose. Giving man a freewill is God’s right of giving the man the right to be wrong! When God created the first man and woman on the earth, He presented them with a simple binary choice. He even told them which one to choose and which one to avoid and yet they made the wrong decision. Any choice presented to us by God dictates that we have the responsibility of things to choose from and a direct decision to make. But, it does not mean that every way that we have chosen to go in is the right way or the correct way for us to go in. That is what Universal Salvationists would like you to believe. It does not matter what you choose the everntual outcome will be the same becasue of God’s Grace. However, let’s get back to why Satan is deceiving people today? Those in the far east and the rest of world that have chosen to believe in Buddha as their choice or option when it was presented to them have actually fallen into this trap of the enemy’s deception. Satan causes religions to spring forth as instruments of depction. What makes you think that it does not matter what you do here on the earth and what path you select to travel on? What makes you believe that choosing Christianity is no different than choosing Islam? Just because you select an Islamic path, it does not mean that this was the correct way to God. It is kind of like the old saying, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. That is the dilemma that people are faced with today everywhere in the world. Because, they do not know this True unseen God they usually end up looking for Him in the wrong places. After all any religion is better than no religion, or is it? Could it be that Satan has put all of these other religions in the world in order to deceive people from choosing the right one and to keep people from selecting the only way that will let them into the Kingdom of God? Why can’t there be One Absolute Truth against many lies? If I was the enemy that is what I would do. I would put out so many options, so much propaganda, distractions and smokescreens that nobody could see or have time to find the truth. It is an amazingly useful strategy in war time, isn’t it? Keep your enemy distracted with little things here and there and then strike with a big thing when they are not looking. This is a common ploy of the Taliban in Afghanistan. You of course have to understand that there is a spiritual war going on. If you refuse to read and believe the whole Bible and only take a few verses out of context to justify your beliefs you can be wrong like the other religions in the world.

God wrote the Bible in a fashion using techniques that purposely allowed men the right of choice. They can read the Bible and get out whatever they want to see from the Bible and to ignore what they do not want to see. God tells us to specifically to “rightly divide the Word of Truth” (2 Tim 2:15). This verse implies there are many ways to wrongly divide the Bible. Just as there are many false religions God wrote the Bible to allow many false teachings. So how do you know when you are right or not? That is a really good question. It starts with knowing the author personally, and then He opens the book up for you to see what it really means, if you are interested of course.

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

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Salvation, Truth, understanding

In the Last Days Knowledge Shall Increase!

Mar 18

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.4) This is Part 1 on the subject of God’s Knowledge in the Bible. I always try to teach how important it is in correct Bible interpretation to be open to new ideas, thoughts and to things that maybe you haven’t ever heard or considered before. Why do you think that this type of noble attitude might be important to have while studying the Bible? I think if for no other reason, it is based upon the factor of human ignorance and that we are not God who knows it all. We as ignorant humans still have a lot left to learn from our God. If you think that you know it all, or at least that you already know all that you need to know, you are already potentially deceived into believing a lie. Satan I believe wants you to think that you are smarter than you really are. Whenever this deception occurs you are then not going to make the effort to seek to know the truth of God’s Word. Satan wants you ignorant of the truth. You are easily defeated as an ignorant Christian. However, God also gives us another very good reason for having a positive attitude and he tells us something that is very profound in the book of Daniel:

Dan 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

This verse is a great witness to the fact that God has concealed the meaning of this book until the “time of the end”. To “shut up” means to hide, keep secret or conceal. This is a common methodology of God found throughout the Bible. God has hidden information for us to find. This information is revealed by the Spirit of God at the proper time. For some scriptures it was during the time of the Apostles and Paul when God revealed vast amounts of new revelation. But, it is also for our time based upon this verse in Daniel, that we live in right now. If you didn’t know it, we are in the time of the end, and guess what it is almost over. Many of you can look around and see how fast technology is advancing. But, the net revelation of this verse, to me speaks of both natural and spiritual things. We of course in the last 20 to 30 years can see the explosion of computers and the internet. As a result of this technology, man’s knowledge has grown astronomically. But, God not to be out done by man is also doing something new. He is revealing the Word of God like never before on a scale that is difficult to comprehend fully. I believe that if you are reading Bible commentaries that are 100 years old or older then you are reading information that has been updated and expanded so much that it sometimes doesn’t resemble the outdated theology. It doesn’t mean they were wrong, it just means God has shed more light on it and revealed a more complete meaning of the verses.

Pro 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

Here is a promise from the Old Testament that God said he would pour out His Spirit and by doing so, the result is a new revealing of His word to His people. I believe that this is a prophetic verse that we can take hold of and claim for ourselves today. This also reminds me of some other verses in the Bible about the harvest.

Jer 5:24 Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the LORD our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the later, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Natural rain involves water falling from heaven physically, but God is speaking of a spiritual rain in this verse. Spiritual rain is the water from heaven where Jesus is right now and this rain could be a new understanding of His Word.

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

In the book of James, it basically quotes from Jeremiah the same reference, but this time it puts it into the context of the return of Jesus Christ. God is looking for the precious fruit of the earth and that is not apples, oranges and bananas. The reference and implied meaning of this verse is that when the Apostles and Paul wrote the New Testament that was the early rain. God poured out His spirit and men increased in spiritual knowledge like never before. Paul wrote 2/3 of the New Testament after being filled with the Holy Spirit and God revealing to him the meaning of many of the Old Testament scriptures. However, God did not reveal to Paul the meaning of Daniel, did he? Have you read anything in Paul’s writings that directly mention Daniel? I have not, however I do believe that Paul wrote many things that do help us to understand this book that we have yet to see and understand. You see in this verse in James, God also speaks of a later rain. The early rain is a reference to a beginning of the rainy season. The later rain could be implied the end of the rainy season. I do not think that means there are new books of the Bible to come, I believe that it has to be a new understanding of what has already been given to us by God. I believe that God has been pouring out His Spirit for the last 100 years and as a result, knowledge and understanding of God’s Word has greatly increased.

You can see this implied reference from Daniel 12:4 where the writer is told to seal up the book until the time of the end. Did you ever notice that there is no obvious encryption code found in the book of Daniel or any other book of the Bible? How is it that God can write things in a known language and the reader not understand what it means for hundreds or even thousands of years. Have you really ever thought about this and asked how God accomplished this task. Now is certainly the time of the end and therefore something should be transpiring to open up this book so that our understanding can be greatly increased. If now is the time of the end like I believe it is, then we ought to be learning new things at an exponential rate. If now is the time of the end there needs to be stuff happening to let us know it. We should be able to look around at the prophecies and see them being fulfilled all around us. Have you seen it happening? I have seen it almost everyday. We will only be privy to it if you are open to change and new ideas that God will be revealing very soon. Either decide to be ready for it or be prepared to miss it, for it will happen very soon and ver fast.

If you would like to continue reading in ths series about “Bible Knowlege” you may go to “Part 2“.

Posted in Bible Interpretation, Keys to Understanding

19 Comments

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Knowledge, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding

Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight – Understanding God’s Methods of Hiding Information in the Bible! Pt 1

Feb 26

Posted by agapegeek

The Introduction:

(Ver 1.5) This is Part 1 in a series of basic important Bible lessons that deals with the question “Why is the Bible so Hard to Understand?” Many of us have certainly discovered by reading and studying the Bible, that everything that is presented in the Bible, is not always clearly perceived or self evident. In other words, everything in the Bible is not easily understood using natural human reasoning or logic. I am personally convinced that the Bible contains many outstanding truths, even though the Body of Christ hasn’t been able up to this point, to agree on a lot of them. I can at least hope that you too can see and understand the challenge that we all face in studying the Bible. Based just upon the number of Christian denominations in the world you can see that God has chosen to conceal Himself not only from the people in the world, but He has also chosen to hide Himself in His Word to give the church, the opportunity to search for Him and to discover Him. By searching for the truth we come to know Him who is the Truth (John 14:6). We can conclude that God, if He wanted to remain a mystery forever and keep men in the dark all that He would have to do is to stay silent and not speak to us. But we can clearly see by the Bible alone that He has given to us, that He has not chosen to do that. Let’s briefly establish the fact that God has hidden information in the Bible.

Pro 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

To make something known implies something was first hidden from plain view. To make God’s Words known implies that what we read in the Bible we need God’s help to understand. There is an implied unveiling process in this act. There is an intentional act of uncovering also implied. To “reveal” that which was hidden. The Bible is God’s Words written down by chosen men. These words are not encrypted in a modern coded system of unreadable text. Yet these words according to the Bible must be revealed in order to be understood.

Eph 6:19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

In Ephesians we are told that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was a mystery. Even Jesus confirmed this reality when he told the Jews to search the scriptures because these were words that testified about him (John 5:39). If they had to search to find Jesus it is very clear that Jesus was hidden in the words that were written in the O.T. As we have seen the Jews did not understand the scriptures and did not embrace the Gospel of Jesus. We can clearly see that while Paul and the other apostles used the Old Testament as the basis for their message, very few of the Jewish leadership understood it. So was it hidden from them only? Or did they just choose not to see it?

Rom 16:25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,

In this letter to the church, God declares that which was being preached came as a result of a revelation being given. A revelation is a revealing of that which was hidden from plain view. It was written in their language, but they did not see it or perceive it. Why is that so important to understand?

Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Here is an Old Testament reference that describes the nature and character of God. This verse declares that it is to God’s glory to conceal or hide information. But in the same sentence it also declares that “kings” are intended to search it out? Who is the King of kings? Jesus is the King of kings. Who are these “kings” that Jesus is King of? Who are these kings that need to do this searching for this hidden information? I believe we are these “kings”. So I have given you several scriptures that all point you to hidden information in the Bible. There are certainly many other scriptures that I could have included and you can find them if you search.

There are a large number of reasons that I believe God has hidden information in the Bible. One reason is to conceal the information from His enemies. Another reason is to give man a choice in what they believe. Still another reason for hiding information is to allow God to reveal the information at the right time to the right people. There are certainly other reasons for God doing this, but as long as you see and understand that He has done it, you will at least be far ahead of a lot of other Christians in the world that do not understand this.

So knowing God has concealed spiritual truths within His Word, we should be smart enough to recognize some of the techniques that God has used to hide these truths. I call this concealing or hiding the truth in plain view. Every word in the Bible is clearly readable by anyone that picks the book up, but every word is also equally hard to understand because of the methods and techniques that God has selected to record His words in a book format. It is much like a game of hide and seek where everyone that you are looking for is out in the open in plain view, but many of them are wearing camouflage and have blended into their surroundings so that you don’t see them clearly. They are there right in front of you, yet you walk right by them. So it is with the Bible, just because we can see all of the words and read them, it is clear to me that we need to follow some very strict rules in order to understand what they say, correctly. Satan can read the same words that we can and he didn’t understand them and he is doing everything in his power to make sure that you don’t understand them either. If Satan would have understood what was written, he would not have crucified Jesus.

In reading Proverbs 25:2, it reveals to us one of God’s intentions and purposes for giving us the Bible. This verse specifically informs us that it is God’s Glory to conceal information. This Hebrew word translated as “conceal” means to keep secret, or to hide from plain view.. When you conceal something that means it is not clearly visible or self apparent. The US army often times camouflages themselves and their equipment to conceal them from or cause themselves not to be seen by the enemy. If a government in our world wanted to conceal information from their enemies they would have probably created a code or an encryption system that would in effect make the textual message unreadable to others. In this way the encoded message is only readable to the intended person to whom the message is sent using the decryption method and the key that would unlock the true meaning. While many have done crypto analysis of Old Testament scriptures and have seemed to have discovered encoded messages, I am not talking about this method of hiding information. While I do not discount these or attempt to preach against them in any way, this is not the information that is hidden in plain sight that I am talking about. Being a computer programmer I understand the complexity behind creating a readable textual message with embedded ELS coded messages. Without a very, very powerful computer it would be impossible to find them, much less try to create them. The Bible Codes are to me just an additional proof that God exists and He has written something for us, to us that only He could have done. To those who don’t believe in God, it is a sign that someday they will understand.

So what I want to do in this blog series, is to explore some of the primary ways that I have discovered how God has hidden Himself in plain view for us to find. By studying some of these methods we can use them to unlock more of the truth and to see and know Him better. So did God encode things in the Bible for us to discover? You might still not understand code concepts, and that is OK. I’m not here to teach you computer algorithms. What I want you to see is some general concepts and methods that God has implemented in the Bible to hide information and truth. By understanding these concepts we can then apply them to our Bible study and hopefully learn whatever God wants us to know before Jesus comes back for us very soon.

Earlier I mentioned a common trait of codes and encryption. This has to do with knowing the key that unlocks the code. The key is the electronic word, phrase, numbers, symbols, or combination of all of these that we use to unlock the encrypted information. That is what we are going to explore in this series of lessons. I want to show you some keys. By understanding the methods that God has used to hide information it will give us the keys that we need to unlock it and to understand it. Jesus makes this statement:

Mat 16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:

I know I pulled a part of a verse to make a point, but take this information and understand the concept given. Jesus tells us that there are keys to the kingdom of heaven. That implies there are hidden or locked things within the kingdom that are not readily available to all. What Jesus is doing is giving us a simple concept lesson and He is telling us that it is our responsibility to open the doors that these keys are associated with. You never hand someone a key, either a physical key that unlocks a lock or an electronic key to unlock a code and not expect them to use it. Are you grasping the concept? So let’s explore some of the key methods that God uses to hide information in the Bible.

Technique 1: Widely Dispersed Truths

One method that God uses frequently to hide truths in His Word, is to spread out the information so that a subject is not completely covered in any one location of the Bible. The Bible is a significantly large book with a lot of words and subjects within it. Finding specific related scriptures is not always as easy as you might think. By spreading the information out in a widely dispersed random pattern, it become exponentially more difficult to grasp the correct meaning of anything. Spreading out information in the Bible is just one of the many techniques that God has used to hide things for us to find. One advantage that we have today over previous generations, is the proliferation of computers within our society. By using a computer’s database indexing and search engine capabilities, we are blessed with a tool that makes it much easier to explore the Word of God and to find truths that are spread out over 783,137 words in the King James Bible. If you don’t study the Bible using a computer you should, it will help you tremendously once you get over the initial learning curve of using a computer to read and study the Bible. What we discover in our search is there are scriptures everywhere in the Bible that speak to, or comment directly on other passages in the Bible. In other words we have the commentary of the author, the Holy Spirit given to us on any given subject. God did not leave us in the dark, he just made it a little challenging to find. I also made mention that the commentary and related information may appear in any random order. Information can be given on any subject in any book of the Bible. This certainly is a very tricky method of hiding information.

Let’s take creation and the story of Adam and Eve. If you search the Bible you will soon discover that both Adam and Eve are referred to in other books of the Bible by name. These are God’s direct commentary on the Genesis story given to Moses. But by studying these verses we can gain a significant amount of insight into the original story. But of course that is not all the information, we would have to search for all of the subjects found in creation, like: man, woman, temptation, sin, serpent, gardens, fruit, seeds, trees, and all of the other subjects that are mentioned in the book. By omitting these facts from our study of the subject we are lacking vital clues to what God intended for us to understand. This example is just a simple sample of a much larger truth that God has spread out the information so that while it is in plain sight, it is not easily found, related or understood. This is one of the most important lessons from this blog that you should take away and learn to put into practice. Don’t read a single verse and attempt to say I understand that, without researching and looking for the related passages and God’s commentary on the subject.

Think with me and consider the hidden reference to the serpent in Genesis chapter 3. I have heard people say that this is not Satan while others say it is Satan. However, there is absolutely no way to know this by only reading this chapter of Genesis. If you read the Bible cover to cover, it would take you a long time to finally find the answer to who this serpent is. This infromation is not revealed until Revelation chapter 12. God finally sees fit to reveal the identity of the hidden serpent in the last book of the Bible. This is a clear example of a widely dispersed truth. Where God introduces you to a subject in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, but does not reveal the identity of the being until the 12th chapter of Revelation. I hope you are beginning to understand these tricky concepts that God has implemented in the Bible.

Widely dispersed truths are an essential part of finding the hidden information in the Bible. You see the Old Testament is a large set of books that Jesus told the Jews to search, for he said these are they that testify about Him (John 5:39). But if you read the Old Testament you will not find one chapter called the story of Jesus. While there are hundreds of prophetic verses of the coming messiah, not one said you will call his name “Jesus”. Yet if you have eyes that see, you can find Jesus on almost every page of the Old Testament in some form or reference. Some are more easily found than others, but none are in plain view and self apparent. The Bible is a complex tricky book written with complex and tricky techniques that record truths in a manner that is not easily recognizable. We have just touched on this subject in this blog and talked about one of these methods. By putting little pieces of information here and little pieces of information elsewhere in a large random order you can certainly understand that this would make it very challenging for us to find anything of value. This one technique alone would make the Bible very difficult to understand, but God has many other techniques of hiding information that we will get into later.

If you would like to continue reading this series, please go to Part 2.

Posted in Bible Interpretation, Keys to Understanding

17 Comments

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Interpretation, Jesus, Prophecy, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding

Proverbs 1:22-23: I Will Make Known My Words Unto You!

Feb 26

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.2) I will continue to talk about Unity and the Keys to Understanding today. Today I want to explore verses found in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs contains a lot of the Wisdom of God. It was written down by Solomon, the son of David the King and Bathsheba. God used Solomon to give us many valuable spiritual truths. I’ve heard several ministers recommend that we should read from the book of Proverbs on a daily basis to gain the wisdom of God. I believe, that by renewing your mind to God’s wisdom you will be able to make better choices and decisions in this life. Today I want to discuss the process that God uses to make His Word known to us. We will begin with the first chapter of Proverbs and verse 22:

Pro 1:22 How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?

Who are these simple ones that God is talking to in this verse? If you did not know that was you, you are already deceived into thinking too highly of yourself. People on the earth are the simple ones that God is talking to. It doesn’t matter how many degrees that you have or how many universities that you have attended, God calls you a simple one. According to God, people love simplicity. They want everything served up fast in a simple neat package to them. However, God is not a part of your simple box concept. You may want God to come down to your simple level and He might for awhile to help you. However, God wants you to come up higher and to see and understand the more complex subjects found in God’s Word. The implication given to us in the beginning of this verse is that God’s word is not simple. I have heard many try to make it simple and reduce it to a human level of intelligence, but they were mostly just confused in what they thought God said. There are many complex spiritual truths in the Bible and these are not always presented in simple terms using simple methods. However if you learn this fact, you can at least become aware of what to look for.

Proverbs 1:22 says that fools hate knowledge. I have seen a lot of fools in the world today. We are in fact raising a generation of fools. It has been rare for me to run across a young person that is truly hungry for the knowledge of God. There are just so many distractions in the world today. Television, movies, games, electronics, music, concerts, the internet, entertainment, sports and on and on I could go. It would appear that words on the pages of the Bible are the last thing that anyone would really want to spend time with these days. There are a huge number of distractions that keep young people’s mind off of anything that is productive or valuable. School is the last thing that most of them would call fun. But, God said fools hate knowledge. Knowledge involves learning, Learning involves hearing. Then when you throw in understanding on top of all of this, that is beyond the mindset of any modern teenager.

Pro 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

Here is a key to knowing and understanding God’s Word. It involves you doing something after God does something and then God doing something in response to what you have done to solve the problem. This is the way God works in most normal cases in the Bible. God offers man reproof or correction and people are required to “turn”. Notice that unless you turn, God will not do anything else. If you think He will, you would be wrong. So you knowing anything from God will involve you turning. To turn implies a correction in your course and action. It could be a new way to think about something. It definitely involves you changing. I believe this is a continual process within life. Since God rarely gives us very much information at one time, we may need to make many course corrections as we continue our walk with God.

Proverbs 1:23 ends with God making known His Word to us after we turn. The middle part of the verse says if we turn, then God will pour out His Spirit upon us. So we can clearly see and understand that in order to know God’s Word it will take the Spirit of God to reveal it to us. From these two verses in Proverbs I have learned several spiritual truths and I will list them again for you to see. Here is my TOP 10 List of THINGS I LEAREND FROM Proverbs 1:22-23:

The Bible is NOT SIMPLE!
The SIMPLE DO NOT Understand the BIBLE!
FOOLS do not want to Learn the BIBLE!
God offers ALL of US Reproof!
We MUST Turn and make Changes in order to Learn!
IF WE CHANGE, God WILL then Pour Out His Spirit Upon US!
The BIBLE Contains HIDDEN and CONCEALED INFORMATION!
God will MAKE Known these Secret Things to ceretain individuals that qualify.
Only With God’s Help Will We KNOW and UNDERSTAND God’s WORD!
Understanding the Word of God is CONDITIONAL!

I do hope that you can see and understand what these verses are telling us. In order for the Body of Christ to come into unity we will require God’s correction first. We WILL have to HEAR God’s correction. We will need to be OPEN to change. Then we will need to CHANGE. God will pour out His Spirit upon us and then we will all KNOW and UNDERSTAND the Word of GOD! It is not a long process, but it is a process none the less. People will need to put down their ego’s and become open to correction. Accepting reproof is not easy for anyone. Admitting you were wrong and changing will certainly be another challenge for others. What God is informing us in these verses is, that it is more up to us than it is up to God on how much we understand in the Bible. Understanding the Word of God is conditional. If you think UNDERSTANDING is automatic you will never achieve it. God is FAITHFUL, so He will do His Part, NOW YOU DO YOUR PART! God Bless!

Posted in Bible Study, Proverbs

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Church, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, man, Proverbs, Religion, Revelation, Truth, understanding

Night and Day Defined! Understanding the Spiritual Heart of Man! Part 2

Feb 19

Posted by agapegeek

(Ver 1.2) This is a series of lessons on a basic spiritual truth that reveals the hidden conditions of the hearts of men and women in the world. God reveals this spiritual truth using the things created and found in the natural universe. These natural things are clearly symbolic and represent a far greater spiritual truth. I am convinced that this is an essential basic truth that every Christian should become intimately familiar with. This is now part 2 of the series and I would suggest that if you have not read from the start that you go back and start with Part 1.

There is a real man or a real woman inside of the physical bodies of every person on the earth. These real people are spirit beings that will live forever somewhere after their body dies. However, most people in the world today don’t know about this fact and are oblivious to this stated reality found in the Bible. The Bible often times speaks of these spiritual individuals in the hidden terms of the “heart”. The “heart” of a man is the spirit of the man. God is not talking about the physical blood pumping organ, God is talking about the center of your being, as in the heart of an apple or the heart of a tree. The “heart” term used by God is a figurative Bible term and describes the center of a human. This center of your being is the real you that you can not see. When a physical body dies, the person’s spirit is immediately transported to one of two possible places. One place is very good location called heaven and the other one is a very bad location called hell. The spiritual things are the real eternal things, the natural things are the temporary things (2 Cor 4:18). God has designed a system in the world that limits humans to a three dimensional realm with specific time constraints. All of these constraints represents natural boundaries and laws. When your body dies, you leave the natural realm you enter into the spiritual realm and you normally never come back (2 Cor 5:8). I have heard of a few people dying and going into the spiritual realm and then they are revived or come back to life in their physical bodies, but I would not put all my eggs in this basket hoping that is what will happen to you. Many times these people can see in both realms simultaneously. These people can see the hospital room, the doctors, the nurses, their family and their body but usually they are above all of this looking down on it all. These people are either sent back by God or God has allowed them to see and experience this in order to tell others that there is more to life than these few years we have on the earth. So this was a brief explanation of the spiritual realm.

In my last blog I introduced you to a number of scriptures that reveal the hearts of people to be either in darkness or in the light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Darkness and Light are symbolic references and are synonymous terms for Night and Day. Today we will explore more scriptures found in the New Testament that further enlighten us to these truths.

Isa 9:2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

I’ll start with this prophecy from the Old Testament. This verse is speaking about Jesus coming to the earth personally walking among us. This verse calls Jesus Christ the “great light” and that is of course a very significant statement. In my last blog we read verses that showed Jesus to be the spiritual Sun, the spiritual light of the world. Just as the physical sun is the source for all natural light on our planet, Jesus is the only source for all spiritual light on our planet. In this verse in Isaiah the people are described as being in the darkness. The darkness is caused by something that is blocking the light and causing a shadow. You do understand the concept of shadows? A shadow is an area where the direct light is not shinning. The direct light has been blocked by another object that casts a shadow on the ground. We were the people in this shadow and this shadow was caused by “death” and Satan. If you read the New Testament you will find verses that describe Satan as holding the power of death. So that is why I related the two together. The Bible says Jesus was made manifest in order to destroy him that had the power over death (Heb 2:14). So we can clearly see who is causing the darkness in the spiritual realm, it is Satan. So the term “great light” let’s explore that term to learn more about the spiritual hearts of men.

Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser lightto rule the night: he made the stars also.

You see in the fourth day of creation God makes a prophetic and symbolic reference to spiritual things that were to come. God makes the “greater light” AKA “great light” to rule the “day”. God then makes a “lesser light” to rule the “night”. These lights are very significant to see and understand for other Bible interpretations. The “greater light” is the Sun and represents Jesus Christ. The “lesser light” is the moon and represents Satan. These two spiritual rulers are over their own separate domains or kingdoms. The Sun rules the Day (Ps 136:8), the moon rules the night (Ps 136:9). These separate 12 hour periods represent two different spiritual realms and conditions of the hearts of people. So the planet earth is a type and pattern of the human heart. The sun shines on the earth in a constant and consistent manner and the earth revolves and is either in the shadow or darkness or in the light depending on how it is positioned at any given time. The earth represents the hearts of men that have the opportunity to change and allow the light to shine or to turn away and stay in the darkness. When Jesus was walking the face of the planet some 2000 years ago he told us this:

Joh 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Jesus made a bold and direct statement that He was the Spiritual Sun, the Greater Light that shined in the world. Jesus said by following Him we would never again walk in the darkness but always have the “light of life”. So light represents Life and darkness represents death. Life and death are very strong analogies and very important to understand.

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.

We can certainly see what I told you about the hearts of men having to be turned from darkness to light. It is clearly the responsibility of the men and women to do the turning, God will not force you to turn, but He will help you if you ask. Then there is another stark contrast given between these two realms. Satan has the power to rule in the darkness. To say Satan is powerless would be an error. But what is important to note is that his power is limited to the realm of “darkness” and the “night”. If you are in the light you are outside of the realm of his influence and power, or at least you should be. Satan will still attempt to deceive you and influence power over you until you learn not to let him.

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:

You see these two spiritual realms being starkly contrasted again. The power of darkness is where, we the church use to be, but we are now called “saints in light”. These two spiritual domains are also called different kingdoms. The Kingdom of Light and the kingdom of darkness. Again day and night are symbolic references to two separate and distinct spiritual states or places to be. Even though we walk the same planet with those who are still in darkness we are not of the darkness and darkness is no longer ruling our hearts and minds. To be in the world but not of the world as the Bible says.

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

So Satan and his demons are spiritual forces that rule the darkness of the world around us. This verse clearly confirms that Satan is the moon, the lesser light, the ruler of the darkness that we referred to from Genesis 1. A ruler clearly implies a kingdom, a kingdom of darkness. Satan has been trying to establish his own dominion and kingdom outside of God since the beginning when sin was found in him.

1Jn 2:8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.

In this verse in 1st John we are told for those who are in the light that the darkness has passed. It is interesting to note that when the lights are on you don’t have any darkness. But this verse also tells us that Jesus is the “true light”. The Sun of Righteousness has arisen in our hearts and He is shinning a true light that we might see the truth. It is interesting that the characteristics of the moon is used to describe Satan symbolically. The moon has no life or produces any light of itself. The only reason we can see the moon at night is because it reflects or masquerades as an object of light. The moon is a pretender and shadow caster and a false light. It is so different than the sun that is the key to the source of our life on this planet. But as the Bible says, men who love the darkness are deceived by it and succumb to the trickery of the ruler of the darkness. But here is some good news and hope for those that are in the darkness:

Eph 5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

You see God says that those who are in the darkness are simply asleep and capable of waking up and seeing the light. This is a very strong typology and the spiritual information is significant. Pray for those in the darkness to wake up and see the light of day. To turn and allow Christ to arise in their hearts. Again if people do this they are translated into the light and the life of God. If they refuse to turn they are already dead. That is a very sad state of many people in the world today.

There are many other verses in the Bible that speak to us on this subject of Day and Night and I would suggest that you get your Bible search program and look for the key words, like day, night, darkness, light, sleep and any other word that you can think of that are associated with these spiritual realms. By studying the subject you will better understand why people don’t see Christ like you see Christ. Why they have been turned off when the light shines in on them. Jesus told us that “now ye are the lights of the world” so it is our responsibility to be a light to others. But this should be done in a Godly manner using the same ways that God worked through Jesus. Learn to be like Jesus and walk like Jesus and you will get others attention by just being so radically different than they are. Here is a quick chart of some of the lessons we have learned about the spiritual realms of Day and Night:

Day And Night Characteristics

DAY	NIGHT
Light	Darkness
Sun Rules the Day	Moon Rules the Night
See	Blind
Awake	Sleep
Sober	Drunk
Life	Death
Good	Evil
Love	Hate
True Light	False Light
Greater Light	Lesser Light
Righteousness	Unrighteousness
Power of God	Power of Satan

If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons, you can continue with “Part 3“.