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Understanding the Collapsing Timeline of the End of the World!
(Ver. 1.2) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible Lessons about the signs of the end times. Many people in our world do not understand that we are at the end of the end of our age. A time called the end of the “last days” on earth. The door to this Age of Man’s dominance upon the earth in conjunction with the works of Satan is closing rapidly. Most of the world proceeds in the darkness and grows more evil for they do not know the signs of the time. It is true what the prophet Hosea said “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. No doubt if people only had the right knowledge, they would also be able to see the times of God’s seasons are concluding quickly. However, I heard a TV preacher the other day make a statement that I agreed with 100%. This pastor of a church here in the U.S. prophesied a coming reveal of God’s Word; his statement said every mystery of God will be revealed in the next 2 years. While I do not know if 2 years is the time frame for Christ’s return or not, I believe that there are countless numbers of mysteries in the Bible to be discovered by God’s people and that God will reveal them by His Spirit to His people before Jesus returns. I mean think about it, why would God hide information in His book if it was not going to be revealed? What do we need with mysteries and hidden information from the Bible in heaven? I had a commenter say that it will sure be nice when we get to heaven and God can teach us all the things that we missed out on down here. Why can’t God teach His people the truth, here and now? Do you think that God is incapable of teaching His people what the truth is in the Bible? All it takes is for God to show us some little keys and suddenly the whole book could unfold right before us like a giant puzzle solved. You see when we get to heaven, there will be no enemies up there, no evil, no crime, and no deception and then what will we need with the truth? From my vantage point on the earth, the church needs to know the truth now so that we can become one body in harmony and accord with each other. That means we have a lot to learn in a very fast time frame. If you are interested in learning these secrets of God with me, then get involved with what God is doing in these last remaining days on the earth.
1Th 5:1 But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
Why did God not have to write about the times and the seasons to these His people? What the Bible does is reveal something that implies we will be able to see these times and seasons and understand that the coming of the Lord is at hand. You can certainly look at the world around us and see many of these things mentioned in the Bible about the end are happening all around us. There have been earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars and many going here and there saying peace, peace! The signs of the times surround us every day. Technology, computers and the internet have made it possible for the Anti-Christ to take control of the world’s finances like never before. The Arab nations are building nuclear weapons and the nation of Israel is in perilous times. There are terrorists and people killing people and people dying all around us. In our calendar year, the seasons are used to determine the times of planting and reaping. God has been planting seeds for the last 2000 years. The knowledge of God has exploded like never before, but there is also a coming time of harvest, where God says that’s it, it is finished! How do you tell people this and not sound crazy in our world today? You sound like a chicken little saying the sky is falling! You come across as a fool, but at least you can be a fool for Christ.
1Th 5:2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
So we have a verse that contradicts the previous verse. This verse says the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night. You just never know when a thief will show up. But, what we have here is the same event from two perspectives. Those who know Christ will be able to see the coming times and for those who do not know Christ it will happen suddenly without any warning.
1Th 5:3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
We certainly see everyone today in the world calling for this illusive peace. What they do not understand is who is behind these wars, the spiritual forces that manipulate and control people in doing the evil that they do. This verse is again given in contrast to other verses in the Bible that reveal the church is not appointed to wrath. Sudden destruction is not coming to the church, if you think it is then you are very confused in who wins this spiritual war. Sudden destruction will come upon the evil people in the world who do not want to see the coming of Jesus. The church of Jesus will be taken up and out of this destruction before it happens.
1Th 5:4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
Here we have the previous verse to verse conflict resolution given to us very clearly. We the church, are not those who are in the darkness. The destruction is only for those in and of the darkness. Those who walk in the darkness are those who have been blinded not to see the truth of God. These are those who have been deceived into believing lies. These verses in 1 Thessalonians 5 are contrasting the end events from two perspectives, one is light and the other is darkness. Do you understand this?
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
We again see that the church of God is those who walk in the light of God. Anyone who has light can see what is happening in the world because of the light that God is shining upon us. This is in stark contrast to those in the darkness who cannot perceive the times or the seasons.
1Th 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
God says let us therefore be awake while we are in the light of day. This is a spiritual statement and not a physical statement. People still sleep at night and work during the day physically. But, these natural realities correspond to spiritual realities that we must understand clearly. To watch and to be sober is another contrasting statement to those who like to party during the night and get drunk. These concepts are not that difficult to grasp if you have eyes that see spiritual things.
1Th 5:9 For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
For God has not appointed us to wrath. I spoke of this verse earlier because I wanted to show you that God is not angry at the church. Wrath is a coming time of punishment for being evil and rejecting the truth. Wrath will never be given to anyone who has been delivered from it by the blood of Jesus. Jesus became sin that we might become the righteousness of God and this makes us saved from the impending doom of the world. The Bible says that we (the church) have been reconciled back to God. That means to be brought back into right relationship with Him. I do not understand how people ignore verses like these in order to teach a mid-tribulation or post-tribulation rapture of the church. The church will not be here during the time of wrath and that means we will be taken out of here very soon. Jesus almost 2000 years ago said this about the times that we are living in:
Rev 22:20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
In being able to recognize the times and seasons, it requires that you understand the Bible and what it teaches on these subjects. If Jesus could make this statement of coming soon almost 2000 years ago, how close do you think that we are today to the return of Jesus? How could Jesus say this and it be a truthful statement? To human perspectives 2000 years is almost an eternity. But, we of course understand that God lives outside of the dimension of time in an eternal self-sustaining mode of existence. God is called the ancient of days in the Bible, so time to God must be completely different than time to us. To man 2000 years is a very long time since man only lives to be a 100 years old, but to God, it is just a yesterday. If I said to you today, “I’ll see you tomorrow”, is that a long time to you? To most people, tomorrow is not a long time. We are simply talking about at the most 48 hours. So when you see Jesus speaking of 2000 years as a short time you must find God’s definition of what time is in order for you to understand the real truth of the Bible. This is called letting the Bible interpret itself:
2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
So by God’s definition of time on the earth, one day can represent a time period of 1000 years to Him. What God is doing is changing our definition to His definition so that we can see things from His perspective. This is one of the most important concepts for correct Bible interpretation that you can find. This definition gives us a reference to time that was hidden in the Bible. When you start analyzing the Bible using this information you can begin to see why Jesus could say that He would see us at the end of the day tomorrow and it be nearly 2000 years on our timeline. Therefore 2000 years would not be a long time in God’s eyes. Seeing things the way God sees them is one of the most important keys to understanding the Bible. Let’s break down this information we just read for a future point of reference:
1000 / 24 = 41.6667 years = 1 God Hour. So One hour in God’s timeline would be just over 41 years of our calendar.
41.6667 / 60 = 0.6944 years = 1 God Minute. One minute to God would be approximately .7 of a calendar year to us.
0.6944 * 365 = 253.47 days = 1 God Minute. One God minute is just over 8 months of our calendar.
253.47 / 60 = 4.2245 days = 1 God Second. 101.388 hours = 1 God Second. 6083.25 seconds = 1 God Second.
While I have not found a reason why these numbers are significant, the concepts behind them are what I am trying to convey. To hear when God tells you to wait a minute, that it could mean wait up to 253 days for the answer. Even God’s Wait a Second, could be over 4 days long. It is a radical shift in our perspective of time concepts. It causes us to come up to a higher dimension of spiritual understanding. It forces us to renew our minds with some new spiritual facts and knowledge. What I am attempting to show you is that many times in the Bible God is defining words differently than we do. Do you understand that any verse in the Bible can change dramatically depending on the definitions of the words found in the verse? If we use man’s definition of the word found in the verse, there is a high probability that we just got it wrong.
By the law of first mention, we must go back to Genesis 1:5 to see the first time the word “Day” is used in the Bible. God goes through a series of 7 days of creation, doing something new every day that is unique to the world that we live in. This is a God week by definition and according to the definition of what a day is it means a period of 7000 years. However, we must also change our perspectives to see what else is hidden in this information. I do not believe that it took God 7000 years to create our world; I believe that God is trying to teach us something else about these days of creation. If you have read my other blogs, you already know that these 7 days of creations are prophetic statements of the history of man on the planet. Every day of the creation account has symbolic meaning of something that transpired in the earth during that millennium. The 7th day is a representative pattern of the coming millennial reign of Christ. This is God’s day of rest upon the earth where we have no enemy to fight or defend against. The first 6 days of creation are days of work for man, where we definitely have a great challenge presented to us by God. Our enemy Satan has come with great fury knowing that his time is very short. So while we do not know the exact day or hour for Christ’s return we can clearly see that the harvest season is fast approaching. There is no way to know how long of time that we have exactly on the planet. Our year 2010 is a corresponding year of 5771 in the Jewish calendar. The Jewish people have supposedly calculated from the time of Adam’s creation to today and they think it has been just under 6000 years by a few hundred years. I think that they are close but that it is much closer to that magic number of 6000 years than we think. There is no way that God is going to wait over 200 years to come back to the earth, people would not survive that long. If I had to guess a number I would say that the Jewish year is closer to 5985 to 5991. But, that is just me pulling numbers out of the air that mean nothing. It is only logical to see that Biblical prophecy is falling into place very rapidly around us. I do not think that the coming of the Lord can wait more than a very few years. If God does wait, then we are in trouble. The world’s economies are declining and the wickedness in the world is increasing at rates that are off the charts. I’m not going to explain the 6 day time line of creation like I have tried in other blogs. So please if you do not understand these concepts go and search my website for additional information on this subject. Using this information let’s look at some Bible verses that certainly apply:
Mat 17:1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,
When you realize that Jesus did nothing by chance or accident, you begin to see important prophetic verses in the Bible with hidden double meanings within them. In this verse it says Jesus went up to a mountain top and took with him Peter, James and John. The symbolic representations in this verse are very clear. If a day is as a thousand years then after 6000 years (6 God Days) of time on the earth Jesus will come to take His church up to be with Him. This is what I see that this verse implies, you of course can believe whatever you like. While on the mountain top Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah. These are also two symbolic representations of those who were dead (Moses) and those who were caught up alive (Elijah) to be with Christ. This whole story in this chapter of Matthew is giving us a prophetic confirmation of God’s timeline on the earth in hidden terminology. I hope and pray that you can see it and how it fits together with other Bible verses.
Mat 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Here Jesus is telling us some more secrets about His impending return. It says that as it was in the days of Noah it will be again in the coming of the Lord. So how was it in the days of Noah? In Noah’s day, the people mocked Noah for building an ark. They laughed because they knew not the impending coming disaster nor could they discern the times or the seasons because they were in darkness. They lacked “knowledge” of the truth and perished because of this lack of knowledge. Jesus says in this chapter of Matthew that they ate and drank and had parties. They married, built houses and went about their ways ignoring the coming disaster. This is a very important lesson for the coming of the end of the age that we are living within. Noah was considered righteous and is a type of the church family of God. Noah knew exactly when the disaster would start and how it would end. Noah was prepared for the disaster, so Noah was saved from the disaster. Noah escaped the wrath of God, and so it will also be with the church. This is a clear pattern of the true church in the world today. These are those who can read the signs of the times and understand the seasons. The Lord’s coming will not come as a thief in the night just like the rain did not come as a thief in the night to Noah. If you are prepared for Christ’s return then you will know and see His return clearly. In the parable of the 10 virgins, there were 5 who were foolishly not prepared and went away for oil. These are types of the people in the world who do not know God. They will not perceive that the time is too short to try to get more oil. While you are away Jesus will come back and those who are ready will go up. This parable is an attempt by God to tell you to get ready now before you realize the time is too close at hand to get more oil. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, do you think that this could be a symbolic indication of the coming 6000 years of Christ’s return? I certainly do. Let’s look at one more verse about the end of time in relation to a historic type:
Luk 17:28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
I take these verses very literally. When Jesus says the coming of the son of man will come like it happened in the days of Lot, what does that tells us? The righteous were taken out and the destruction began to rain down immediately upon those cities. This again gives us a picture of the pre-tribulation departure of the church. God does not appoint the righteous to His wrath. This verse says those in the earth will be eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building and their consumed focus on these activities will cause them to miss the coming of Jesus.
Joh 2:1 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
God gives us little clues in the Bible in vastly spread out verses. Here we have a reference to a real event that occurred during the days of Jesus on the earth, but God uses it to inform us of a spiritual event that is coming. These types of verses are allegorical and they are real events that happened on the earth, but they show us a spiritual reality. After two God days (2000 years) there is coming a wedding feast that will occur in heaven on the third day. While the earth is experiencing the vials of Revelation, the church will be in heaven getting ready for a wedding feast. Verses like these are very interesting and potentially controversial because it appears that I am pulling something out of context to teach a spiritual prophecy. However, God uses this technique throughout the Bible in symbols, types and shadows and allegories. I mean think about it, God could have used any number of days in this verse and it could have been accurate, but God chooses to use 2 days and then Jesus went to a weeding. Do you think this is an accident? I certainly do not!
Joh 4:43 Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.
Again we see that Jesus could have stayed however many days that he wanted, but it is recorded that Jesus stayed here 2 days and then the departure occurred. Is this another coincidence or is this a prophetic picture of the coming departure of the church? Only you can decide what you believe, it is. I will believe that it is a prophecy.
Joh 6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.
Approximately four times in this chapter, Jesus uses the term the “Last Day” in conjunction with a time of resurrection and new life. What is the last day of the week? The “Last Day” of the week would be to the Jewish people the Sabbath, also called the day of rest. The God Sabbath is also called the Millennial Reign of Christ. We can very clearly see that Jesus is saying that there is coming a God Last Day where some things will change dramatically for us. There are a bunch of verses like this one in the Bible that make much more sense when viewed in the context of the prophetic creation week. When you apply God’s definition correctly you can understand how they are telling us our time on this earth is closing to an end, when we return to reign with Christ on the 7th day.
Joh 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
Wow, there are so many verses that we could go into that give us this repetitive clue of the coming “Last Day” when the feast will come. This of course will be the covenant marriage feast of the Lamb of God to His bride, the church. You must search your Bibles for these little hidden clues and then you will begin to understand them. God uses some very tricky methods of hiding information in the Bible in plain sight.
Joh 12:1 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.
Again we see an amazing coincidence of 6 days and then a feast. The Passover was a representative symbolic meal of covenant between God and Israel. This is a pattern of the coming Marriage Supper when the church eats and drinks with Christ. So God could have put any number of days here in this verse but, chooses 6 as being significantly important for us to see. This verse also speaks of being raised from the dead after these 6 days, so that is again too amazing to be an accident. These are just more prophetic pictures of the coming to the end of our current earth age.
So while the Bible does not give us exact dates and times, it gives us enough information to discern the times and seasons that we are living in. I hope that you are beginning to understand the concepts being taught and can see the references to the soon return of Christ. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2“.
People Generally Don’t Know That They Know Something Important!
(Ver 1.1) I was watching the news on TV and there was a policeman speaking about a crime that had just occurred. He was on the news asking for people who were near the crime scene to come forward. He then made this statement, “People don’t know what they know”. In other words he was saying you might have been a witness to the crime and not realized that you were because you did not know it was a crime. Maybe you happened upon the crime right after it happened and saw the culprits walking or running away from it. Maybe you saw a car drive away from the scene and this is the key that will unlock the identities of the guilty parties. He was clearly saying that someone saw something and that if they would come forward with this information it might be very important to solving the case. When he said that statement, God spoke to me and said this is the way the Bible is. People will read something in the Bible and not realize how important it is because they do not understand what it says and how it relates to other subjects in the Bible. I wrote a very similar lesson a long time ago called “People Generally Don’t Know What They Don’t Know”. If you did not read that article you should go back and review the concepts given. They are very profound revelations. Today’s subject while being very similar to this concept is also diametrically opposed to it. In the first lesson you have the concept of not knowing the bridge is out and driving off of the missing expanse in the dark to your death. If you would have just known that the bridge was out, then you would have been spared the tragic outcome. This is a concept found in the prophet Hosea. In this verse God reveals some very significant Bible truths to us:
Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
It would appear to me from this verse that “Knowledge” is the key to not being destroyed in this world. While this could apply to natural knowledge, this verse is speaking of spiritual things as being what is important to know. The Law of God at the time of this writing represented the Words of God. The Words of God are what is important for us to know. Knowledge of the Word of God is the opposite of Ignorance of the Word of God. A Lack of Knowledge is totally related to your current ignorance level. So in the one case God says people perish from this world because they do not esteem the Word of God and count it as valuable to know. They in effect kill themselves because they have rejected the truth. This in effect, is not knowing what you do not know. But, we also have the lesson today, which is very similar in nature. You might know a little bit, but not understand the importance or significance of that knowledge because you lack the knowledge of how important it is to know or to share with others. In the case of the policeman on the news someone held the missing link to identify the perpetrators but did not know that they had it.
Take for example, the virgin birth of Jesus. There have actually been churches who have taught that the virgin birth is not important to know to be saved. However, if Jesus was not born of a vrigin then He was just a man like me. If you have read my lessons on “Understanding the Virgin Birth” then you already know this is not true. To listen to an ignorant preacher who teaches something is not important in the Bible, is a very foolish thing to do. You should never let any preacher do your Bible study for you, and that includes me! If you hear me say something from the Bible then go and read your Bible and study it for yourself to see if it is true or not. It is only the Bible that you have seen for yourself that will do you any good in life. Your pastor’s Bible knowledge will not do you any good when Satan comes and attacks you. If you are a Christian then the Spirit of God is also inside of you and if I say something wrong the Spirit of God inside of you will bear witness that I am wrong. So you will have two witnesses that will always agree to show you the reality of every truth in the Bible. The Bible says the Word of God and the Spirit of God will always agree and bear witness to the truth (1 John 5:7).
So today’s Bible lesson is not a long or complex something to do or understand. It is actually a very simple concept of seeing what you have seen and then going back and figuring out if it was important. I do this all the time when I study the Bible. I constantly review my past Bible readings and notes for things that I may have learned but not fully understood. I then use these little facts to build a greater knowledge of the truth when reading today’s Bible studies. I think I have said this before, but it bears repeating for those to remember, that truth always builds upon truth. When building a house of truth if your house is built upon false teachings then these are weaknesses that will cause your house to topple like a house of cards. If you build your foundation on the rock of the Word of God, then your foundation is firm and unshakeable. God’s Word is Truth, Jesus is Truth, but yet the Bible is written in a complex spiritual way that forces us to divide the truth correctly. I wish I could say this was easy, but after over 20 years of studying the Bible, I am only a little bit closer to understanding everything that the Bible says. So learn the lessons given today about recognizing that what you don’t know is important. Then go and continue in your Bible studies to learn more.
Understanding the Symbolic Nature of Genesis 1, 2 & 3! Spiritual Symbols Found in Genesis!
(Ver 1.4) In reading and studying the Book of Genesis I have found that it is essential to look at the first 3 chapters of this book using symbolic spiritual eyeglasses which allow us to see the concealed spiritual meanings that were hidden from the surface only reading that many Christians do. By studying the book of Genesis I have discovered that most of the subjects written about in these three chapters contain natural symbols that convey a much greater and complex spiritual truth. The difficulty comes in rightly dividing what is natural and what is spiritual and then interpreting both of these at the same time correctly. Clearly the book of Genesis and especially the first 3 chapters contain both real naturally created realities and people, but at the same time it contains a vast number of spiritual symbolic references that are intermixed throughout the text in almost every verse. This makes correct Bible interpretation of Genesis infinitely more complex, especially for carnal minded Christians.
1Co 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
I put this verse in this lesson to show you how important rightly dividing the Bible is to correct interpretations. Here God says there are many who teach things in the Bible that are just from man’s own wisdom. You can still find this in churches and on the internet everywhere. But, God says there is a better way, let the Holy Ghost teach you spiritual things and then compare these spiritual things with other spiritual things. Most Bible scholars would certainly agree that this complexity is repeated in other books of the Bible like the prophets and especially the Book of Revelation. Revelation is dominated by symbolic references throughout the entire book and it is widely one of the most controversial books with the most widely dispersed interpretations surrounding it. So symbolism is an added layer of complexity that makes understanding these Bible books with it, much more difficult to comprehend and to understand correctly. For example when God mixes natural fruit with symbolic spiritual fruit in the same chapter this forces us to see what is being discussed by the context and then to use the rest of the Bible to help us interpret the meanings of the spiritual side of the information given. This is called “Comparing Spiritual Things with Spiritual Things” and “Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth” and we are required to see it correctly or we will remain hopelessly confused. We must therefore, choose to rightly divide the Word of God deciphering or decoding every word between the spiritual definition and the physical definition or we will wrongly divide it and make them all spiritual or all physical references. To make them all spiritual or all natural, we would get most of our interpretations wrong when doing this. So God did this all by a grand design. God purposely hid complex information in the Bible to keep it from Satan and to allow Him to reveal it to us His church in His perfect time. It is the designed process that I call “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight”. So in today’s blog I am going to focus on the symbols recorded in the first three chapters of Genesis and give you a list of the most important ones that I have found. Here is the List of Symbols in Genesis 1, 2 & 3:
|
Symbol |
Description |
Chapter Verse Reference |
| Adam | A real man, but also a symbolic representation of the man Jesus Christ | Genesis 2:18-26; Romans 5:14 |
| Afraid | The symbolic spiritual force of the fear of the consequences of sin and death | Genesis 3:10; Heb 2:15; |
| Ashamed, Not | Symbolic Spiritual Innocence | Genesis 2:25; 1 John 2:28 |
| Cleave | The symbolic covenant of marriage between Christ and the church to be JOINED! | Genesis 2:24; 1 Cor 6:17 |
| Darkness | The spiritual kingdom domain of Satan and those in it | Genesis 1:2; Rom 2:19 |
| Day | Those in the Kingdom of God where the Sun of Righteousness has arisen | Genesis 1:5; Malachi 4:2; 1 Th 5:5; |
| Day | The days of creation were symbolic 1000 years of the history of Man | Genesis 1:5, Genesis 1:8, Genesis 1:13; Genesis 1:19; Genesis 1:23; Genesis 1:31; Genesis 2:2; 2 Peter 3:8 |
| Divided | Symbolic separation of spiritual beings | Genesis 1:4; 1:7; Luke 12:51 |
| Dust | The Symbolic Spiritual ground and the possession of man for 7000 years (7 days) | Genesis 2:7; 3:14; 3:19; |
| East | The Symbolic direction of the rising Spiritual Sun | Genesis 2:14; 3:24; Mat 24:27; |
| Eat | Spiritual enlightenment and understanding either of good or of evil | Genesis 3:6; 3:11-19; 3:22; John 6:51 |
| Firmament | A spiritual division or separation, an expanse or spiritual dimension as a partition. Above the firmament is heaven the throne of God. Below the firmament is the future expanse of Satan’s domain. The air realm represents man’s current position and where Satan currently resides. | Genesis 1:7; |
| Flesh, One | The symbolic covenant of marriage between Christ and the church | Genesis 2:24 |
| Fourth Day, the | The 4000 year appointed time of the coming of Christ into the world | Genesis 1:19 |
| Fruit | That which is produced by a Spiritual Tree either good or evil | Genesis 3:2, 3, 6; James 5:7 |
| Garden | The heart of man, the symbolic soil of the earth where God plants His seeds to grow spiritual fruit | Genesis 2:8; 3:2; 3:10 |
| Greater Light, the (Sun) | The symbolic Jesus, the ruler of the spiritual day Kingdom of Light | Genesis 1:16; Mal 4:2 |
| Hand | Symbolic Spiritual Power | Genesis 3:22 |
| Lesser Light, the (Moon) | Satan the ruler of the darkness of this world; the Prince of the Kingdom of Darkness | Genesis 1:16; Eph 6:12 |
| Light | The God of Creation, God is Light | Genesis 1:3; 1 John 1:5 |
| Meat | The symbolic food of a spiritually mature man | Genesis 1:29-30; Heb 5:12 |
| Naked | The External Shame of Sin also the unclothed spirit of man | Genesis 3:10; 2 Cor 5:3 |
| Night | Those in the spiritual darkness, who stumble and sleep and get drunk in the world; kingdom of Satan | Genesis 1:5; 1:14; 1:16; 1:18; 1 Th 5:7 |
| Rain | The symbolic outpouring of the Spirit of God, the former and the later | Genesis 2:5; James 5:7 |
| Sea(s) | Peoples/Nations of the earth | Genesis 1:10; Rev 17:15; |
| Second Day, the | The Covenant of Abraham to separate God’s people from the other people on the earth | Genesis 1:8; |
| Seed | The symbolic representation of children, words, and several other types of spiritual things | Genesis 1:11-12; 3:15; |
| Serpent, the | Satan the spiritual ruler of the darkness, the deceiver of the nations | Genesis 3:1; Rev 12:9; Rev 20:2 |
| Seventh Day, the | The Millennial Reign of Christ; God’s symbolic Day of Rest | Genesis 2:2; Heb 4:4; Rev 20:6; |
| Sixth Day, the End of the | The prophetic coming into maturity of the church of God before His return. | Genesis 1:26 |
| Skin | The outward clothes of the spirit of man; God later removes this with the circumcision of the heart | Genesis 3:21; Rom 2:29 |
| Third Day, the | God starts planting seeds and expecting fruit to grow in His garden; Moses given the Law | Genesis 1:12 |
| Thorns and Thistles | The Weeds of the Enemy Satan | Genesis 3:18 |
| Tree(s) | Any man who makes a choice to either produce good fruit or evil fruit | Genesis 2:9; 3:8 |
| Tree of Life | Those men who have chosen to receive the Word of God and produce fruit unto righteousness | Genesis 2:9; 3:24 |
| Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil | Those men who have seen good but chosen evil | Genesis 2:9, 3:11; |
| Waters | Symbolic people, the voice of many waters | Genesis 1:6; Rev 17:15; |
| Way, the | Symbolic Spiritual Path to Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom from God | Genesis 3:24 |
| Woman | The symbolic type of the Church who was taken out of Christ | Genesis 2:22-23; 3:15; Eph 5:32 |
These are certainly not every symbolic reference in these three chapters of Genesis; these are just the ones that I have seen and feel are important to know. You of course are welcome to look for others and if you find them please let me know so that I can add them to the list. I will certainly confirm that I do not know everything and I like to learn new things. God teaches me new things almost every day and it is very exciting when He does this. I pray this list will be a helpful tool in your study of the Bible and specifically the book of Genesis. God Bless!
Understanding the Concepts of Deception in the Bible! Righteous vs. Evil Deception! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) Today is Part 4 of a series of very advanced lessons on Understanding Deception in the Bible. We have covered a lot of important information about this subject, so please do not start reading here in the middle of the series, go back and start reading with “Part 1” so that you can better understand what has already been covered in more detail than what I can do today. The church world has widely been taught that Satan is the initiator, instigator, mastermind, leader or distributer of deception in our world and that this deception is always evil. I of course concur with these facts whole heartedly. However, in the last lesson in this series I introduced you to the concept of “Righteous Deception” and I will carry this lesson further today so that you can better understand these new concepts revealed to us in the Bible. What I have discovered by Studying the Bible is that there are several types of deception mentioned in the Bible and some are positive and some are negative. By the Bible definition we can understand that evil deception is when someone comes to you with hurtful or harmful intentions and lies to you to get you to do something that you should not have done. However, I also showed you in the last lesson that the Bible speaks of “Self-Deception” as being a condition where a man or woman has deceived themselves into doing something that they should not have done. You should have gone and looked up the verses that I gave you so that you can better understand this situation so that it does not happen to you. So I gave you several brand new concepts about deception that you should at least be a little bit familiar with by now. According to God’s definitions, a deception in order for it to be a sin must be directed at a person to cause hurt or harm or an expected evil outcome. We clearly saw in Genesis 38 that Tamar used deception for a positive outcome and for the good of God, Judah and the nation of Israel. Tamar was exalted by God for what she did so that she was included in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1. Without Tamar’s intentional deception of Judah there would have been no King David, no Solomon and no Jesus. I know these statements rock your religious boats to no end. I totally warned you in these lessons that I was going to upset you evil deception apple cart so that you would have to see this subject in a new more complex and different way going forward and I hope that you are doing just that.
I’m going to start today’s lesson by giving you another natural example of the use of deception for a good or more positive outcome. Say you are working late at night at a restaurant and about to close up and go home. You hide the majority of your daily money and receipts in the hidden vault in your office and you put the rest of the money in your petty cash drawer. Say you have $5000 in the vault and $500 in the petty cash drawer. Then suddenly an armed robber comes into your business to steal from you. He demands your money or your life so you hand him your petty cash drawer and tell him to go. He asks for more money and you say I gave you money now go. You are clearly attempting to be deceptive while not telling a lie and you convince him to finally leave. You call the cops and they show up and so on. So was what this man did a sin of deception in the eyes of God and the Bible? You see I do not think so, because it matters who are trying to deceive and why. You are not trying to harm this thief you are just trying to keep him from taking everything that you have. This is the way Satan is in the world also. Satan is an evil thief that has come to “kill”, “steal” and “destroy” your life’s work (John 10:10). So how do you handle an evil spiritual thief like Satan if you are God? I believe that sometimes you have to deceive (trick) these evil people into doing the right things. I know there are religious people who are just having fits right now because I implied that God can legally use deception. To deceive someone without sinning requires great wisdom to do and God is the ultimate authority of all wisdom. Why am I giving you this example? I want to show you what the Bible says that God did and then you can better understand this concept of “Righteous Deception” a little better. Read this next Bible verse very, very carefully using your eyes and your brain:
1Co 2:8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
In this verse it declares a concept that right “knowledge” is the key to doing what is best for you. What we learn is that if we would have known that the highway was closed, we would not have gone that way, for example. The Bible says in Hosea 4:6 that my people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. So again knowledge is the key to not being destroyed in the world. Here in this verse, we have an instance of implied active righteous deception being taught to us. The princes of this world are references to Satan and his demonic angels. They are the rulers of this world that God is speaking of. If you look up the Greek word translated as “Prince” it means “ruler”. This verse then tells you that if they had known what was going to happen to them by killing God on a cross, they would not have done it. Do you understand this very complex concept being given? Satan hung Jesus on the cross because he didn’t know what was going to happen and he thought if he killed Jesus this would just get Him off of his planet. It appears to be a clear case of the lack of information from God and wrong assumptions on the part of Satan. This sounds exactly like what Abraham did in Genesis 12, doesn’t it? Abraham withheld information and the king made wrong assumptions and thus the wrong choice. It is very clear that God withheld important information from Satan and as a result Satan did the right things that God needed done. This is really an amazing example of God’s ability to control information in order to get a powerful spiritual being like Satan to do the right thing for God but the wrong thing for himself. You see it was God’s death on the cross that ended His covenant relationship with Satan and the angels forever. Satan is now only in covenant with the humans on the earth, the sons and daughters of Adam. I cover this in other blogs so I cannot repeat everything here. So just understand that the death of God on the cross caused something to happen to Satan that he greatly regrets today. Do you understand how God used deception because He had an evil enemy and how God is justified in using this deception because he was deceiving a deceiver. You can clearly see that this type of deception is a potentially powerful tool when used properly and not for evil. What I am trying to do is to get you to think outside the box and to see that not every deception in the Bible is an evil or a sin. This of course represents a two-edged sword in what I am trying to teach, because there will obviously be some who try to use what I say to justify their evil intentions and only God knows your heart better than you, so you will never get away with using this wrongfully.
So let’s go back to Genesis and look at another example of “Righteous Deception” used for the good of God’s chosen people. In the story of Isaac in Genesis 25-27, Isaac and Rebekah have two twin sons. They however are not identical twins because they look and act completely different. Esau comes out first and becomes the first born in the family who is slated to inherit everything that his father Isaac owns. However, the implication from the birth is that Esau did something underhanded to come out first and Jacob stuck his hand out and caught his brother by the heel. These are clearly symbolic types being given to us of what was going to transpire in the future. So Jacob the “heel catcher” was born second and he is in the natural line to serve his older brother. I’m sure that you are familiar with this story because it is widely taught, but it has probably never been taught in the context of it being a “Righteous Act of Deception”. Jacob’s mother Rebekah comes to him with a plan and here are some of the concerns that Jacob brings up in this chapter of Genesis:
Gen 27:12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing.
The mother’s plan was for Jacob to get his father’s blessing by the use of deception. You can clearly see that Jacob is concerned with being labeled a deceiver by his father, so we are definitely talking about a clear case of the act of deception in this story of Genesis. In this story you see that Jacob’s mother comes up with this plan of deception for her husband and two sons. I don’t know why this is the second story concerning the righteous act of deception by a woman. Rebekah tells her son Jacob to go and kill some animals that she can fix his father favorite meal. Then she tells Jacob to go and get some skins to cover his arms, hands and neck with. Why did Rebekah instigate this deception and for what purpose was it done? You might have to go back to chapter 25 to see part of the answer to this question. When the children were still in the womb of Rebekah, she noticed that they were already fighting inside of her. She went to God to find out why and God spoke to her some inside information (literal pun) that was very relevant to this lesson of deception.
Gen 25:23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
God says these are two nations of people and only one will be called by my name. Not good news for one of them, is it? Here we have a story that is very difficult to grasp and accept. Esau is clearly a child of Isaac and the firstborn from him, the rightful heir of all of his father’s wealth. But, God said that the elder firstborn would serve the younger second born. You should understand the concept of “Analogies” from the Bible if you have read my other Bible lessons. This is a concept that a natural real story gives us spiritual information about two spiritual brothers that I just cannot get into today. Just understand that there is more information hidden in this story than is on the surface and then go and dig for it. I will help you and tell you that the younger son is a type of Jesus so now go and figure out who is Jesus’ older brother.
Rom 9:13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
So God knew the sons of Rebekah before they were born and God also knew what they would do in this world before they were born. So God let Rebekah in on a secret and this was why she could do what she did and be justified in the eyes of God. So why was Jacob justified in doing what he did in deceiving his father for the blessing?
Gen 25:31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
In Genesis 25 Esau comes home very hungry and not thinking and asks his brother for food. His brother says “sell me your birthright”. The birthright is the right of the firstborn to own everything of his father. So Esau reasons in his mind that unless he eats his birthright will not do him any good and says this:
Gen 25:32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
So then Jacob tells his brother to swear that the birthright will be his.
Gen 25:33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
So you can clearly see that Esau sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of soup and some bread. Esau also gave his word to his brother and in the eyes of God your word is your legal commitment to do what you have said. If you did not mean it you should not have said it, the Bible says. It could be that Esau was playing Jacob for a fool because he clearly still expects to go and inherit the blessing from his father later in this book of Genesis.
Gen 25:34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
You can see that God says the man Esau “despised” his own birthright. This Hebrew words means to NOT Esteem or to disdain, scorn. It is the act of a vile person the definition says. This is certainly not a positive confirmation for what Esau has done in the eyes of God. It also gives legal justification for what Rebekah and Jacob did to deceive Isaac for the blessing that now rightfully belonged to Jacob. There is a lot of things to learn from this story, and one thing is that even though Jacob was justified in what he did, the Bible says that God is not mocked whatsoever a man sows that will he also reap. So Jacob planted the seeds of deception and these came up when he was working for Laban for his wife Rachel. Laban deceived Jacob 10 times it says in the Bible changing the terms and conditions of his employment. Jacob thought he was working for 7 years for Rachel and ended up working 14 years for her. So while you can be justified in doing deception, it usually always comes back to bite you later in life. God however, did not abandon his man Jacob and continued to bless him even though Laban was attempting to steal from him and to use him.
So it is interesting to note that Esau was legally the heir of his father Isaac, but God caused this blessing to go to his younger brother Jacob who became the father of the nation of Israel. So we learn that not everyone that came from Abraham can be called Israel, only Jacob’s descendants. This is an example of righteous division or separation. The sons of Esau were not the chosen ones. What we have seen is a clear use of deception initiated by God. God told Rebekah about the sons in her womb before they were born. I do not know if you like everything that the Bible says or not. Many of these types of stories are very difficult for many to accept. I sure if you wanted to you could come up with alternative meanings and interpretations to everything that I just have taught on this subject of deception. But, I hope that you can see who God was dealing with and why deception was used to cause a positive designed result. I think that I will end this lesson here today. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about deception, please go to “Part 5“.
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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?
Understanding the Concepts of Deception in the Bible! Righteous vs. Evil Deception! Part 3
(Ver 1.4) Today is Part 3 of a series of lessons on Understanding Deception in the Bible. I do not know if you can tell why I write this blog or not? My number one goal is to help you to understand the Bible better today than you did yesterday. If I can help just one person accomplish this, I believe that is worth the countless hours that I have invested in writing these advanced Bible lessons. If you know God better than you did after you read my lessons then I have succeeded at accomplishing my goal. Today’s lesson is about the complex subject of deception, but this lesson is much more advanced than the first two in the series. The first two lessons were general overviews of your enemy Satan and the techniques that he attempts to use to deceive people in the earth today. The first two lessons dealt with only one side of the subject of deception that I refer to as “Evil Deception”. Today I will introduce you to the other side of deceptin to show you that it can be used for positive outcomes and that will shock many Christians who have never been taught this side of the subject. If you have not read this series of lesson from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Also today’s lesson is intended for spiritually mature Christians since I will probably go into many things that you have never heard before from anyone and I do not want to cause anyone any confusion so please judge your level of spiritual maturity and make the determination if you want to hear something that is potentially new and controversial. If you do not want to learn anything new, then just go read someone else’s blog for today.
In the previous lesson on deception I talked about Satan being called a deceiver (Rev 12:9, 20:10) of the nations and how God looks upon these actions very unfavorably. One technique that Satan uses for deception is to take a truth and pervert it with an attached or alternative meaning. Another technique of deception that Satan uses is to associate a Bible truth with a false religion, causing Christians to reject it as the truth. Another technique of deception is to take a Bible symbol of truth and to possess it as a satanic symbol so that Christians again reject this truth completely. There are so many complex methods of trickery involved in deception and you should become intimately knowledgeable of every method that you can so that you are not the one deceived in the future. However, today I am going to flip the evil deception apple cart and introduce you to a brand new concept that you probably have never heard anyone speak on before in your life, especially in church. Obviously everyone teaches that deception and lies are an evil sin. But, today I am going to attempt to show you the positive side of deception found in the Bible. Right there your religious mind is probably giving you fits saying “I didn’t know deception had any positive side or use”. What I will show you in today’s lesson is that there are different kinds of deception found in the Bible and how that the Bible says not every deception is considered evil or a sin by God. I guess most people struggle with this subject because they do not realize that there are multiple types of deception found in the Bible and therefore they do not understand how that any level of deception could be permitted at times to achieve a positive outcome. Many religious people look purely at the existence of only one type of deception that they associate with someone telling someone a lie. They then lump all deception into this same basket category as being an evil sinful lie. I had a reader who read one of my Bible lessons on Abraham and left me a comment saying that Abraham sinned. In this story of Abraham, he went around telling everyone his wife was his sister so that no one would kill him to get her. If you read this Bible lesson called “Genesis 12: Was Abraham a Liar?” you should have learned that Abraham never lied, his wife Sarah was his half-sister (Gen 20:12). They both had the same father but different mothers, so they were clearly brother and sister to each other by definition, yet Abraham married his sister and she became the wife who gave birth to the promised child Isaac. So Abraham was clearly guilty of remaining silent on the important fact that Sarah was also his wife and not just his sister and this is all that you can accuse him of based upon what the Bible says. Let me start by asking you this question, is silence a sin? Can you find anywhere in the Bible where it says if I’m silent even on a key point of information that I have committed a sin? I searched my Bible and I could not find one verse that said silence was a sin.
Of course it gets more complex than this because your silence is also tied to your motivation of why you are being silent and that fact alone make this subject infinitely more complex. We’ll talk more about your motivation shortly but, I searched and searched the Bible for a verse that said silence was a sin and I could not find it anywhere. So my reader claimed that Abraham committed a sin of an invented name called a “lie of omission”. According to his definition, a “lie of omission” would be to remain silent in any area that left out any important information that could have been said in order to purposely deceive someone. However, after I confronted my commenter, he had to agree that this term “lie of omission” and its definition was not found in the Bible anywhere and therefore what he had said was a sin came from his own human reasoning. The human intellect is an amazing God given blessing, however it is rarely God inspired thoughts unless you have thoroughly renewed your carnal mind with God’s spiritual knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Therefore, you cannot count on anything that comes from your carnal mind as being the truth. After all of this, my commenter refused to say that Abraham didn’t sin in what he did and he held to the concept that Abraham was therefore still a deceitful liar because he withheld information from the king. Wow, this is a very dangerous approach to take in your Bible interpretation. In Matthew 7:26 Jesus called this action of ignoring God’s word a foolish man who has built his house on sand. To base your beliefs on your own human reasoning instead of the Bible will cause you to be wrong 100 times out of 100 tries. What we must do is to build our house on the Rock of the Word of God and base our beliefs on what God says and only what God says, in order to be assured and have confidence in what we know and teach to others. You know I do not have to be right about everything that I say and teach. I am perfectly willing to change if you can show me the chapters and the verses that say something different than what I teach. I would rather change and be right than to stay with believing an error. However, if you are just telling me your opinion that I’m wrong because that is not what you think is true then you have a major problem, not me. Here is a web definition for the word “deceive” that I found:
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth (as in half-truths or omission). Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment.
Here are some synonyms for Deception from the Thesaurus:
Trick, Trickery, Sham, Fraud, Con, Cheating, Pretext, Duplicity, Deceit
Wow this is a pretty amazing definition that is all encompassing, isn’t it? However, I noticed two things directly missing from this definition of deception;w with one being the motivation of the individual doing the deception and the other being the purpose for the deception or you could say the expected outcome for the deception. It further does not say or even imply that there are potentially times when deception is good and the results of the deception can cause a positive outcome to occur either. According to this lone definition that I found on the internet you can clearly see that Abraham was absolutely guilty of committing a level of deception for either evil or for whatever purpose. However, I believe that to remain silent is still a key area that is totally different than to deceive someone by telling them a lie. I can find many verses in the Bible that say “Thou Shalt not lie” (Lev 19:11, Zep. 3:13). But, to be silent I have still not found any verses yet that says this is a sin. In this story found in Genesis 12 and 20 of Abraham telling the kings that his wife was his sister, I could not find any verses where God rebuked, chastised or punished Abraham for what he did or in this case didn’t do. Can you find this anywhere? You can clearly see that these kings were either plagued (Gen 12:17) or had a dream from God that told him that he was a dead man (Gen 20:3). So God’s attention was focused on what the kings did and not what Abraham did or still in this case did not do. Do you understand this? So I want to introduce you to the first new factor about deception today that will upset your deception apple cart. This concept is called “Self Deception” where a person has deceived themselves into doing the wrong thing based upon their own personal thoughts, motivations or their natural physical or emotional desires. You can clearly see that the kings in these stories of Genesis 12 and 20 were only interested in themselves and what they wanted. Nobody asked Sarah what she wanted, did they? Of course back then it was a male dominated world and when a male king wanted a woman, there were no options for the woman given to her. When Abraham tells the kings she is my sister, the kings ASSUMES that she is available to be taken like a stray dog that doesn’t belong to anyone. They make a very wrong assumption based upon not knowing all the facts that they could have found out if they had just asked some more direct questions in order to find the truth. You can read scriptures about being “Self Deceived” in Jer. 37:9, Oba. 1:3, 1 Cor. 3:18, Gal 6:3, James 1:26 and 1 John 1:8. There are many factors that cause self-deception and these can involve pride, arrogance and wrong thinking where you think too highly of yourself and see yourself to be wise in this world. You should go and look up these verses to learn how people can deceive themselves and you should be able to see how these verses can easily apply to the kings in Abraham’s story.
There are three basic factors to deception that are critical to understand that are not normally taught. First, there are different types or methods of deception. You can clearly see this by someone telling a lie, but you can also see this by someone just failing to tell the truth. They are dramatically different types of deception in the eyes of God. Second, there are different reasons or motivations for using deception and the intended outcome for the deception. In other words is the person doing the deception doing it for someone’s harm, hurt or destruction or for a purpose of overall good? Then the third factor to consider is who the intended target for the deception is. Is the one being deceived a good person or an evil person? Can the one being deceived do me any harm if they are not deceived? All three of these factors matter in order for any deception to be called a sin in they eyes of God. You see there is an implied problem with deception that you have not fully thought of or comprehended fully. If you take the literal internet definition of deception and apply it as it was written that the omission of information or truth is called “deception” then God is quilty of deceiving us all. Is your God a deceiver? If you only take this definition, He is because He knows things that we clearly do not know and many of them.
Some have tried to conclude that all deception is sin like my commenter and this is just not what the Bible teaches. That statement is really going to shock many of my readers. However, what people have done is taken a complex subject and oversimplified it and caused all deception to be thought of in a negative light. But yet as we continue through this lesson we will see that this is not true. Let me give you an example of some deception that occurred in my life that might shock you. My own mother was a known and practicing deceiver; my mother deceived me when I was just a child in grade school. She tricked me into eating squash when I was a kid by mashing it up and stirring it into my cream corn. They were both yellow vegetables and when they were mixed together I could not tell that the squash was present. You see I liked cream corn but I did not like the squash and I refused to eat it. However, by her trickery and deception of her mixing the squash with my cream corn and then by purposefully not telling me about her methods, I ate it without knowing I was eating it. Clearly she withheld key information and truth from me and clearly it was an intentional act of a hidden deception. By the definition of deceive that we looked at, she is clearly guilty as Abraham was, but, was this deception a sin? Did my mother sin by hiding squash in my cream corn and not telling me about it? According to my commenter he would have said that she did. However, was this not just an example of the practical use of deception to achieve a positive outcome for me? I think that you can see it was the only way that I was going to eat squash so it worked. What was my mother’s reasoning and motivation for deceiving me? Was it to do evil and harm to me or was it to do something good and positive for me so that I benefited? In her mind it was to do good so that I would eat my vegetables and grow up strong and healthy. So hopefully you can see that not every type of deception is a sin from this one simple example. I do not believe that my mother was committing a sin by hiding squash in my cream corn, do you? So let’s change the scenario and say someone hid poison in your food. This of course changes everything dramatically. Now we have a different motivation for a different purpose and the expected outcome of the deception is completely different. Clearly anyone who would do this is well within the realm of committing a horrific sin by using a very similar deception method that my mother was guilty of. I hope that you can begin to see the impact that motivation and purpose play into the role of deception. Do you see the potential dilemma being presented to us from my two examples of food deception? It matters who is deceiving, why they are deceiving, who is deceived and what is the intended purpose of the deception in order to make a determination if it is a sin or not. Just because my mother hid squash in my cream corn and did not tell me that she did it, does not constitute an evil act of the sin of deception. Are you grasping these very important concepts? You see if you only used the web definition of the word “deceive” you can clearly see my mother was guilty of “deception”, therefore she should go to jail or hell. But, her reasons for doing it were justified to achieve a positive outcome for me. This is called “Righteous Deception” and I will show it to you in the Bible so that you can better understand how it works. I pray that you are beginning to see the complexity of the subject of deception and the potential use of deception to achieve a positive outcome for someone.
So let’s go back to the story of Abraham and see who did what, where and why? Abraham was traveling into the nation of Egypt where a foreign government was ruled by a people who didn’t know God. In fact in the Bible Egypt was a type of the world and Pharaoh a type of Satan. According to Abraham’s reasoning, he told his wife to tell everyone that she was his sister so that these godless people would not kill him to get to her. So the motivation of Abraham was not to do any evil to anyone, but to preserve his own life in an uncertain set of circumstances surrounding evil people. It was Egypt who was doing the evil and not Abraham by taking a woman just because she was pretty and good looking. You could compare this to rape today and this is clearly a crime. No one asked Sarah what she wanted; they simply decided what to do based upon what the king wanted. Was that the right thing to do? Obviously God did not think so and that is why He put plagues on the nation for what they had done. So Abraham was dealing with an uncertain evil nation of people who could potentially do great harm to him for what they wanted. So do you see any differences now in this type of deception initiated by Abraham? Abraham never had any intention of harm for any evil purpose to anyone in being deceptive. So by not telling them all of truth; did Abraham lie? I still do not think so! Did Abraham sin? I still do not think so. Abraham’s heart was clear before God. I hope that you can see this.
What I am attempting to show you is that not every deception is a sin in the Bible and you will see some more examples of this in these next verses also found in Genesis. This is a story in chapter 38 is one that is very informative of many things, but I’m only going to talk about the concept of “Righteous Deception” given to us in this story. In Genesis 38:6 you see that Judah the son of Jacob had a firstborn son named Er and Judah got him a wife named Tamar. However, verse 7 said that Er was wicked in the eyes of the Lord so God killed him. Not good for Er! So Judah had three sons the firstborn Er is now dead so Judah gives Tamar to Onan his next oldest son and tells him to have children for his dead brother Er. Onan is also wicked in the eyes of the Lord because he refuses his father’s request and God kills him also. Wow, Tamar is either really bad luck for the children of Judah or something else is going on here. We can read in this chapter that Judah tells Tamar to go to her father’s house and wait for his third son to get old enough and she will be his wife next. So Tamar waits and waits and Judah never mentions it again and finally Judah’s wife also dies. So Tamar does what? What is Tamar supposed to do? In Genesis 38:13 it says that someone told Tamar that her father-in-law Judah was going to a certain city to shear his sheep. So Tamar comes up with a plan of deception:
Gen 38:14 And she put her widow’s garments off from her, and covered her with a vail, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnath; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him to wife.
Here we have a part of the story that is easily missed. You see Tamar could see that Judah’s third son was grown up and she knew that Judah had not fulfilled his word to her. By not doing what he said; Judah has become a liar and that is not good is it? Therefore, Tamar takes off her widow clothes and disguises herself with a veil. In doing this Tamar has taken on the outward appearance of a prostitute and she places herself in the path of Judah on purpose.
Gen 38:15 When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face.
So Judah sees the woman Tamar and thinks to himself that she is a harlot available for hire. It is very important to note that Tamar does not ever say she is a Harlot; it is only Judah who has assumed the wrong things based upon a perceived impression of outward looks. Judah could have asked to see her face or spoken with her in many ways to find out the real truth, but he has been self-deceived with natural human male desire. Isn’t that interesting? What we see is Judah has deceived himself into thinking the wrong way based upon human desire and lust and outward appearances. It sounds a lot like what the kings did when looking at Sarah in the first story of Abraham.
Gen 38:16 And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?
So technically speaking while Tamar never says she is a prostitute you have to look at what she says very carefully. It would appear that she is asking for money for her sexual favor, but examine her heart and think again. She is really just asking for what she was already promised by Judah. Nowhere in this story is her deception an evil intentional act for harm to Judah or an attempt to get back at him for his lie.
Gen 38:17 And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it?
Judah tells Tamar he will send her a kid from the flock, but Tamar know who she is dealing with and says she needs some security to insure that he will do what he says. So she says this:
Gen 38:18 And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.
So we can see that Judah is still negotiating the price and the collateral like any normal business transaction. Tamar asks for his signet, his bracelet and his staff for collateral. Do you understand the principle and symbolic meaning of these items? A signet was like giving your credit card to someone today. With it they could command you to pay everything that they charge with it. The first time bracelets are mentioned in the Bible it was when the servant gave Rebekah two bracelets for her to become Isaac’s wife, so this is a clear parallel to this story in Genesis 38. The staff was of course a symbol of power and the main instrument of a shepherd to herd his sheep. So Tamar was not asking for trivial things, these were signs and symbols of this man’s identity. In the Bible you can find where it says that having sex with a prostitute causes you to become one flesh with her. So the sexual act is considered to be a marriage covenant between Judah and Tamar. Therefore, Tamar was gathering items that could easily be used to identify him later as the one who had sex with her. Anyway Judah must have missed sex a lot so he agreed and gave her these three items and then he made Tamar pregnant with his children and then he went back home.
Gen 38:19 And she arose, and went away, and laid by her vail from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood.
Tamar departs back to her father’s house and changes her clothes back to the widow garments and then waits. Meanwhile, Judah sends people to find the prostitute with the sheep that he promised so that he could get back his possessions and they cannot find her. Nobody has ever seen this woman, so she was clearly not a prostitute for financial gain or income. So if money was not Tamar’s motivation what was the motivation of Tamar and who did she deceive? It is very clear that it was deception in the “nth” degree. But, I did not see anywhere that said that Tamar ever lied with her lips to achieve this deception, nor do I see where she did it to cause hurt or harm to anyone else. The purpose of this deception was not for evil but for the good outcome of the continuation of the family name of Judah. So in effect this deception of Tamar was only done for the good of Judah and not to do him any evil. This is a very important story in the Bible and you just do not realize its importance right now. So Judah finally hears about Tamar when she begins to show her pregnancy. It’s funny how words in the rumor mill can travel so quickly to everyone. Everyone knew that Tamar was a widow so when she shows up pregnant it is a perceived problem for Judah and the community. So Judah calls for Tamar so that they can put her to death for being a whore, but when Tamar shows up at his house she has his signet ring, staff and bracelets that show who the father is and Judah cannot not deny it because of these facts she presented to him. Judah then makes this statement:
Gen 38:26 And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah my son. And he knew her again no more.
You can clearly see that Judah was calling her deception a “righteous justified act”. Because, of this woman’s trickery the family line of Jesus has been preserved and Jesus can still come into the world as God had designed. You can clearly see this honor by reading the genealogy of Jesus given to us in the book of Matthew chapter 1. There are only 6 women mentioned by name in this list of father names and Tamar is one of them. She earned a mention of prominence by a simple act of righteous deception. Tamar has arisen to the level of rock star status in the Bible because she used deception for the good of someone other than herself. This is a very important part of deception that is rarely taught and seldom mentioned. Here is another mention of her name in the Book of Ruth:
Rth 4:12 And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
Tamar is again mentioned in the book of Ruth as being a righteous woman who did great things for the good of mankind and the house of Israel. You cannot deny that this was deception, but God elevates her to a level of importance for doing this deception that few have understood until today. At no time did God accuse this woman of committing any sin for what she did, do you see this?
I actually have many more Bible verses to go into this subject of deception, but I have gone too long for today. So I will wrap this lesson up with that story of Tamar and hope that you can now see and understand that not every deception found in the Bible is a negative sin in the eyes of God. In my next lesson in this series I will give you some more examples found in the Bible of “Righteous Deception” and these will help to establish the truth in the mouths of two or three witnesses. I hope and pray that you have learned something from today’s lesson that you can take away in growing in your relationship with your God. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series on deception, you can go to “Part 4“.
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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?
Understanding Spoken Words in the Bible! Elijah’s Words and Prayer for Rain! Part 11
(Ver 1.3) Today is Part 11 of a series of very advanced lessons on Understanding Spoken Words in the Bible. You may have noticed if you read my Bible lessons that I teach a lot on this subject and one reason is that the Bible says a lot about this subject. I figured out that any subject that God emphasizes this much must be an important one for me to learn about and to know. Therefore, I spend a lot of time looking at these verses on this subject and they have shocked me into changing what I say dramatically. If you understand this subject just a little bit you will know this is true for you also. I will warn you that today’s lesson is potentially very advanced and only for mature spiritual Christians. This is because the topics and things said may be hard to swallow for younger immature Christians. So please judge yourself before you continue reading this Bible lesson. If you are not comfortable with controversial topics then please just go read someone else’s blog for today. If you have never studied this series of lessons on Spoken Words, I would strongly suggest that you go back to “Part 1” and start your reading there first.
When you study the Bible, you do not read but 1 chapter in Genesis and you can see that God speaks words in order to create our world that we live in. At least seven times in this chapter of Genesis it says “And God said” and God would say something and then shortly it would come to pass. It is interesting to note and to analyze what God said and then to see who He was speaking it to. Did you ever realize that in Genesis 1 you cannot find where it says that God was ever speaking to anyone in particular? In other words God was not speaking to someone specifically in a conversation like we have them between ourselves. God would speak words directed at no one but a problem that He perceived and then things would change based upon what He said. Therefore, no one had to hear God’s words spoken for them to be effective and to cause something to change. It’s kind of like the old saying if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? According to what the Bible says, the tree heard it even if no one else did. For example, God would look at the darkness that covered the earth and say “Light Be” and then light was. So obviously the darkness heard what God said even though we did not. So we learn from this that your words have the same potential and they do not have to be directed at or heard by anyone in order to effect changes in your personal world. God spoke the answer before the problem and then the answer was made manifest. Read Genesis 1 and see what God says “Let there be light”, “Let there be a firmament”, “Let the waters be divided”, “Let the earth bring forth grass” and on and on. Every one of these cases represents a problem followed by a spoken solution. This is a concept taught in the Bible where God describes as “calling those things that be not as though they were”. Do you understand this concept? If you do not understand this concept you should go and read Roman 4:17 and the surrounding verses to see what God says about this subject of speaking words before you see them happen. The concept of calling for what is not seen is exactly what God did in Genesis 1. God saw there was no light and said there was light and then the light came in. You can see this principle demonstrated in Genesis 1:3, 1:6, 1:9, 1:11, 1:14, 1:20 and 1:24. It is a very powerful lesson from God being given to us. God plainly sets us an example of what we should be following in the world today. Then in Genesis 1:26, God said “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness and let them have dominion…”. So if God said this, did this happen like the other 7 times God said? You can clearly see that everything God said in Genesis 1 came to pass exactly like he declared it, so these words spoken about man would be no different. If man was designed by God to be like God, then we would have to be open to operate like God does. We of course do not always have to believe this, but this is usually just because we have not been taught these concepts from the pulpit.
Today’s lesson is concerning prayer and spoken words; their relationship and their essential unified association to each other. It is usually self-evident to most people that prayer should involve speaking words to God. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray like John taught his disciples, Jesus gave them some example words to speak to God. Many times people take this example prayer that some call the “Lord’s Prayer” and just parrot the words back up to God like this is being effective. However, this was not what Jesus was teaching us to do. You can teach any parrot to say these words and that would not be praying at all. God is not stupid; He has heard these words before, so these words are not intended to replace your words that you normally speak. Also, Jesus taught more than one set of verses on the subject of prayer so we must try to put all of them together and then learn from them all. Here is something else that Jesus said about prayer:
Mat 6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
As you can see Jesus says for us not to be vain in repeating the same words over and over to God thinking that we will be heard. This verse implies that it matters what we say in prayer. If you pray the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly in your prayer life, are you not being vainly repetitive? So that sounds like a problem to me. Do not use a model prayer as the only basis for what you pray. You may certainly at first use this prayer as a model construction for your prayer and then change it to your own words. The Lord’s Prayer starts with praise to God and the acknowledgment to who God is and then the prayer asks for God’s will to be done in the earth. Finally, the prayer gets to us asking for what we need in our lives and the forgiveness of our sins is one thing that we should ask for. But then you should also understand that this prayer was taught to the disciples before Jesus died on the cross. Therefore, this was a model of an Old Testament prayer to God and not necessarily a New Testament prayer to God. For example, Jesus said to pray that the Kingdom of God be established in the earth; and guess what the Kingdom of God is inside of me right here and right now, so this prayer has been answered, so why would I pray that again? I’m smart enough to know that the Kingdom of God has come inside of me already so I do not need to ask for this to happen again. If God has already fulfilled it, then you do not need to pray for what has already occurred. Do you understand this? You might can pray that the kingdom of God be expanded and grow, but technically speaking Jesus never taught us to pray that sinners would get saved. The only verse that I have found about praying for sinners in the Bible is when Jesus tells His disciples to “Pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth laborers into His harvest”. This is the salvation principle of God sending sowers, a preacher or worker to speak the truth in love to an unsaved person so that they can hear and believe in Jesus and then be saved. So prayer is an awesome subject to study in the Bible and we will get to more of this subject later. But, today I want to speak on specifically about spoken words in relation to prayer. You cannot technically pray without using words, but we also speak words all day long and how do these words affect what we pray?
I cannot find anywhere in the Bible where God honors silence or silent prayer. In fact when I was studying about angels it would appear that the scripture says if the man would have been silent, the angels would not have been sent. You can read this in Daniel very clearly. Daniel prayed to God and fasted for 21 days until the angel of God finally showed up with the answer to his prayer. So Daniel’s silence would have resulted in no angels being sent, the angel Gabriel told Daniel for your words I was sent (Dan 10:12). This is a problem in many religious circles where they hold a moment of silence for some individual that maybe has just died. This might be considered giving someone respect or honor but your silence is doing no good other than that. What if when Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus and stood before it in a moment of silence and then left? Would Lazarus had been raised from the dead? No, I do not believe that he would have. So we can then see what Jesus did to cause Lazarus to be raised, can’t we? Jesus makes the statement to God, “I thank thee that you have heard me”. Jesus implies something that is very important to our lesson today, and that is God is listening to your words. You then see Jesus speaking to the dead man and calling his name “Lazarus come forth”. Was Jesus calling Lazarus alive with his mouth and the words that just came out? So silence would not have brought the answer to Lazarus. To give honor or respect to someone is probably not a bad thing to do, but it will not change the situation. It is like here in the south when we see a funeral procession going by we normally pull over in our cars and stop out of respect for those who are driving by. This is a common practice in the southern parts of the United States and I believe it promotes an attitude of Christian love towards those who have just lost someone from this world, so I believe it is a positive thing to continue doing even though there are no Bible verses that say to do this.
Jas 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
This is one of my key Bible verses today that introduces the rest of the subject of prayer to come. You can clearly see that God is instructing us to pray and not just for ourselves. This verse ends in the statement that the prayers of a righteous man or woman have great power in them. Because Christians do not believe this, they do not do it. Many times it is a self-image problem; they do not feel like they are righteous enough to ask God to do anything. Fortunately for us it is not our righteousness that we are depending on; if it was we would all be in trouble. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that permits us to come boldly before the throne of God without guilt or shame (Heb 4:16). So here is the next verse that follows this one about your prayer:
Jas 5:17 Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.
So here I go today with the basics on this lesson about prayer and words. As you can read in this verse, God says that Elijah was a man just like one of us. What people should understand is that the people that God uses in the Bible were not special or different or unique in their appearance, characteristics, problems, situations, challenges or life’s little nuances from us today. Too many Christians think in the terms that prophets like Elijah possessed something special that we do not have that allowed him to accomplish great things in the Bible that we simply cannot do. However, that is certainly not what this verse is saying, is it? Elijah according to God and James who is writing this account is said to have prayed to God and this caused it not to rain on the earth for a period of 42 months. This is actually a very interesting statement that God makes to us, since if you have ever read the story of Elijah you can’t find where Elijah ever prayed this in a way that we would call prayer. So what is God trying to teach us from this statement? I believe God is saying sometimes we need to expand our definition of what prayer is.
Jas 5:18 And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.
So here is another verse that says Elijah prayed and God caused it to rain again. We have now seen two verses that said Elijah prayed and God answered the prayers because they were effective. It sounds like to me that this would be a good subject to go back into the Old Testament and see what God says to us about how Elijah accomplished these miracles of no rain and then rain again. You can find this story of Elijah starting in chapter 17 of 1 Kings:
1Ki 17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
Here is the beginning of some words that Elijah spoke that almost floored me. This is the exact same Elijah that James wrote about so get that first and foremost into your head. Then realize that this verse is the very first verse in the Bible that mentions the name of Elijah. So therefore, we can conclude that there are no prayers of Elijah to God that are mentioned in the Bible up to this point. So we have a major problem that needs a resolution; either God did not record Elijah’s prayer in the Bible or Elijah did not pray the way that we would consider prayer to be performed. I personally believe the second is true and God gave us the exact information in the Bible that we needed to know to learn about what prayer is and what prayer is not. Remember what Jesus said “Father I thank thee that you heard me”. Do you think that God was listening to the words that Elijah said to Ahab? Let’s reexamine what Elijah says; God tells us that Elijah was speaking to Ahab and Elijah said “The Rain will obey my Words!” I know this was my paraphrase of what he said, but it is very close to exactly what He says to Ahab. I mean did you see it? Elijah had to believe something in order for him to make this kind of statement; the drought had not started yet so these words could be considered to be a prophetic prediction of something that has not occurred. Or as we have seen in Genesis 1, John 11 and Romans 4, it could be that Elijah was calling those things that be not as though they were. We of course know that Elijah was a prophet of God, but remember what James said, the New Testament says Elijah was man just like one of us. In other words what Elijah did, we can do. Wow, I don’t know if you believe that or not, but I do. I know that just blows the minds of religious people to think this way, but I’m just reading the Bible.
In reading this chapter of 1 Kings you can see that God speaks to Elijah and tells him what to do only after he has spoken to Ahab. God tells Elijah to go to a brook where God will sustain him and Elijah goes there and stays until the brook dries up for a lack of rain on the earth. God then tells Elijah to go to a city where a widow woman has been commanded by God to provide for him. The widow is obedient and God blesses her and even when her son dies, the prophet of God raises the child back to life. So God is definitely heavily involved in this chapter of the Bible and this is how this chapter ends:
1Ki 17:24 And the woman said to Elijah, Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.
The Widow woman says “The Words of the Lord in your mouth are true”. It is very interesting to see what this woman saw and says. Keep in mind that James said this was a man like us, and then reread this chapter with this in mind, looking for what he says. Are the words that come out of your mouth, can they be considered the truth of God’s Word? The words that you speak, will a stranger woman that you just met see that they are the words of God? Your words that you speak are much more important than you can possibly imagine. I believe your words help to identify you.
1Ki 18:1 And it came to pass after many days, that the word of the LORD came to Elijah in the third year, saying, Go, shew thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth.
Here is the first time that God tells Elijah to go back to Ahab and tell him that it will rain again. You cannot find where Elijah asked God to do this, can you? This appears to be a God initiated conversation and not Elijah’s prayer for God to send rain, doesn’t it? So how did God tell Elijah this? Was it some loud audible voice from heaven or is this not how God speaks to you? God only spoke to me once in an audible voice so I believe this is not how God normally speaks to His people in the earth. Every other time that God speaks to me it has been as a still small voice in my spirit and I believe this is how God spoke to Elijah in telling him what to do also. Otherwise God is doing something different or something special for Elijah that he doesn’t do for us today and this is not what James told us in the New Testament. It is also special to note and to understand that prayer is not about just you speaking to God. If you are the only one speaking in a prayer conversation with the Almighty then you have a major problem on your hands. You should be quiet enough to let God speak back to you since He is so much smarter than you are. It would be much more valuable to hear what God says at prayer time than for Him to hear what you have to say constantly. Do you understand this concept of listening in prayer? Just pay attention and give God the opportunity to speak, you might be shocked at what He says for you to do.
1Ki 18:41 And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.
In this chapter of 1 Kings, Elijah goes to king Ahab after God told him it was going to rain and makes some more statements that are absolutely faith based words. In this chapter Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a Godly duel of power exhibitions and demonstrations. This was an exhibited display of the confidence that Elijah had in his God’s ability. Why were there 450 prophets of Baal in the camp of Israel? Why did Israel put any of their confidence in these false religions and religious leaders? That is a very good question to consider! In this chapter Elijah calls down the fire of God to consume the sacrifices that were drowned in water first. Keep in mind we have just had a drought of over 3 years long and Elijah is pouring water on his altar. Does this sound like the actions of a man in a drought? Here we see in chapter 17 that Elijah told the king that it will not rain for my words and then in chapter 18 and verse 41 Elijah says that he hears the sound of the abundance of rain. Yet it has not rained a drop in over 3 years. Is this a problem? Or can you see that what Elijah is doing is what God did in Genesis 1? I’m going to ask you this more than once today; are you a man or a woman that is also like Elijah? You should really read James 5 a few hundred times before you answer that question.
1Ki 18:43 And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times.
These lessons found in the life of Elijah are very profound. Elijah told Ahab there was a sound of rain when there was no rain. Then Elijah tells his servant to go and look for the rain and the servant comes back and reports he did not find any rain and Elijah tells him to go and look seven more times. What is Elijah doing? Is there anything that you should learn when faced with a drought in your life?
1Ki 18:44 And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not.
So the seventh time the servant went to look to the sea, he comes back to Elijah and tells him that he saw a small cloud coming out of the sea. Do you understand how rain is formed? These are the water cycles of the earth’s evaporation from the seas that forms clouds and then the weather patterns that carries this moisture in the atmosphere to then fall back down to the earth as rain? Here we have Elijah knowing how this weather phenomenon works before there were any modern weather forecasters. What was Elijah doing? Do you remember what Elijah said in 1 Kings 17:1? Elijah told the king that the rain would obey his words. Elijah said that it would not rain for these years until he said it would rain. The prophets of Baal and the things that God did to them were some of the reasons that Elijah could make these claims that God could back his words, but this is the lesson that Elijah and God is trying to teach us today. I believe that this lesson applies to us in the modern world. Elijah said he heard rain when there was not rain then said go and look for the rain until they say a cloud form.
1Ki 18:45 And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel.
So what is God trying to say to us? Elijah said it would not rain and it did not rain, Elijah then said it would rain and it did rain a bunch. I did not see one time in these two chapters of 1 Kings, where it said Elijah prayed for no rain or rain. Only James calls what Elijah did prayer and that is a very profound revelation. I only saw one time where it could be implied that Elijah may have asked God for rain and this was in verse 42:
1Ki 18:42 So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees,
You can clearly see in this verse that Elijah assumed a position of humility and this is associated with an attitude of prayerful inclination towards God. However, I’m going to be really picky and tell you that it does not say Elijah prayed and it does not give us any words of prayer that Elijah said to God. So what do we do with this lack of information? We can assume that Elijah prayed and God thought that this prayer was not important enough to include in the Bible or we can assume that Elijah didn’t pray like we think of prayer and then we have to go back to James and figure out how did James know that Elijah did pray since God does not say he did in 1 Kings? Did James assume like others or did God teach James a greater definition of what prayer was? You also have to understand that God told Elijah that it was going to rain in 1 King 18:1 so why pray for what God has already said will happen. Do you understand this concept? I believe that these two chapters of 1 Kings should expand our definition of what prayer is in the eyes of God. Your words are heard by God and then God uses these to fulfill what you have said. I know that does not go over big with everyone, but I believe this is what God is saying.
So how do you apply this story of Elijah to us today? I believe that it crosses over into many things that we do in many ways. A couple of years ago the region of the country where I lived was going through a drought situation that was becoming significantly greater. Over the course of a few months, the lake levels had dropped lower than they had been since I lived here. Water rationing was mandatory and you could not water you grass or outdoor plants, wash your cars or do things to waste water. It was getting crazy here so I finally decided to do something about it. That sounds pretty arrogant doesn’t it? That statement makes me sound like I am God or something. However, I learned from the story of Elijah the principles given to us from James that I could do what Elijah did. So one day during the drought I looked out at the clear blue sky and started talking to the weather patterns, jet streams, pressure zones and the climatological situations to change in order to bring us rain on my house and city. So did it change overnight? Like the story of Elijah I went out and looked at the sky several times before it finally rained but then the drought was over and it rained a bunch. You see I believed the Word of God was true and that what God said Elijah did, I could do. I never prayed a prayer and asked God to send rain; I only looked out at the problem and spoke to it to change to bring me rain. You of course could say that this was just an amazing coincidence that I did what I did at just the right time before it rained or you can look at the Bible and declare with me that God is not a liar. After over 3 years of no rain Elijah said he heard the sound of an abundance of rain and after a few more days it occurred. So either what happened to Elijah was an amazing coincidence also or you are just stupid and don’t want to see what God is saying in the Bible to us. Here is a verse found in the Bible that directly applies to what we just read about in the life of Elijah:
Mar 11:23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Jesus makes a radical statement here that most religious people readily reject. Jesus says if you speak to a mountain and believe what you say will come to pass, it will happen. So is speaking to rain any different than speaking to a mountain? Are they not both inanimate objects without the ears for hearing? However Jesus clearly implies that they can hear in this verse found in Mark. This is a paradox of Biblical proportions. You see if you are a commander in the army and issue an order you just expect it to be obeyed and carried out. This is the same type of reasoning that Jesus is giving to us in this verse in Mark 11:23. Jesus is implying that the mountain is waiting for an order to obey in order to be moved. If no order is given, then no movement is made. If you speak to it and tell it to go and believe what you say will happen, then Jesus clearly said the order will be carried out. You are not concerned with how it is carried out, only the fact that it happens like you said. Mountains can be symbolic representations of problems in your life, even like a real drought. Can you see how this verse applies to what Elijah said in 1 Kings? Everything that Elijah said was what happened in the earth, because he believed it would happen. Elijah obviously believed in his words and they came to pass just as he had spoken. God called this prayer in James 5 and you should understand this drastically changes what we should be saying in our daily lives. Too many Christians pray and ask God for help and then go around speaking the opposite of what they prayed. It would sound like to me based upon what we learned from Elijah that these words cancel each other out. If you pray for God to help pay your bills and then look at your bills and say I can’t pay you, then you have canceled your prayer out. What we have learned in the story of Elijah is God’s definition of prayer is much greater than our definition of prayer. Your words of prayer could be the words that you speak to a king in the earth and tell him that it will not rain for your words. These are powerful concepts that are being transferred to us from God and if you get a hold of them they will change what comes out of your mouth. So I’ll end this lesson with this question again; Are you like an Elijah? God Bless!
Understanding Seeds! Planting Financial Seeds! Part 12
(Ver 2.2) Today is now Part 12 of a very important series of lessons on Understanding Seeds in the Bible. We have covered a lot of very significant information that will not be repeated so I would highly recommend that you go back and start your reading with “Part 1”. I almost purposely left this part of this subject of seeds out of the series because it is so popularly preached on TV that it gives many a negative perception on a positive subject. However, money and finances are clearly found in the Bible so I will touch on it today. I believe if you study the Gospels you will see that Jesus taught on money more than any other subject. I have heard many preachers, especially TV preachers, jump all over this subject and it appears to come across that they do it because they are only after your money. Of course I do not judge them because I do not know their hearts, only God knows a man’s motivation for doing what he does. It could be that God told them to teach this subject with great emphasis and I would sound like a fool if I would criticize what God does. So, I cannot say or will not judge if this is true or not, I just said it just appears to many to be this way because of the emphasis that they are placing on a minor part of a much greater subject about seeds. It would seem to me that to only pick one part of a subject and teach that causes the wrong perceptions to be given and to many people it is true that perception becomes reality and this is not a good image to portray to the world. So far, I have given you eleven different lessons about seeds in the Bible and have not mentioned money or finances even once. I guess since I do these Bible lessons for free and never ask you for money, is the one reason that I can include this lesson on money in the series today.
In searching the Bible for any form of the word “seed” I found approximately 257 verses in the KJV that directly mentioned this word. Out of this total I counted less than 20 verses that speak about money or that can be applied to money directly. Of course this is a subjective number of verses depending upon your desire to try to apply verses from one topic to another. This is certainly a legal method of Bible interpretation; God does it all the time. You can find that God used the same word seed to describe at least 10 different things in the Bible and the laws and principles that govern them are universal truths that cross over into each topic area. But, it is always difficult to teach some subjects like money and not sound like you are asking for money, especially in light of what the Bible says on this subject. That is just the inherit problem with this subject and I will do the best that I can in spite of this appearance. I hope that you can see the difference in what I say since there are no names or ministry names attached to this website and no donate buttons anywhere that allows you to give money to me. If you are a Christian you should be giving your money to where you go to church and are being fed spiritually; we’ll see more about this as we go into this lesson.
So even though seeds of finance are a minor part of this subject in this entire seed topic realm, it is still a valid concept that applies to your money. First, off think about this, farming and agriculture were common methods of income in Bible days. The seed concepts of sowing and reaping applied whether you planted corn or raised sheep. If you farmed then you raised crops or animals that could be sold or traded to others. So the seed concepts found in the Bible about farming must also apply to modern day money and finances directly, also. Farmers used seeds to grow crops and these crops produced more food than the originally planted seeds. So the principles of sowing seeds into good ground, seed increase and multiplication are clearly applicable to our modern money. In the world of finances money would represent the seed. Today we can take money and invest it in the stock market or whatever expecting it to grow over time. This is a seed principle that works when you plant your seeds in good ground. You see good ground in the financial world are the companies that are going to be profitable. If you place your money in a company that is foolish then it can go out of business and you lose your investment and that is the definition of planting your seed into bad ground. In America we have many people who buy lottery tickets. These are people who are hoping to hit it big and win millions of dollars overnight. I have not found that concept in the Bible. In the Bible if you want millions of dollars you must start with what you have and plant it to cause it to grow into millions of dollars. This is the Bible concept of financial seed planting and reaping an increase. These are clear Bible farming concepts that you need to learn and to apply to your life and what you do in the world. If you are expecting to hit it big and get rich over night the odds are that it will not happen. Yes, the lottery does occasionally reward someone with a large payment that gives the appearance of the possibility that it can happen to anyone. However, mathematically speaking the odds of it happening to you is extremely low; in fact it is more likely that you will get hit by lightning and die than to think that you will win the lottery. So let’s examine some scripture that can apply to money and finances in relation to seeds.
Gen 8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
While this scripture does not directly mention money it can be applied to money very easily. This verse states a Bible law that establishes the concept of planting seeds and reaping harvests as long as the earth exists. This would seem to imply that this principle will exist in the new earth to come also, so it seems to me to be a concept that we need to learn. God tells us that our world was designed to be a seed world of sowing and reaping. If you plant your seeds in good ground you will always harvest an increased crop or return on your initial investment. Your seeds sown are always your initial investment that you risk losing. The same enemies that you find in the natural world of natural seeds also apply symbolically to the financial world. The concept of weeds, insects and the birds of the air that eat your seed; these are all symbolic enemies to financial dealings. Before you can invest money anywhere you should first determine if this is good ground to plant in. Too many times people put money somewhere and then change it to something else before they make anything where it is planted. This would be like planting corn seed in the ground today and then digging it up tomorrow to take it to another field that you heard was better ground. If you think this is stupid to do, you are right, but in the financial world people do it everyday.
Lev 26:16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
What I wanted to do was to show you that every seed sown can have an enemy. Here we have God telling the children of Israel that the seeds they have sown will be eaten by their enemies. This was usually caused by a reckless disregard for obeying the Word of God. Whenever the children of Israel disobeyed God, this would open the door and allow enemies to come in and take what they had worked for. So this is a lesson for Christian to learn from as a bad example of what not to do.
Deu 28:38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.
So you can see another verse where insects can come and eat your seed. Here God says that you will take a lot of seeds into your field and harvest very little of them because they were all eaten by an enemy. In our world today, financial enemies abound all around us. There are false investment schemes that take your money and you can lose everything. A man in the U.S. is serving jail time right now for taking billions of dollars from people and spending it on himself and his family. His lavish lifestyle lasted for several years until it finally caught up with him, but most of the people that put their money in his false funds all lost their money. These are some of the potential enemies to financial transactions and many of them are backed by satanic influences that causes you lose your money.
Deu 14:22 Thou shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth forth year by year.
So here is another verse that does not mention money directly, yet clearly applies. The word tithe means to give a tenth. The word increase is a numerical financial term of positive results. This verse also says that your field brings forth year by year. So this is a principle of being faithful to do what you know to do in a consistent manner. Being consistent is a seed principle. There are many factors to planting seeds in the natural that apply in the financial world. For, example, one key factor of correct seed planting is timing. Did you know you can plant the right seed in the right ground at the wrong time and totally fail and lose everything? So knowing when to plant is a key to getting positive results. There are of course other seed concepts that also apply to money. You can under seed a field and not reap what you should have. You can over seed a field and also cause your crop to be unprofitable. There are really too many factors to consider about seeds that apply to investing that I cannot go into them all. It is not my goal to teach you how to invest your money; it is only my goal to introduce you to Bible concepts and to note the things that God has created in the world that give us views into spiritual laws. I’ll take you to one more Old Testament verse before I move to the New Testament:
Isa 55:10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
Here is a verse that is speaking of natural things and spiritual things simultaneously. It can also clearly be applied to financial things. The blessings of God are many times manifested in the natural realm in financial blessings. You can see this concept in the Book of Job when God blessed Job in the end with more than he had in the beginning. You can also see the concept repeated in the life of Abraham when God blessed him exceedingly and abundantly so that his herds could not coexist with his nephew Lot’s herds because the land would not sustain them both since they were so blessed. You can see the blessing of God on the life of Jacob when he worked 7 years for Rachael and his father-in-law tricked him into seven more years. Jacob’s father-in-law saw that he was blessed because of Jacob’s presence and tried to manipulate his income and cheat him out of his blessings from God. So we can see this pattern repeatedly found in the Bible that God blesses people financially with an increase in the natural realm. So the verse in Isaiah can be applied to natural seeds, spiritual seeds, and financial seeds and so on. If God gives us seed and bread these are clearly symbolic of financial things that represent income producing and life sustaining factors. Let’s look at some New Testament verses about seeds and money:
2Co 9:6 But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Here we again find a verse that crosses subject topic boundaries. This verse applies to many things and it represents a spiritual law of God. The basic law presented to you is this; you will always reap what you sow. If you sow a little bit, you get a little bit back. If you sow a lot you get a lot back. These are just basic seed laws found in the Bible. You can see that this verse does not mention seed directly, however to sow is to plant seed; therefore the seed is indirectly related. Let’s see what else this chapter says about seeds of finance:
2Co 9:7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
What is a cheerful giver? You can again apply this to many things, including money. Being a cheerful giver involves primarily your attitude. If you have a right positive attitude you will be blessed in what you do. Have you ever read the story of Joseph in Genesis? Here is a man that was handed some very rough set of circumstances in life and he maintained a great attitude through them all. Joseph always expected God to fulfill his words that were spoken to him, so even though his brothers sold him into slavery he continued to believe in the best outcome. Joseph spent a great amount of time in prison, but wherever he was, the blessing of God was upon him and he was raised because of his attitude. This is a very powerful example for Christians today. It tells us that we do not always have it exactly the way that we would like it to be all the time, but we can still expect God to work it all out to cause it to be good for us in the end. So this verse is all about your positive attitude and your faith in God. You can read the other verses in this chapter and hopefully see the connections to money and finances, but I’ll end this chapters’ discussion with this one more verse:
2Co 9:10 Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;)
As you can clearly see the term seed sown is self-evident. The term increase is also self-evident. The “fruits” of your righteousness is of course symbolic of your harvest. So this verse clearly applies in the spiritual realm to our effort to grow in spiritual maturity. However, this verse will also cross over in the context of the natural realm and must be related to our financial blessings from God. It can also mean emotional blessings. It can further apply to our seeds that we plant in the lives of other people that allows God to grow them and produce fruit in their lives. There are just a wide variety of applications for almost every verse on seeds. This is why I teach that money is just a small part of the bigger picture of seeds given to us in the Word of God. So let’s examine another chapter of the N.T. about seeds:
1Co 9:7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?
As you can see from this verse, God is comparing several similar concepts of financial matters. God says nobody finances their own war. God says nobody plants a crop and not also eats from it. Nobody raises sheep and not drink the milk of the flock. These are all symbolic representations of a spiritual set of realities found in the Bible. We the church are in a spiritual warfare with a spiritual enemy named Satan. Then Paul was a sower of the word of God and he says that anyone who sows will eat from that which he has sown. Then sheep are a widely symbolic representation of the people of God in the Bible. So the clear implied meaning is Paul fed the sheep and the sheep fed him back. This is not rocket science so grasp these simple concepts and learn to live by them.
1Co 9:9 For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
Here we have a Bible concept that is very profound being explained. Many times God writes a Bible verse about natural things that cross over into the spiritual realm and this is a prime example of this. Paul is saying that God wrote about oxen and corn but that these apply to him and to us. In other words God did not write this verse for the benefit of the oxen, it was written for our benefit so that we can learn from it. Oxen when treading corn are said to be partakers of the corn and this is a Bible principle given to us from God. If the oxen are working then they should eat from their labors of work.
1Co 9:11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?
So this is a popular TV preacher verse found in the Bible. However, Paul is not writing this asking for their money he is only explaining a very powerful concept of sowing and reaping. Paul was sowing spiritual seeds into their lives and Paul said it was good for them to give back carnal or natural things back to him. In this verse Paul is claiming to be like the oxen that was working and that he should be a partaker of his own labor. However, what we see here are two principles being exercised simultaneously. To give to Paul would cause Paul to receive a harvest from what he has previously spiritually sown from the Word of God. For them to give financially to Paul is a concept of them planting back natural seeds into good ground; therefore they can also expect a harvest for what they have planted. In other words if they wanted Paul to continue to bless them with spiritual things it was good for them to give to Paul of their natural things like money, food, etc. so that Paul could live on the earth to continue to preach and not have to work to eat.
1Co 9:13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?
As we continue to read in this chapter, Paul and God is giving us a key principle that ministers of the gospel are partakers of those which they minister to. In other words this was a designed system of church government by God. It promotes a minister who is focused on you and not himself. If your minister had to work for a living in the world, you and the rest of the church would be a secondary thought to his primary time taker of working for a living. However, if the church pays for his wellbeing and financial needs then the minister can focus on God and the church and ministering to the sheep of God and not have to worry about where he will eat tomorrow.
1Co 9:14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
God again says what I just tried to say. The minister of God should be paid by the people who he ministers to. This is clearly the concept of sowing and reaping for both participants. The minister should minister in faith that the people will meet his financial needs and the people should give to the minister in faith that the God of their salvation will give them increases from the seeds that they have sown. So here is the flip side of the coin that also goes with this subject of sowing and reaping:
1Co 9:18 What is my reward then? Verily that, when I preach the gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel.
God in this verse clearly says that anyone who preaches and charges you money for the information is being an abuser of God’s designed plan. Paul very clearly says that he should not charge anyone to preach what God has given to him for free. This is what discourages me about many TV preachers that I listen to. While they say good spiritual things for 20 minutes, they end their show with a request for you to buy the rest of the message on CD or DVD and it always costs much more than it does to produce these and to send them out. A DVD can cost $20 plus postage and handling fees and this is clearly outrages for a piece of plastic that costs maybe 20 cents in bulk. Clearly these ministers of God are looking to your purchases of their messages to fund their TV ministries. So I understand and I am not stupid that TV cost a lot of money, but yet in what they do and the way that they do it, it gives the appearance of being an abuse of power that God says was not acceptable. It also promotes a philosophy that only the rich can afford to know the truth of the Gospel and that is not a fair thing to do. As you can tell this bothers me a great deal and I think it is very wrong. Here is what Jesus said on the subject:
Mat 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
Jesus tells us that God did not charge us for the information that we learned to preach, so we should not charge others to hear it also. That is why I do a free blog on a free website and I never ask for money or request you to send me a donation. Money is not a motivational factor and why I do what I do. However, that does not mean you should not do what God says to do either. Wow, this is a very complex subject that involves the participation of everyone doing what they should do, when they should do it and then everything works according to God’s designed plan. So that is why I did not want to include this lesson in my series about seeds, because it can very easily be taken wrong. I probably ended this lesson and sounded like you should give me something for the spiritual seeds that I have given to you; and that is not what I said at all. I said that I do these lessons for free because I love being a blessing to others. So I try to do the right things according to the word of God and you should do the same. If you noticed this blog is called the “Agapegeek” Blog and not my name. That means I am anonymous and you do not know me or my address to send me anything. I do this on purpose also. How you can bless me is to tell a friend about what you have learned and increase the traffic on my web site. That would be one of the greatest ways that you can be a blessing to me. If you learned anything about giving and sowing financially then you should give to your local pastor to help support your church to grow. We have just briefly covered a much broader subject of sowing and reaping financially from the Word of God. This is a complex subject and one that is not easily understood by many. Many people find it very difficult to relate their money to be like a seed that can be planted into ground to grow and increase. However, you can certainly find this concept in the Bible therefore you can personally choose to participate in it or to ignore it. Thanks for reading my Bible Study and God Bless!
Understanding Angels! The Negative Aspects of Angels! Part 8
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 8 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1” and read forward to this lesson. We have primarily been focused on the angels of God only and only the positive things that they do for the people of God on the earth. We saw for instance how angels delivered Lot and his family from the pending disaster of Sodom. We saw the angel of God assist Abraham’s servant in finding his son Isaac a wife. We saw angels bringing messages to Daniel and Joseph from God with words that came from heaven. But, today I want to discuss some negative potential impacts that angels can have against those who are not always doing the right things in the earth. In a previous lesson I talked about the two angels who were sent to Lot to rescue them from impending doom and disaster. But, you may also recall that the angels said they were the ones sent to destroy both of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and they did it very well. So we can clearly see that angels have significant power and ability to do both positive things like save Lot and his family and then extremely negative things like wipe out two large cities of ungodly residents. Wow, that is very important information to know as a Christian. As a Christian you should always be aware that you are not doing something that will provoke God or your angel into doing something negative to you. So today instead of discussing how angels can be a blessing to Christians, let me give you the flip side of this coin and show you how they can also be your worst nightmare. If you read in the book of Numbers and chapter 22 you find the story of Balaam. The King of Moab comes to this man and asks him for his help to curse the children of Israel. Balaam was told by God not to do it, but Balaam eventually yields to the King’s pressure and goes with him. We can pretty clearly see that God says don’t go and Balaam ignores God and goes anyway. This was clearly a great mistake to disobey God’s Word and this is what the Bible then says happened to Balaam:
Num 22:22 And God’s anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the LORD stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him.
You can very clearly see that God was not happy with Balaam and the same angels of God who were sent to minister for those who would be heirs of salvation can also become Balaam’s adversary or enemy because Balaam was doing things that he should not be doing. This proves that angels can either work for you or against you depending upon your spoken words, decisions and actions in the earth’s realm. If you make the right choices and do the right things they will prosper you and make your way successful and if you make the wrong choices you may find yourself in the predicament that Balaam was found in of an angel with a big sword in hand ready to strike you down. One of the key factors to this story of Balaam is not so much what he did but who he was going to do it to. The children of Israel were God’s covenant people and they were at this time married to God the Almighty. You do not go and mess with God’s wife and expect to live. This is a grave mistake that people in the earth make today. I have seen many news media people attack anointed men of God and this is cursing them like Balaam was going to do. I would not want to be one of these news people in what they are doing to God’s wife on the earth. You may recall that Jesus takes attacks on the church very personally. When Saul persecuted the church and killed them, Jesus showed up and said “Saul, why do you persecute me”! This could have been really bad news for Saul but, Saul repented and called Jesus his Lord and his life changed dramatically for the better. If he would have continued in his previous ways and ignored the words of Jesus then it would not have gone well for Saul. You might also recall that even though Saul repented, that he went away from the meeting with Jesus as a blind man.
Num 22:23 And the ass saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way.
Nowhere does it say that Balaam saw the angel, but clearly the ass that Balaam was riding on either sensed the presence of this spiritual being or somehow knew that she should not go where Balaam wanted her to go. You can read this story and see that Balaam whips his stubborn animal into submission and it almost cost him his life. This angel had a sword in his hand and would have killed Balaam if he did not change and do what God said for him to do. This is a very powerful lesson about angels either working for you or against you and how it is up to you to determine which one that they do. You can clearly see that Balaam had a freewill choice that he could have made. Balaam could have continued on his way in error and died or Balaam could humble himself and change. This is where many people in the earth miss it and die. Out of pride they cannot admit their mistakes and continue with the path they are on and they reap the consequences of disobedience.
Num 22:31 Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face.
We can see that God in his mercy suddenly allowed Balaam to have a spiritual vision into the reality of angels. Suddenly from this entire story Balaam could see what the ass saw and knew that He was in jeopardy. This also represents another way that men can see angels while on the earth. Angels do not always have to manifest in our physical presence for us to see them. The Bible very clearly tells us that God opened Balaam’s eyes so that the angel could be seen. However, either angels must manifest into a physical form or God must open our spiritual eyes so that we can see them or you will never know that the angel may be standing right in front of you trying to keep you from doing the wrong things. You should definitely learn the lesson of Balaam and see how you can be effecting what your angel is doing. So let’s look at another story quickly found in the Bible. What we experience in this next verse is a fact that even the greatest men of God in the Bible can fail and cause angels to do negative things. Here in 2 Samuel you can read the story of David’s sin. David makes a choice and does what God said not to do. So let me ask you this, if God tells David not to do something does God want that to be secretly done? That is the reasoning of some ignorant people, however I always believe that God says what He means and means what He says. So in this story David numbers the children of Israel and God had told David not to do this. So God sends a prophet to David and tells him to choose between 3 negative consequences and David does:
2Sa 24:16 And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough: stay now thine hand. And the angel of the LORD was by the threshingplace of Araunah the Jebusite.
So as you can read in this verse God sent an angel and this angel is on the verge of destroying Jerusalem and God recalls him before this occurs. What we learn from this story is even the greatest men of God can make mistakes. David we are told in the Book of Acts was a man after God’s own heart. However, clearly David made a huge mistake that cost lives. So we can learn from this lesson that no one is immune or too good from the negative impacts of angels. While the angel did not attack David personally, since David was the King in charge of his people, the angels hurt David more than if he would have attacked him physically. David repented before the Lord and God withdrew the angel. There are probably many other Bible verses that we could look at that convey the strength and potential negative impacts that angels can have. If you study the Book of Revelation you will see angels administrating severe consequences upon the earth as the vials are poured out. Do not be deceived into believing that angels do things only by God’s design. We have seen too many cases already where people determine what an angel does in the earth. Those who obey God’s words are favored and the angels help and work for them to make them successful. Those who are disobedient or ignore God’s words will cause angels to work against them.
- Angels are not normally visible to the natural eye
- Angels can still be present even though we cannot see them
- Angels have weapons, power and ability to do great good or great harm
- Angels can be sent because of God’s anger of man’s disobedience
- Therefore man’s disobedience can cause negative things to happen to them or others by angels
- God had to open the spiritual eyes of the man Balaam to see the angel
- Even David caused negative things to happen from an angel
- This means you are not immune to the same results of the angel’s work in the earth
Those are a few very important statements to know. It is also interesting to note that this story of Balaam proves God is not in control of what men in the earth do. These verses clearly say that God said not to go and Balaam made the purposeful and intentional decision to disobey so God had to send an angel to stop him. God told David not to count the children of Israel and David intentionally disobeyed and felt the consequences. These stories clearly demonstrate the “Freewill” of man to obey or disobey God’s instructions. That is the problem in the world today still, men and women want to clearly disregard God’s words and instructions for their version and definition of morality. I do not know if God still sends angels to deal with this reckless disregard to God’s standards, but somehow I believe that it still applies. I heard one minister say that he was praying and God told him to go to another minister and give him a message of warning. This minister did not want to obey God but, he did it anyway. The message that God gave him for this other minister was for him to judge himself and change his ways. What his ways were was not revealed to us, but God got the point over in a very clear way. However, this minister disregarded God’s attempt to help him and guess what this minister died at a very young age. Was this the work of an angel? I do not know and cannot say what killed him other than disobedience. If you understand the stories of Balaam or David then you understand that the root of the problem was always “disobedience”. Disobedience always has consequences eventually. This is just a very basic spiritual law given to us in the Bible. God says the wages of sin is death and sin can be reduced to simply being disobedient. So I know I’m not perfect, but I try to be aware of my words and my actions so that I do not provoke my angels to do something because God is angry with me. I hope you are beginning to see the important parts that people play in what happens to them in the earth. These are just some of the basics found in the Bible that are very important to know. God Bless!
If you would like to continue in this series of lesson on angels you may go to “Part 9“.
Understanding Symbolic Sheep in the Bible! Are You Once Saved and Always Saved?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 in the series of lesson on the subject Once Saved Always Saved and what others have called unconditional eternal security. If you have not read all of the lessons from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start reading with “Part 1“. Today is a response to a reader’s comment, who thinks that I know nothing about sheep in the Bible among other topics that I may get into later. However, this man wanted to chastise me for not following his steps of hermeneutical Bible study. He claimed that I clearly did not know what I was talking about when I taught on Predestination and Once Saved Always Saved, because He had figured out the magic formula for Bible interpretation. However, this man failed in one minor detail, he gave me no Bible verses for his method of interpretation so therefore I categorically reject his methods completely. You can read from my other Bible lessons how I interpret scriptures based on other scriptures found in the Bible. This is called letting the Bible interpret itself. There are many basic laws of interpretation given to us in the Bible and I am totally guilty of following these the best that I know how to do. So you can find many blogs on my methods of Bible interpretations so go and read them and learn. Any man can invent rules for Bible interpretation and that is the problem with most of them that you find on the internet. The Bible says that no scripture is of any private interpretation and this is what most people are guilty of. Today’s lesson will be an obvious example of how two people can read the same scriptures and get two opposite interpretations and why. You see all you have to do is ignore certain key words in these next verses and you can get the exact same interpretation that he gave me. However, if you try to do it correctly and pay attention to every word you come up with a major difference in perspectives. Here are some of the Bible verses that this man said I do not understand:
Joh 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
Joh 10:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
Joh 10:29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.
Joh 10:30 I and my Father are one.
In this chapter of John and John is one of my favorite books of the Bible which I have studied more than any other except maybe Genesis, I find a very interesting set of statements being made. This man said that these verses prove that people are “once saved and always saved” by God and can never lose their salvation because that is just what it says. However, if you look very closely and examine the wording and context that is not what it says at all. Sheep are of course symbolic of people in this chapter. The sheepfold is the symbolic world that we live in. Jesus is of course the Chief Shepherd that is in charge of all of us sheep. These verses start with the statement that “My sheep hear my voice”. So right there we learn the first lesson. Not everyone is “His” sheep. You do not have to qualify the noun “sheep” with the adjective “My” if all sheep can hear His voice. Do you get it? So let me ask you a simple question, are you one of His sheep? How can you tell if you are one of His sheep? Is it just because you say you are? I believe our current President proves that is a lie in his actions every day. Saying you are a Christian does not make you a Christian ever. You might recall in the book of Acts that some men came up to a demon possessed man and said “In the name of Jesus that Paul preaches come out of him”. However, the demons said to them “Paul we know and Jesus we know but who are you” and they made them sorry that they confronted a being more powerful than they were (Act 19:13-15). These were examples of men who were not His sheep, but tried to act like it anyway. So you either are one of His sheep or you are not one of His sheep! What is it that determines this fact? It really is not that complicated, if you can hear His voice then you are, if you do not hear His voice then you are not. So let me ask you this, do you hear His voice? I know for certain that I hear His voice on a daily basis, what can you say about this? So the first thing that you learn is not everyone is His sheep and then only His sheep can hear His voice. So let me ask you this, if someone speaks and you are not paying attention do you ever miss what is said? My wife accuses me of this every now and then. She says something and I am sometimes distracted or not paying attention like I should and I miss what was said. Has this ever happened to you? Just because you can hear does not mean that you heard. This is proved every day in church. People sit in the congregation listening to the preacher and I would guess that only a small handful actually hear what is being said and understand it. So hearing is not the complete answer given here, I believe it takes more than just hearing. You can learn this from the Parable of the Sower when Jesus taught on the 6 types of soil, 3 types of soil produced some fruit and 3 types did not produce any fruit. But, they all heard the same words of the sower who was planting the seeds. So obviously there is much more involved than just hearing. Do you get it?
So the next statement that Jesus makes is “I know them and they follow me”. So if you hear His voice Jesus says “He knows you”. However, then He says “They follow me”. Uh oh? Is that another potential problem? What if they don’t follow Him or His voice? Do sheep ever have a “freewill” choice of whether they follow the Shepherd or ignore the Shepherd’s voice? I mean come on, do people ever lose the right to choose? You see you clearly do still have a choice to make even after becoming one of His sheep. There is a clear implied meaning given to us here in this verse that sheep still have choices to make even after being saved out of this crazy world. I mean come on and think a little bit with your brain! If they choose to follow Jesus they can choose not to follow Jesus also. The only way that this would not be possible is if God tied a rope around the neck of every one of His sheep and then dragged them wherever He went whether they wanted to go or not. That would be forced “predestination” and forced “eternal salvation”. Does God forcibly enforce His will upon all Christians and all people in the world? There are many confused Christians who think that He does. If this is the type of God that you serve then you are highly deceived and very ignorant. God is not forcing any of His sheep to follow Him. If you know anything about being a good shepherd, they always walk ahead of their sheep calling to them and the sheep normally follow them. The sheep are therefore highly trustworthy of their master that He is not going to lead them to the wolves. However, sheep do still have a choice not to follow. Once Jesus told this story found in the Bible that is very relevant to our current subject today about sheep:
Luk 15:4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Is Jesus talking about sheep in this parable? I don’t think so! Jesus is again using sheep as an example of people. However, it is very clear and self-evident that sheep can wander off and away from the voice of the shepherd that was guiding them. This tells me that Jesus the Great Shepherd is not in complete control of everyone on this planet and what they do. Any sheep at any time has the choice or chance to walk away. Do you get this concept? This is called “FREEWILL”. These are saved people who have walked away from Jesus’ voice and no longer are able to hear it. Do you GET IT? Of course Jesus says any good shepherd will leave the 99 and go and look for the 1 that is LOST! So here we go again. Does this mean the shepherd when He finds this lost sheep drags him kicking and screaming back to the flock by force? If you think it does then you again do not know the loving compassionate merciful God who allows His sheep to do as they will. Sure a sheep could wander off accidently and be totally glad to get back to the safety of the flock and the shepherd. But, still people are not sheep, they are people and they can do what they want, when they want, to who they want at any time. If a sheep wanders off and commits suicide there is no getting that sheep back even if the shepherd wants it back really bad. If while away from the safety of the shepherd a wolf comes and eats that sheep, it is also gone forever. These are basic sheep principles of shepherds and their flocks. People want to think that God is in control of everything, but if this was true and God is the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Almighty, He would have never let one of His sheep get lost in the first place. In this parable, it is clear that a sheep got away and the shepherd did not know about it until He stopped and counted and said I only have 99 and I started with 100 so one got lost. Wow, what do you do with people who ignore what the Bible says for their version of reality? It sure makes it difficult if you can’t see the words that written on the pages, doesn’t it?
Let’s further examine the emphasized subject in verses 28 and 29 of John 10 that we were looking at first. If you can see, then you can understand that both of these verses are about the Power of God vs. the power of Satan. Both of these verses say that God is able to keep those that have chosen to follow Him. Remember that choosing to follow was an important prerequisite to the next two verses. So the next two verses are only applicable if you continue to follow by your freewill choices. As long as you are with the shepherd you are clearly SAFE and no one including Satan can come and force you away. This would be the opposite of forcible salvation; it would be called forcible damnation. If it is illegal for Satan to force you to hell, guess what it would be illegal for God to force you to go to heaven. This MUST be a two way street that goes both ways and the only determining factor which way you go is by your own choice of continuing to follow your faithful Shepherd.
So did we learn anything today? I bet my commenter didn’t hear a thing that I said and that is really a sad state of the world that we live in. My Bible says “Whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not”. It is almost impossible to get a blind man to see. What you must determine is a basic question; do sheep still have any freewill choices to make in the real world after being saved? Can they do what they want rather than do what God says? Before you answer this question you should go and read your Bible and see if there are any people in there who God said not to do this and they ignored it and went and did it anyway. There is Balaam, there is all of natural Israel, there is even Moses who God said speak to the rock and he hit it instead. There are too many examples in the Bible of people disobeying God’s voice. Why did God pick sheep as a type or symbol of people in the world? You should study more about sheep and learn how they are a picture of people. For example, sheep are pretty dumb animals, I have to admit that and that speaks a lot for God’s opinion on what people think in the world. You should be smart enough to first see that God’s intelligence is so far above your intelligence that it is barely comparable to a man vs. a sheep. So having said that your opinion is worthless! What you think about the Bible is totally irrelevant! There is no significance to your thoughts unless they become God’s thoughts. So what have we learned about sheep today?
- People like Sheep are DUMB!
- Sheep still have a free will!
- Not ALL Sheep belong to God!
- Sheep still have to pay attention and understand the words of the Shepherd.
- A Sheep can Get LOST accidently or on purpose!
- God will try to go and find the lost sheep!
- Not every sheep has to follow the Shepherd!
- No one can force a sheep away from His Shepherd as long as it hears and follows.
These are the basics found in these verses about sheep in the Bible. You of course can disagree with what I just said and ignore the facts if you want to. But, please do not write me any more ignorant comments about my lack of understanding of the Bible and go pull the plank out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of mine. God Bless!
If you want to continue reading about Once Saved Always Saved and the Eternal Security subjects you may go to “Part 4“.
Understanding the Difference Between Being the House of God and Being In the House of God!
(Ver 2.2) Today I will teach on a Bible basic truth that every Christian should know. There is an interesting difference between being in the house of God and being the House of God that many preachers that I have heard must not clearly understand. I have been in numerous church services where either the pastor or the worship leader gets up behind the pulpit and says “It’s good to be in the house of the Lord”. I guess I know what they are trying to say, but technically speaking that is a very false statement and directly contradicts what the Bible says in so many aspects. That statement also portrays a false reality to unsaved people that is easily taken wrong or misunderstood. Those types of statements leave people with the impression that if they come to church, they have satisfied their religious obligation to God. However, the Bible says that the church building that you are meeting in is not the house of God! You see the Bible clearly says that God does not dwell in the buildings made by the hands of men anymore. We know this is what God use to do in the Old Testament when God told Moses to build Him a temple and the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus in Matthew taught that David entered into the house of God to eat the show bread. But, these were all natural symbolic representations for a much different spiritual reality that was to come. Here is one of my key verses for today’s lesson and I hope you can see what it says:
Act 7:48 Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,
So here we have a major problem with the statement that too many preachers make. God clearly tells us in the Bible that it is impossible for man to build or make anything that is worthy of God’s dwelling place. If you read the next verse and the context you will see what I am talking about. God does not dwell in your man made church building; so when you say He does you leave a very false image in the minds of your listeners. However, there is another reality that God may show up at your church service if you invite Him in and then choose to let Him come in. I’ve heard ministers describe the presence of God at their meetings appearing like a cloud that would roll in over the people and then amazing things would happen. However, some people saw the cloud and others did not see the cloud. There are many examples of this type of cloud in the Bible if you look for them (Exo 16:10, Exo 19:9, Exo 24:15). I gave you 3 instances found in Exodus but God appears as a spiritual cloud several other times in the Bible as well. Then there are also literally many church buildings around the world that God does not ever show up in, because He is not welcome. Oh, sure they pretend that they are doing the right things and singing the right songs and acting out the parts pretty well. However, they neither know God nor are known by God so they worship with their lips, but Jesus said their hearts are far, far away. Jesus warned some religious people like this in Matthew 23:27 calling them “whited sepulchers that are beautiful on the outside but inwardly were unclean and full of dead men’s bones”. So God is not interested in your external religion or your outward religious ideas of being righteous. Just as God did not show up in the Jewish temple anymore, God will not show up at your church if your heart is not right before Him. These are examples of how important it is to be precise in exactly what you believe and to know what the Bible says. So where is the house of the Lord now? Or maybe I should have asked who is the house of the Lord now? If you study your Bible you will find that it says the people in the church are now this house of God:
1Ti 3:15 But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
As you search the Bible you find verses that read much differently than what some men preach and teach. Here is one of those examples. You of course can take this verse literally or figuratively. I believe that this temple is symbolic based upon the scriptures that I will show you in a minute. First, let me ask you what is the church of God or again I should say who is the church of God? Let me give you a few quick scriptures that hopefully will make my point that you can see for yourself:
Rom 16:5 Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ.
Here is God calling the people that meet in the house the church and not the building where they meet. This can get more complex than this, but this is the basics of the lesson today. You see the people that meet together in a building can be holding church services, but technically this is not the church. God clearly calls the people in the building the church and never is there any physical building called by this name or title in the Bible. This is really a very important difference to recognize.
1Co 1:2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:
Again we have the people living in the city of Corinth being called the church of God and not a building. It further qualifies that not everyone in the city is the church, but only those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. So it is much more important to be in Christ than it is to be in a building with a name on the outside. This is the mistake that pastors are leaving people with when they tell them they are in the house of the Lord today. They should be saying it is good to be in Christ Jesus and be the house of God.
1Co 15:9 For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
This is the last verse that I will show you today that says the church are the people that Paul persecuted and Paul did not burn down buildings or deface a building. When Jesus appeared to Saul on the road and said “Saul why do you persecute me?” Jesus was telling him He took it personally because these people that he persecuted were the church and the body of Christ where God lives today:
1Co 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
Here is the main reason that I wanted to get to today that clearly tells us where the Spirit of God is today. You can clearly see that God is not living in the buildings that are made by the hands of men anymore. God has designed and created our bodies to be His temple and dwelling place. So wherever we go God goes. Where ever we are the church is, if you are a true Christian. You see when you become a Christian the Spirit of God comes inside of your body to live and to bear witness with your spirit that you are now a child of God (Romans 8:16). This is exactly why when you tell people they are in the house of God a building made by man’s hands that it contributes to a lie. You can hold church in a hotel and God will be there if He is inside of you. You can hold church in a tent and God will be there if God is inside of you. God is not interested in your building projects, however God will help you build one if that is what you like. I have to say that it is much nicer meeting in nice churches with climate controlled environments than sweating or freezing outdoors. Just build your church building and don’t call it the house of God. I am the house of God and you are the house of God we are a spiritual building made of living stones being built up into an eternal spiritual city of the Most High God. Here is a Bible verse that says what I just tried to say:
1Pe 2:5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
The term “lively stones” literally means stones with life in them. This makes us complexly a very unique chosen building material for God’s house. You can clearly see that we are being “built up” to become a spiritual house for God. This is one of the key accomplished works of Jesus Christ. Why was it necessary for God to build a new spiritual house? I have taught on this before, but I’ll say it again for those who do not understand it yet. You see you only build a new house if you have something wrong with your old house. Heaven was the previous spiritual house of God where there were an enumerable number of angels dwelling. So what do you do when some of your angels have been found with sin in them? You should really think about that before you try to answer it. God is a just God and God is God who does not lie and break promises with those in His family. So God’s old spiritual house and family has a major problem occurring internally within it and this causes God to decide to build/create a new House through His Son Jesus Christ. I’ll talk and teach more on this subject soon, so please keep a look out for it, the Bible says some very important things on this subject for Christians who desire to understand.
Let’s get back to God’s new spiritual building project where you can clearly find in the Bible that Jesus is building this new house for God using us the church. We know in 1 Peter 2:5 that it says we are being “built up” a spiritual house. This implies a foundation and then subsequent building layers. Who is the spiritual foundation for this new spiritual house? Of course it is God Himself to some degree who is our foundation as well as a few other chosen individuals that are mentioned in this verse:
Eph 2:20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
Again we can clearly see that we the people of God in the church building are being built upon a foundation that consists of three spiritual entities. Jesus Christ is clearly called the most important stone in the new building and He is described as the “chief corner”. This was usually in ancient building projects the first stone that was laid and one that all other stones are aligned from. So the first thing that you should grasp is that Jesus Christ is also a stone in this new spiritual house. God became one of us so that we could be made again like one of Him. The next thing that you should observe in this verse is that the Apostles of Jesus and the prophets of God from the O.T. are also living stones that makeup the foundation for this new building. Do you understand this? This is very important that you see. Here is another verse that gives us an additional perspective on the subject:
Rev 21:14 And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
In this chapter of Revelation God describes another place or actually the same place that we have been discussing but in different terms. In this chapter God describes a spiritual city called “New Jerusalem” and “Holy Jerusalem”. Both of these are the names given to the new spiritual dwelling place of God. If you noticed in this verse that this city contains a foundation of the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ. That sounds very similar to what we just read in Ephesians 2:20. What we can see are some amazing parallels that are certainly not found here by chance or accident. Both Ephesians and 1 Peter spoke of a building project that is being created by God. We are called the temple of God in the letters written to the church, however in Revelation God speaks of us in terms of being a city. Both are structures with walls and foundations and are built with stones. Here is another verse that certainly applies to our subject today concerning this city found in Revelation 21:
Rev 21:3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
This verse is pretty amazing. It speaks of us as being the tabernacle of God. Tabernacle is a term meaning God’s tent. Isn’t this what Moses built God in the Old Testament? Moses built a tent which clearly meant a temporary dwelling place. What Moses made was a temporary dwelling because it was made by men. Anything that a man makes will be temporary. However, we are now found to be an eternal dwelling place for our God made not with the hands of men. When we leave this planet we will be given eternal glorified bodies like the one that Jesus possessed after His resurrection. This will be a body that will never fail or fade. Therefore it will be a permanent dwelling place for the Spirit of God. God is saying in Revelation 21:3 that God’s new house will be “with” men. The term “with” in this verse means to be joined to Him in marriage and become one flesh with Him. What we see today is a small taste of what we will see in eternity. The Spirit of God being in us today is a pattern for what we will experience forever in eternity. Therefore, God’s New Jerusalem is a spiritual city of People in covenant with Him where He lives and dwells throughout eternity. We will be His people and He will be our God and according to the Bible no eye has seen nor have we even begun to imagine the great things that He has planned for us (1 Cor 2:9). I hope and pray that you enjoyed my short and basic Bible lesson on God’s spiritual building project and have learned that we are that project here today and right now. So the next time when you go to church remember you are not going to the house of God, YOU ARE THE HOUSE OF GOD who is going to a building to meet with the rest of God’s house for fellowship, praise and worship of Him who is In US! God Bless!
Understanding the Power of the Spoken Word in the Bible! Keeping Your Mouth Pure!
(Ver 1.1) Today is “Part 10” in a series of 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 with “Part 1”. Truly one of the most important subjects found in the Bible is the power of spoken words. God clearly created everything that we can see in our world by His spoken words and the Bible says in this same chapter of Genesis 1 that God made man in His image and after His likeness. So man possesses the same capabilities and characteristics that God possesses in of course a controlled set of circumstances and in a more limited capacity. In other words we are not going to go out and create any new worlds like God did with just our words. But, that does not mean we do not control our personal view of this world with our words. I guess most Christians just ignore verses in the Bible about this subject and refuse to believe them and that is very unfortunate for them, because God’s Words are still true and they work for them or against them whether they understand them or not. It is very much like the laws of gravity. I do not fully understand the law of gravity, but I know enough to cooperate with it so that I do not fall off of a cliff and hurt myself. I could spend a lot of time on this subject and probably will, but today I’m going to start in an O.T. book of the Bible that is not widely taught from by many preachers. This is the book of Ecclesiastes and we will read in chapter 5.
Ecc 5:1 Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil.
Here we have a verse that is easily misunderstood and ignored by Christians. What is the primary subject of this verse? This verse is primarily about your personal relationship with God. But, it also has some very important instructions given to us concerning our relationship with God. Did you notice what this verse says? It says it is better to listen than to speak when holding a conversation with God. Why would this be important? Did you know that you cannot learn anything or even hear anything important if you are the one doing the talking? You might think that you know something worthy of God’s time and ear, but God clearly says that you do not. What is the “Sacrifice of Fools”? If you study the Bible you can see that God says the words that we speak to God in praise are called the sacrifice of our lips to Him (Heb 13:15). So what is the opposite of the sacrifice of praise to God? I believe the opposite would be you speaking the words of self-exaltation, or any words promoting something other than God. In other words stating with your opinion or your personal thoughts and ideas of what the truth is to you, these would be the words of a fool according to God. That is one of the primary reasons that I do not watch much reality TV on our channels here in America. These are the words of fools who do not understand that what they are saying is evil. Isn’t that what God just said in this verse? Here is a very good definition of what is evil in the eyes of God. These are people speaking things without any basis of factual information or knowledge of the truth? These are empty words from people with empty minds. These are fools in the eyes of God. God clearly tells us as Christians we should be swift to hear and slow to speak (Jas 1:19). So this verse has some very important instructions given by the inspiration of God for us and we can learn from them or we can choose to ignore them like many do. These are strong words from a strong God and it gets even better than that, read this next verse:
Ecc 5:2 Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.
Wow, it is so incredible what the Bible says, isn’t it? God implies that He hears every word that you speak and in fact in previous lessons on this subject you might recall that I taught that we will all give an account for every idle word that we have spoken according to Jesus himself (Mat 12:36). This verse starts with do not be “rash” with your mouth! Did you know that you can be rash with your mouth? In previous lessons on words I taught on the sword of your mouth being able to cut two ways; either blessing someone or cursing someone. This is the power that you have in your mouth according to the Bible. You should always speak blessings over your children and encourage them with your words. There are many children in our world that have never heard their parents say they were proud of them. There are many children in the world that have never been told that they have great potential to do great things in the world. These are the children that have been cursed by their parents saying they are stupid, dumb and incapable of anything positive. These would be examples of “rash” words being spoken in the world.
The next statement in this verse demonstrates an old principle that I have previously taught on in the series. This part of the verse says let not your heart be hasty to utter, say, speak, declare, etc.! Wow, again did you understand the connection? The words that we speak came out of us from the abundance of the understanding in our hearts (spirit) (Mat 12:34). This is again why it is better to listen to God and allow Him to speak, since His understanding is infinitely greater than yours. This is a very important principle being given to us. The words that you speak come from what you have deposited in your spirit. So if you do not like what you are saying you are in need of a heart transplant, spiritually speaking of course. Jesus you might recall said “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit…” (John 6:63). If Jesus’ words were spirit, then guess what your words are also spirit, just understand the difference that many times your words are coming from an ignorant spirit and most definitely are not the words of an unlimited knowing Spirit like God. I say that but you can change that by learning to speak the written words of God and that makes your words seem wiser even if you do not yet fully understand the full meanings. Finally this verse again confirms that it is best for us if we let our words be few when speaking to God. This is always a good idea whenever dealing with anyone in the world. If you are the one doing all of the talking then you will never learn anything new. So being a good listener is the key to learning the truth. I’m going to skip down to verses 4 and 5 for my next point on spoken words:
Ecc 5:4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
Ecc 5:5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
These are very important concepts to learn from concerning your spoken words. God is giving us a very specific principle in these two verses. What is that principle? It is to say what you mean and then for you to literally do what you say! In other words don’t tell someone I’ll meet you at 2:00 in the board room and never show up. What does that make you if you say one thing and then do something else? It is called being a liar and that is not a positive characteristic for anyone in the eyes of God. In these two verses it very clearly says that it is better for you to not say anything than it is for you to say something and to never do it. The example given is clearly about your money. If you tell God you are going to give Him something and then you never do it then you have made yourself a fool in the eyes of God. This is a very important life lesson. I worked with a man who would tell people I’ll have that for you tomorrow and something would always happen and he never could fulfill what he promised. The character of that man was now in question by everyone and everyone soon learned that you could not depend on anything that he said. People need to be able to place their confidence in your spoken words. If God said “I will do this for you” and then never did it, what would that make God’s character like? That would not be good for God’s reputation would it? If you cannot backup your words with your actions then you need to shut up and stay quiet. It is much better to be perceived as an ignorant man then it is to open your mouth and prove it to everyone. Here is another verse that speaks to us along these lines of our actions
1Jn 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
Is God talking about your words and your actions in this verse? You bet He is! If a man says “I love you God” but yet treats everyone in the world with contempt, God says that man is a liar. A liar is someone who speaks words and then does not follow through with the effort to make them happen or to display them to others. There is a direct connection between your words and your actions so learn the lesson of God and see what He says. You should learn from God’s Word that He is faithful to perform what He has promised because God’s character is never in question.
Ecc 5:6 Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel, that it was an error: wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thine hands?
Here we have another verse that declares the importance of your words. Did you know your mouth is what causes your flesh to sin? If you did not know this then you just learned something very important today. Your mouth is connected to your spirit and your spirit is the eternal part of you that will be judged someday by God. God does not judge your flesh, get it? Did you know that you are not a body? Your body is the flesh and bone house of your spirit so your flesh is not responsible for your sin, you are! Here we have a principle being given to us and it has far reaching consequences. How are people saved? This is not a trick question, but one that most Christians cannot answer correctly. People are saved by their words that they speak. If you read Romans 10 you will see the connection between your words and salvation. If you confess the “Lord Jesus” with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dean, you shall be saved! Here is the heart and mouth connection being given to us again in relationship to being saved. So what is the opposite of being saved? It still involves a heart and mouth connection but it is the complete opposite of those words found in Romans 10. Instead of Jesus being your Lord, you think that you are the lord of your life and do not require anyone else. So you think wrong and speak wrong and thus are not saved. People like this are deceived by Satan who is really in control of their lives and he is their lord whether they believe it or not.
If you have been reading my series of lessons on angels you already understand a little bit about the importance of words spoken and angels doing, working or being sent by God to help you. So what is the connection of this verse with the previous two about vowing to God? Why does it say you are speaking to your angel? Have you ever seen an angel and have you talked with one? Most of us have not so this verse implies that angels are listening to your words the same as God is listening to your words. So you cannot say “I vow to God” and then say “Oh, I made a mistake” and expect God or the angels to help you. If you say something you always have the choice of whether or not you will do it. God will not force you to do anything. However, this verse in context with the others that we just read about words clearly tells us that your voice can cause God to become very angry with you and He can “destroy” the work of your hands. The work of your hands is the job that you do to make money, your business, your employer, your income producer, etc. God can bless this or God can cause it to fail and it is clearly linked to your mouth in determining which one God will do. If you do not understand this you need to study the Bible a lot more and learn how to be blessed by God.
So today I took you through 5 or 6 verses found in Ecclesiastes about spoken words and their connection to your relationship with God as well as showing you the need to aligning your words to your actions for the continued blessings of God to come upon you and overtake you. What you say has more bearings on what you get out of life than anything else that you do here. Learn today to be quick to hear from God and slow to speak so that you can continue to learn from Him. Let your words be few in general to everyone, unless you are told to speak to people and say something from God like I was today. I pray that you will continue in the Word of God and continue to be led by the Spirit of God in everything that you do. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lesson on spoken words in the Bible you can continue with “Part 11“.
Understanding Angels! Protecting Angels! Part 7
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 7 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read all of these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1” and read forward to this lesson. In the past we have been discussing the physical makeup of angels, where angels come from, the dimensions of angels, the assignments of angels and we have learned that they are intended to be a beneficial spiritual force that works for us and with us. Christians and the angels of God are on the same spiritual team and we have the same God. But, we have also seen battles, conflicts and the realities of other angels that are not working for God. These evil or unclean angels are God’s enemies and we will discuss them more in the future. Today I want to discuss a different purpose of angels of God found in the Bible. I believe that God has assigned specific tasks and responsibilities for angels to follow. These are generally followed for our benefit, but angels never override your will unless there is eminent danger. If you recall we studied the story of Lot in Sodom and God sent two angels to his house to get him and his family out before the city was destroyed. These angels practically had to drag this family away from the city by the hand, because they did not want to leave. I do not know if it was a case of core unbelief or just the fact that they thought they belonged there in the city. We did see that Lot left two daughters in the city that were married and they would not leave with them, so this might have contributed to the hesitation. However, if they would have stayed in Sodom they would all have been killed that very day by the falling fire and brimstone from heaven. Of course the only reason they were saved was because God talked with Abraham and Abraham asked God to spare them. So really Lot had nothing to do with his salvation other than allowing the angels to guide them out. He was very fortunate that he had an uncle that knew a God who was merciful. Many times angels will do this for your unsaved relatives also if you ask them to. So what we learn from God’s story of Sodom is that angels can protect people from a pending disaster, either natural or supernatural. Therefore, one of the key assignments of angels given to them by God is to protect those who are heirs of salvation.
Of course it is always much more complicated than trying to make that simple of a statement trying to say that an angel’s job is just to protect us. We can clearly see in the world that even Christians die in plane crashes and terrorist attacks. In fact children are killed every day in our world and they have not yet come to the age of accountability to make a decision for Christ. So where are all the protecting angels for these children? These are very difficult questions to try to answer since we do not know all of the facts or circumstances surrounding any one’s death that occurs in our world. So how can we attempt to explain why something happened if we do not know all of the information necessary about what caused this to occur? That is our challenge, since the Bible says that we are looking through a glass darkly and only see partially the spiritual realm, we must do the best that we can from what information God hsd given to us. I do not believe that we can know everything unless God somehow shows them to us and many times these things are personal items between God and that person and God will not tell you their secrets just because you want to know them. God says in Deuteronomy 29:29 “that the secret things belong to the Lord” so don’t go asking God to reveal to you things that do not concern you personally. So today I ask the question do people have guardian angles assigned to them by God? Here is an interesting statement that Jesus said about angels:
Mat 18:10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.
Here we have a verse where Jesus is speaking about the little children that have been brought to Him to be blessed. Jesus tells us that these little children all have “their” own angel. These angels go from here to heaven and when in heaven they check with God and see what God says for them to do. Since God does not show any favoritism to anyone we must logically conclude from this information that every child born on the earth has an angel assigned to them. The population of the earth is currently less than 7 billion and in the book of Hebrews God tells us that the total number of the angels in Heaven are innumerable. Men can easily count to a billion and even a trillion if they had enough time or could just use a computer. According to Revelation 12 we know that 1/3 of the angels have been cast down with Satan to the earth. Therefore, we can clearly observe that even taking away 1/3 there are potentially more than enough angels to go around to watch over 7 billion people.
Let me tell you about some personal experiences that I believe that angels have come to my aid in my past. One day as a young man I sat in my car at a red light in the left turn lane waiting for the light to turn green. I was the first one in line and just sat waiting for a green light to go. Suddenly a dump truck ran over the front of my car and crushed it. It seems this truck was coming down the hill to my left and lost his brakes and the driver of the truck could not get it to stop when the light was changing. I never heard anything or saw anything that was about to happen. So the driver came down the hill without brakes, without sounding his horn and he was trying to weave and dodge everyone as he came down the hill without any brakes. He missed most everyone except my car. However, if I was 5 or 6 feet closer into the intersection or the light had turned green I would not be here today. A man I knew saw me right after the wreck of my car and stopped to talk to me. He said I was very lucky to have escaped harm and he was right. You see I did not see any angels present that day, but yet looking back on it I can see the hand of God that spared me so I conclude that an angel was at work that day doing something to help me. It could have been just to cause the light to stay red long enough for me not to go forward. It could have been to tell me to stop and not inch any closer into the intersection. It could have been helping the driver of the truck to know how to turn and when to turn the wheel to keep from killing anyone. I mean we do not know all of the possibilities that could have been affected by an angel’s help. It is very difficult to know when something like that happens all of the factors that went into that day’s activities for everyone involved. I mean I could have been a few minutes later and missed everything or I could have been a few feet forward and been killed.
Then later in life I was attending a church gathering at a large convention center in downtown Dallas Texas. It was very late at night and the service was still going on, but I decided to take my kids home to get them into bed. So we left early and started for where I parked my vehicle about three blocks away. I noticed as I walked down the sidewalk that there was no one else around anywhere and that concerned me. We had to go close to 3 blocks to get to my car and it was very dark except for street lights. Suddenly I noticed two teenaged punks up ahead of me nearly a block away on the other side of the street. Then I noticed them looking at me and taking something out of their ankles like knives or weapons of some sort. I knew this was not a good situation to be in with two small young children. I was carrying my youngest child and my eldest son walked by me. I saw that the punks crossed the street so I crossed the street at the same time in the opposite direction. They suddenly realized that I had changed my course as they were coming towards me. I remember praying to God and “pleading the blood of Jesus” over my situation. I grabbed the hand of my son and we turned to walk back towards the convention center down the middle of the street. Suddenly a group of people appeared out of nowhere. There were probably four of them, two men and two women so I started walking towards them and arrived at them at the same time as the two teenaged punks so I turned and stood by them and we all stopped to look at the punks. The teenagers were outnumbered at this point so they asked some dumb questions acting all innocent and then ran off. I walked with this people for a little while never saying anything to any of them about what just happened. Suddenly again one of the women turned to me and said “Thank you” and they went on into the night and disappeared. So why was someone that I did not know telling me “Thank you” with me not saying anything to them at all? I have asked myself that question many times and can only come to the conclusion that it was because I prayed and ask that God cover us with His shed blood. So were these angels sent from God or were these just people who happened to be at the right place at the right time for me? I don’t know! I just believe that God answers prayer and how He does it is not up to me. I cannot tell this story without tears coming to my eyes thinking about it.
So those were just two examples of how angels could have affected a positive outcome in a potentially negative set of circumstances. One time I saw nobody and the other time there were people involved that I saw. I have heard many times a minister of God say this, “People are looking for the spectacular and all the time missing the supernatural”. In other words they read their Bibles and want God to do something like part the Red Sea for them or appear in a burning bush and God does not have to do something like this to cause a supernatural event to transpire and save your life. I’ll give you one more example of someone I knew. He was working very late one night at the office and he had his little daughter with him there at work. They decided to go home and of course it was dark and everyone else was already gone. As he loaded his daughter in the car and put her in her car seat a man with a gun came up and told him let’s go back inside the office building. This man that was being robbed with his daughter was the type of man that carried a licensed firearm with him for protection, but it was in his brief case in the front seat of the car. So he told the gun man I have my wallet in my brief case and reached in and his hand fell on the gun in the exact perfect way so that he just grabbed it and pointed it and began to shoot it at the robber. The man was hit several times but did not go down. The robber pointed his gun at the window of the car where the daughter was and pulled the trigger and guess what, the bullet bounced off of the window. The car did not have bullet proof glass and this should not have happened. So was this a chance accidental occurrence that everything just worked out like it did for the child? You have to be pretty blind to think that it was. I am confident that the angel of God was present there to help and to save the little girl who is still our friend today as a 13 year old young lady. Can angels stop bullets? I believe that they can, what you believe is your choice.
Psa 34:7 The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.
So God tells us in the Bible that the angels of the Lord are present around those that have respect for God. Therefore, those who do not fear God might have a problem. It would be good to hear God say that we have an angel that is with us, but it also much better to hear Him say that one of their assignments is to help deliver us from something? What we need to figure out is what it is that they deliver us from? I believe that we only need deliverance from something that is intended to do us harm or hurt. Do you understand this? What is this trying to tell us? If angels can deliver you then other angels can also do things to you to cause you harm. That is just a basic reality found within the spiritual realm. Satan wants to kill you and God wants to save you and we have the classic battle of good vs. evil in our world transpiring all around us every night on the evening news. So how does Satan cause things to happen to take you out of the world? Many times Satan influences and uses people to hurt other people. Just as good angels can influence good people to do good things, Satan can influence and suggest that evil people do bad things to hurt other people. We have not discussed demons and evil spirits yet, but the Bible says they exist and we will definitely talk about them later.
Exo 14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them:
You can read another story of angelic involvement with the children of Israel leaving Egypt. In this story God says that an angel appeared before them to help guide them. The children of Israel make a camp and the angel moves to the rear of them for protection. We can clearly see that angels give God’s people a layer of protection from their enemies of Egypt who were pursuing them to take them back. This is not ministering “to” them; this is another example of angels ministering “for” them. We can clearly see that “protection” is one of the primary responsibilities for angels. You can also assume that Satan was influencing Pharaoh to pursue God’s people to do them harm. This is another example of how angels can affect the outcome of what happens in the world.
Exo 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
So I hesitate to mention this verse, because it says the angel was guiding Israel in the way that they should go. However, it will be a good opportunity to teach you something about the role of angels in the church. Angels can clearly give people direct messages from God. We can seen this happening repeatedly in the Bible. These words from God can be considered guidance. You can even see this in examples found in the New Testament. However, many times these angels brought news from God about pending disasters. For example, Paul’s ship wreck in Acts 27:23 was foretold to him by the angel that he would live through it. But, here is the problem; I have not found a verse of scripture that tells us to pray for angels to lead us. The Bible in the New Testament says that those who are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God (Rom 8:14). So it appears to me that today we are to be primarily led by the Spirit of God that lives in us. This does not mean that God cannot still send you an angel if He chooses to do so. However, it is God’s choice and not yours. Do not put God in a box and think that an angel is the only way God can do anything for you, just leave the option open if God so desires. I have heard stories of people who prayed for angels to appear and Satan shows up to give them a message like it was from God and this was nothing but a way to deceive them into doing something not in line with the will of God. The Bible clearly says that Satan can disguise himself to appear as a messenger of light (2 Cor 11:14). So if you pray and ask for angel and are not promised one in the Word of God, then you are asking and praying for something out of the line of God’s purpose and plan and this normally just opens the door for Satan to come in to deliver his message of deception.
There are many verses in the Bible where angels are used by God to protect and deliver His people, so I will not go through all of these. I will briefly talk about Peter being thrown into prison by Herod in Acts 12:5. In this chapter you can see that Peter was being persecuted for preaching the truth. Thus we have Satan influencing Herod to do God’s people harm and Herod later finds out this was a mistake that he should not have made. In verse 5 of Acts 12 you see that the church was praying for God to deliver Peter and they continued to do this until Peter showed up at their door one night. God ends up sending an angel to wake Peter in the jail and this angel walks him to the house where the church is meeting. The angel is able to bypass the guards, release his physical bonds and open doors supernaturally to get Peter out of prison. This is a supernatural event of the divine intervention of God of how an angel can be used to deliver anyone from harm. Peter would have been executed the next day if not for the angel of God and the prayers of the church. This is another example of how angels are sent for the words of people on the earth. If there had been no prayers or words spoken there would have been no deliverance for Peter and we would have a few less books of the Bible to read today. Please notice that spiritual angels can affect an change physical things and outcomes.
I’ll end this lesson with another example of how angels can potentially work in the earth and you not see them or know of their involvement. In an earlier lesson I told you that the towers in NY on 9/11 were amazingly empty compared to normal capacity. My wife knew one man in NY that was supposed to be in the tower giving a presentation for his company. This was a very important meeting and one that he should never have missed. However, something transpired that day that was not expected at home and he was forced to stay home with his family that day. Because he stayed home we can only assume that this saved his life. The company that he worked for and the company that he was presenting to both vanished that day and do not exist anymore. So what appeared to be important that day turns out was not very important in the grand scheme of life. Were angels involved in this one case, again we do not know but yet something happened out of the normal course of life that caused a dramatic different result. I personally believe it was an angel, but you can believe whatever you like.
So I am personally convinced that angels do supernatural things to help people when someone asks God to help them. It doesn’t have to be you praying for yourself either. It can be like Peter when it was the church that prayed for his deliverance or Abraham speaking to God for Lot’s benefit. Ask God to get involved in the lives of your friends and relatives and see what happens. I am a firm believer that we are not done with evil in the world. I believe the terrorist and evil people of the world are hard at work coming up with new ways to hurt people. By releasing the angels of God to help protect us is one of the best defenses that we can possess against this spiritual evil. If you have personal stories of how angels helped you out of a bad situation I would be very happy to hear about them. I’ll end this lesson here for today and pray that you have a very blessed day.
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons on angels you can continue with “Part 8“.
God and Computers! God Challenges the Kings of the Earth!
(Ver 1.1) Today I’m going talk about a subject that I have taught before. This is a very important subject found in the Bible and it helps us to explain many of the challenges we are faced with in the church today. This subject helps us to understand why there are literally thousands of church denominations in the world and why some believe so radically different than others. So today I am going to talk more about the hidden mysteries of the Word of God. Do you like to solve puzzles? To me the more difficult the challenge the more interested I am in trying to solve it. This doesn’t mean that I am the most intelligent or the highest I.Q. person in the world; I just like to solve problems. But, maybe that is just me as a problem solver type personality that comes from my computer programming experiences. As a computer programmer, I was constantly challenged with difficult problems to come up with solutions for writing computer programs. If you did not know it, computer programming is simply a computer programmer’s attempt to solve a very specific definable and repeatable problem. Sometimes we are creating new solutions and sometimes we are just inventing fixes for existing older problems. Problem solving is a Godly principle that makes humans vastly different from the rest of creation. Humans generally want to learn and are curious to want to know things and how they work. People also generally like a challenge and whether it is just doing a simple puzzle or solving a complex riddle we like the sense of accomplishment that comes with solving these types of enigmas. Did you know that God is a problem solver? If we are made in the image and likeness of God then we have His problem solving ability built within us in a lesser degree.
Problem solving can either be positive or negative. If you create a code system it is different than if you figure out how to break the code. However, both of these actions are creative problem solving abilities from a different perspective. You can see this in a computer hacker’s mentality. People are constantly trying to invent a new more complex code but, that just becomes a greater challenge for someone else to try to break into it. So let’s shift gears and talk about the Bible code system. God has actually come up with an ingenious system of message hiding in a plainly written word arrangement. I believe this was a demonstration of His ability to create an ultimate encoded word system that hides many spiritual truths using natural ideas, words, symbols, types and terms in the Bible.
An enigma is of course a strange word that some may not understand what it means. It means a perplexing or mysterious coded puzzle; something that is difficult to understand and almost impossible to explain on the surface. Did you know this is how God designed and wrote the Bible? God purposely designed the words in the Bible to hide a vast amount of spiritual information that we in the church still fight over daily trying to figure out what they all mean. Why do we fight over this information so much? It is primarily because too many men and women want to take natural things spoken of and try to interpret these words with their own natural human understanding. This method will not work and will only result in confusion since God is not writing at a man’s natural level. I guess I should rephrase that statement, I believe that God is writing about highly complex spiritual things at the level that a natural man cannot understand.
I believe that natural people do not understand spiritual things until their spiritual eyes of their understanding have been opened to see it by the Spirit of God. This is one of God’s guarantees of making His Word known at the exact right time that He wants it to be known. Did you know that God has thrown down a challenge for all humans on the earth? I guess technically it is not a challenge to every human, only those who want to know the truth. There are many, many people in the earth who are not interested in the truth; they are too consumed with their version of reality to care about what is really true. So you must decide today which category of people you fall into. Are you one that wants to know the truth? If so then here is God’s challenge to us in this verse:
Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.
You can clearly see that God has purposely hidden and concealed information in the Bible for us to find before He comes back to the earth. Are you diligently looking for it already? What does it mean to “search out a matter”? It means you have to “WORK” to find it. It also means it is not easily found. It also means you don’t know it already. Uh oh? That goes over really big with a lot of religious theologians who think their doctorate degrees give them an advantage over the rest of humans.
I believe these concepts of God hiding information in the Bible for us to find with all of my heart. Jesus when He walked the face of the planet close to 2000 years ago told us that if we would continue to study the Word of God that we would eventually come to know this truth that God has hidden for us (John 8:32). Verses like these two that I just mentioned tell me that we do not know all of the things that God has hidden yet. Here is another statement that Jesus made that had direct bearing on our subject today:
Luk 8:17 For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.
You can clearly see that Jesus is speaking of hidden and concealed secret heavenly information. This has to be valuable spiritual knowledge for us to know before we go to be with the Lord. This has to be something that will help us now in our spiritual battle against Satan. You may recall that I did a blog on “Understanding Spiritual Warfare”. In this lesson I told you that the battle was over the Word of God. Satan is doing everything that he can to keep you from knowing what God wants you to find out. Satan thinks if he can stop you from finding the truth, he has a chance of survival and I think that is a partial truth. Fortunately for us we have God on our side who is our guide and teacher, so we cannot fail. Here in Luke 8:17 Jesus said everything that God has concealed will be made known. The deep spiritual secrets of God will be revealed so that we can understand them. I strongly believe that the time is very short for us to find these hidden truths but, that God is also doing things in the earth to help us to see and know these hidden truths, like the invention of computers. I am convinced that computers are a tool given to us by God for His good and His purpose of learning and spreading the truth to the world.
When I was a computer programmer many years ago I remember a time that I was faced with a difficult challenge. It seems one of our system’s programs was missing the source code and therefore we could not make any significant changes to this program. You might not understand computer programming, you always first start coding and create a source language file and this is compiled into the machine’s object language code and this is what the computer uses to execute the instructions that you wrote it to do. Programmers never write programs using the machine’s language anymore like they did with very early computers. Today’s computer programming languages are much higher level than machine language. A single line of program code can be compiled into a whole bunch of machine instructions. Back to my story, we lost the source code to a key part of our system. But we were fine without the source code as long as we did not want to make any major modifications to the programmed operations that we previously used to create the executable. I’m going to show my age a little bit here and tell you we use to do something called “ZAP” the object code to make minor modifications to it. You could change the machine’s operation by changing instructions or addresses or eliminating the instructions all together with NO OPERATION replacement codes. So I would do this to our IBM main frame operating system so that it would not roll over the date when midnight came along, for example. You see IBM didn’t give us their source code so if we wanted to change it from rolling over the date we had to change the executable machine codes and that is what I did. It amazes me what we could get away with back then. If auditors would have been smart enough to understand the power that we had they would have had a cow! Today is of course a little bit better and different more secure world to some degree. So back to my story about losing the source code, this was a challenge to me and I was bent on solving it. So I took the object code and reverse engineered it back to the original source code as best as I could make it out to be. Of course I had learned a few things about the programming standards that were in place so that made it easier to reverse engineer it back to the original source code. This of course would be a much more difficult operation in our modern world, since most programmers only use very high level object oriented languages that are not as easy to create source from the executable programs.
So why did I tell you a story about old time computer programming and solving problems? God taught me so much from my computer programmer experiences that applies to the Word of God that it is incredible. You see God knows computers better than we know computers. I am convinced that God gave man computers for a purpose of the end times. Therefore, God knew that we would have computers in these final days before He returns and we could use them and their principles in our attempts at understanding the Bible. So I believe that God used computer laws and principles to help hide information in the Bible. One principle that I have blogged on before is that there are established spiritual laws that govern everything that God does. I called this a “Rules Based Approach” to Bible interpretation. God implemented and created the laws that govern correct Bible Interpretation and we are required to first discover them and then to follow them in order to understand what is written correctly. Another computer design principle used in any valid application development is called “Application Standards”. These are generally speaking repeatable patterns that occur in a uniform fashion or approach that can always be counted on to be followed. We live in a world full of standards. They make standard bolts and nuts, the large portion of the world has adopted weights and measurement standards around the metric system, there are also standard bar code systems that are used in our grocery stores to help speed out check out and other inventory control systems and we could go on and on about standards and that they are around us everywhere. In my early programming we had “Naming Standards” and other standards that are probably too technical to talk about in a Bible study that goes out to many who are not that computer literate. However, the concept of standards is a design concept that is also encapsulated or employed by God in the Bible. For example, there is the Bible concept of Types and Shadows found predominately in the Old Testament stories and the Gospels. These are real stories of real people, places and things in the world that exhibit a view into a spiritual reality that we cannot observe with our natural eyes. The Bible is full of repeatable patterns in many aspects and dimensions. Take the concept of “seeds” if you have not read my blog on “Understanding Seeds” you should. Seeds are repeatable standard found within the Bible that applies across the board to many aspects including complex spiritual things that you did not know of.
So if you are a computer programmer, today I challenge you to begin to study the Bible using computer science laws and knowledge. Examine the Bible using object oriented concepts of encapsulation, inheritance and abstraction. Take your computer knowledge and apply it using God’s methods and knowing God understands computers better than you do. See if you cannot find new things by using this new approach to Bible study. If you are not a computer programmer fear not, do not be downcast or feel inferior, I believe that God will use what you have and what you know to get you to see new things also, maybe even things that I do not see.
Today’s lesson was a reminder to you that God’s word contains many, many hidden spiritual secrets. That is the most important thing that you need to take away with you today. Then you need to figure out how God has hidden these things in the Bible. God did not use an unreadable code system like governments do to try to guard secrets, so that means that God used some very difficult different methods to conceal the truth in plain sight. I started writing a series of blogs of “Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight” which reveal some of the techniques used by God in hiding information in the Bible. If you have not read this series I would suggest that you go and read them as an introduction to some very basic techniques used by God. These are not a complete list, so do not expect them to tell you every secret utilized. If I knew them all I would already know everything that I need to solve every Bible debate that exists today and no one is at that point yet. However, I am a firm believer that before Jesus returns the church will make herself ready and will become one in harmony like Jesus prayed and asked to happen. If you are interested in making this happen then stay in the Word of God and continue to study to find the truth. God Bless!
The Predestination Fable vs. Freewill Theology!
(Ver 1.3) This is now Part 3 in a series of advanced Bible studies concerning the erroneous doctrine of extreme “Predestination”. If you have not read from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start with “Part 1“. It seems that there is not a shortage of ignorant people in the world or on the internet. Today I will address a very deep topic that I have addressed previously but I will do it today in a more detailed way for these people who refuse to believe the truth. There are so many levels of deception in the world. There are so many variations of the same lies that it is almost impossible to address them all. I had a reader write me a new variation of an old deception about “Predestination”. His claim was that everyone will be saved who wants to be saved, but God still predestined some people for hell because the Bible says Jesus chose Judas to betray Him. I guess according to this man’s reasoning Judas didn’t want to be saved and this was why Jesus chose him. I really do not know what people are thinking when they say some of the things that they do. Hopefully by writing this I can help someone in the world not to fall into this level of deception, for you see I do not believe that you can help people who do not want to be helped. It is very difficult and even impossible to help everyone. If you noticed while reading your Bible even Jesus could not help everyone. That statement might shock you, but you do realize that some of the Jews hung Him on the cross? Did Jesus not preach and teach the same words to these people as He did everyone else? How is it that some accepted and others rejected and the same words were spoken to each? I guess according to this guy it was because of God’s predestined purpose that everyone did what they did. After all God controls what every human on the planet does every minute of the day. We are all just God’s puppets and we only do His will. That is why there is so much good in the world and love towards each other. Heck, I haven’t seen enough love in the church, much less in the world. Why does the church bicker and fight within their own ranks so much? I guess it was all just God’s will and Jesus doesn’t get His prayers answered. Remember in John when Jesus prayed and asked His Father to “Make them one as we are one”? Has this ever happened in the last 2000 years? I think one of the few times that I saw it was in the Bible in Acts 2:1 when there were only 120 in the upper room and they were all in one accord. It seems to me that once the church grew beyond the 120 it became increasingly more difficult to remain in harmony. Why is that?
Today I’m going to speak about “Predestination” vs. “Freewill”. What is predestination? According to definitions that I have found it is the theology that states God has foreordained every event in the course of human history including the end result of salvation for every man, woman and child. This was a popular teaching that originated from “Calvin” I believe and it has continued in many ignorant and deceived churches to this day. This teaching has many problems and ignores many other Bible verses. It promotes a theology of “Limited Justification”, where only those selected by God have been atoned for by the Blood of Jesus. Therefore the Blood of Jesus is not all encompassing or powerful enough to save everyone. It further promotes the theology of “Once Saved Always Saved” where a God selected Christian can do nothing to lose their salvation. This philosophy is based upon the fact that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent and can do whatever He desires, so therefore they make the erroneous leap that God controls everything that happens to us in the world. Just because God can they think that God does. If it happens in the world then that is or was the plan of God in manifestation. This teaching comes from the minds of heavily deceived individuals who do not see or understand the Bible. Why do they not understand the Bible; primarily because they do not know the author of the Bible who is God! To understand the Bible you must first and above all else come to know Him (the Author) and allow His Holy Spirit to guide you into all of the truth (John 16:13). By knowing God you learn His character, His Integrity, His Nature, His Ways and His Personality. God’s integrity and character is the highest moral standard that exists above everyone else. For example, the Bible says it is impossible for God to lie. You can clearly see that makes His character way beyond mine. It is entirely possible for me to lie to you. It is entirely possible for any human on the earth to lie to you. In fact I do not know of another being natural or spiritual that exists that cannot lie. The existence of Satan proves that even angels can lie. That is why we MUST see what God says in His Word in order to find the truth.
Whether you realize it or not we have a significant problem within the Body of Christ, a major conflict, a battle of theologies between the “Predestination” Theology and the “Freewill” Theology. Many may have never heard of either of these teachings. Therefore they do not understand what they mean or know that there is a conflict being debated. If you do not understand these subjects then you need to learn quickly which one is the truth and which one is a fabrication. But, hopefully you will better understand them as I go through the rest of this lesson. What we have on the surface is the theology that God is in control of everything that happens vs. the theology that man has a freewill to choose his own destiny. This is the root of the battle.
So this reader of mine who ignored everything that I said in the last lesson on the subject of predestination (“Many Called and Few Chosen”), wrote me a long comment why I was so wrong giving me lots of his misunderstood Bible verses about how God prophesied every major event in the Bible before it ever happened in the world. Therefore according to his brilliant reasoning “Prophesy” proves “predestination” or a “predestined plan” that cannot be changed. I have written in other Bible lessons that God lives outside of the boundaries or constraints of time. Do you believe God is limited to time? If you think God is limited to the dimension of time where was God before the “beginning”? Scientists clearly understand that our known universe had a beginning, a clear starting point in time called the “big bang”. We must logically conclude that if God created time God existed before time. Can we agree upon this factual conclusion?
Jesus said “I am the beginning and the end” and this clearly tells us that God pre-existed in a self-existent perpetual state before and after either of these two points of reference in time. Let’s consider the nature of prophecy. The Bible clearly says that “I make known the end from the beginning” (Isa 46:10). Therefore God definitely knows the end before it happens. We are therefore at a crossroad point of decision to choose to believe one of two paths of opposing theology. The first path is the belief that just because God knows the end and everything in between that also means God orchestrated and caused it all to happen this way. This belief alleviates all other source or influences of freewill choices. Or the second path that we could take is that God did not cause it all to happen this way but rather only reports to us in the Bible what will happen based upon foreknowledge. This approach keeps the positive or negative influences of human freewill and other spiritual beings. Just because God knows what will happen does not mean God causes it to happen that way. Let me ask you this, do you believe that God is in control of everything that happens? Can you show me a Bible verse that says this? I simply do not know one and if you do then I would be happy to learn about it. However, you cannot take a prophecy and say God caused it to happen unless you see the words “God caused Judas to betray Jesus”. Otherwise your theology is based upon assumptions of human reasoning and that is a very dangerous place to put your confidence. The Bible says many things that will counter this theological theory that God controls everything and we must see these clearly to understand the real truth. I mean can you read? Here are some Bible verses that you should pay very close attention to:
Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
Jesus is teaching a parable that relates a spiritual truth about the Kingdom of God. The first thing that you need to note is the fact that God says He has an enemy. Not an evil puppet, an enemy. You can find this reality multiple times in the N.T. God says in Hebrews “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies thou footstool” (Heb 1:13). Do you know the definition of an enemy? According to God your enemy never does what you want them to do; if an enemy did what you desired then they would not be your enemy. We are fighting terrorism in the U.S., because why? Terrorists call the U.S. their enemy. Therefore, we are forced to defend our nation and to try to defeat them because they called us the enemy of their god Allah. Do you have a different definition for an enemy? You should go through the Bible and see the references to what God calls an enemy. An enemy is never one that under the control of those they are opposed to, unless they have been totally defeated. In this parable of God’s garden or farm, God is said to have sown wheat seeds and an enemy has come along in secret and sown “tares” in God’s garden. It doesn’t sound like God is in complete control of His own garden, does it? You cannot read a story like this and believe in “predestination” unless you twist it to believe that God’s enemy is just a part of God’s planned design. If you believe that, then you have to change the definition of what an enemy is. If Satan is doing exactly what God wants him to do, then he is a friend of God and not an enemy. You can clearly see this is true or it makes Jesus Christ out to be a liar. You see in John 15:14 Jesus said this to His disciples “You are my friends, if you do what I command you”. So if Satan is doing what God wants he would not be called an enemy he would have to be called a friend of God. I mean are you blind or can you read? Go through your Bible searching and tell me where it says that Satan is a friend of God? Knowing this fact alone blows extreme “Predestination” out of the water. There is no way to believe in predestination unless you change God’s definition of a friend and an enemy. By clear definition it is impossible for God to have enemies and be in total control of everything. You really need to study your Bible more before you make wild theological statements like God has predestined some to hell. Let’s see another new perspective that counters the theology of extreme “Predestination”.
Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
In the book of Genesis God is telling us of a time when man was morally corrupt. It is easy for me to understand that this is why America is in the dilemma that we are in today. Liberals want to remove God from our government and our schools and then expect things to get better. However, the Bible proves this is not what happens in our world without God’s involvement. Without churches, a Bible and God being intimately involved you can see what God says happened in the world. The rise of “wickedness” and “evil” in the thoughts and minds of humanity in our country has caused a generation of people who are not better than we use to be, but much worse. If you take God out of your schools you teach ignorance, children grow up without any moral character, standards and integrity. Therefore, they do what they want to do to who they want to do it and whenever they think they can get away with it. Take a look at this next verse in Genesis:
Gen 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Ok, I’m going to ask you again, Can You READ? What does this verse say? It says “God was sorry that He made man because He saw the wickedness that was running rampant in the earth. I thought God caused all of this wickedness to occur by His designed plan? After all how would God use Noah to save humans if God had not caused the evil in the world to be present in the first place? So this is the reasoning of predestination theology that you have to say that God purposely caused the “Evil” so that He could implement a plan of “Salvation” for us all. That is what extreme “Predestination” is preaching. But, how can you cause something to happen and then regret that it happened? Does that make any logical sense to you? You see you cannot do this if you have any morality and integrity at all. You do not ever go to your car in the drive way and purposely break it just so you can fix it, that would be called insanity. You see this is a major problem for extreme “Predestination” theology. If God wanted something different than what was happening on the earth, God would have controlled it to make it occur differently. God would not have allowed “wickedness” if it was all up to God. You can see that, can’t you? These verses just don’t make any sense in the extreme “Predestination” world that God caused it to be this way so that God could regret that He created man to be evil. Wow, this is some very powerful stuff if you can accept it as the truth!
Let me give you another verse of scripture that is directly opposed to the exreme philosophy of “Predestination”. You see according to “Predestination” theology God has foreordained that some people would go to hell and some people would be saved. If this is true, man would have no choice to ever make to obtain either one of these end results. So how do you deal with a verse that says something like this?
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.
I have heard many opinions to what this verse means and most of them are wrong. There are those who claim this verse teaches that everyone will be saved because God always gets His will done both in heaven and on the earth. This is the theory of “Universal Salvation” and it is another lie from Satan. Then there are others who must ignore this verse to teach “Predestination” theories. This verse very clearly says God desires everyone to be saved. This verse countermands the philosophy of “Selective Atonement” that other deceived Christians want to buy into. In the “Selective Atonement” philosophy God only paid the price for the sins of those that were chosen. The others have their sins carried with them to hell forever. But, you can read and see that God is speaking in this verse about being patient towards us on the earth because His will is for “everyone” to be saved. If it is therefore possible for everyone to be saved by the shed Blood of Jesus then Jesus paid the price for ALL sin with His onetime blood sacrifice. Where many Christians get confused is in the fact that salvation is not totally up to God. The reality is found in the Bible that God saved everyone but this does not mean that everyone is saved. For those who want to leave salvation totally up to God is how they created the belief of extreme “Predestination”. For those who can see the truth, they know that man has a part to receive through faith everything that God has given to them by His grace. Can you help explain to me what God needs to have patience if He is controlling what is happening in the world? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Here is another popular verse that “Universal Salvation” teachers try to exalt to the total truth. Since everyone was condemned to die by Adam, we can now clearly see that by Christ everyone will live again. But, the problem with that is this is not what it says. This verse says only those “IN CHRIST” will be made alive and that is totally different. If you do not understand what it means to be “IN CHRIST” you should go and read my lessons on “Understanding Seeds”. What we have seen in these two last verses that I gave you is that the Bible says it is possible for everyone to be saved, but that it is not an automatic occurrence just because this is the will of God. So we are uniquely challenged by God to take every verse we can find in the Bible on a given subject and then to balance the information given to us in order to come up with the correct interpretations. One of the keys to doing this is by allowing God and His Word to interpret itself. This means getting God’s definitions for every word. This means reading God’s commentaries on the given subjects that we are learning. There are many factors to understanding the Bible and one of the greatest errors that men make is to take a single verse or two and try to make a single truth found in the Bible the complete truth and this is a major mistake.
Let’s go into another Bible verse that is often overlooked by “Predestination” teachers. In the Gospels the disciples of Jesus come to Him and ask “Lord teach us to pray as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). If extreme predestination was really true, then Jesus’ response should have been “You don’t need to pray and ask God for anything because God’s will is always done”. However, this was not Jesus’ response was it? This was Jesus’ response to His disciples:
Luk 11:2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth.
Obviously Jesus thought praying to God was important enough to teach His disciples how to do it. This fact alone discredits “predestination” completely. Why do you pray to God? Do you pray to find out the will of God for your life and that is all? If you pray and have to ask for the will of God to be made known to you so you can do it then you are obviously not doing the will of God already. Do you understand that logic? In this verse Jesus is teaching His disciples to “pray” that the kingdom of God should come. Wow, that was a very heavy duty statement for God to make. If God’s will is always done on the earth then there is absolutely no need to pray for the Kingdom of God to come. Jesus then continues to pray that the “will” of God be done on the earth like it is performed already in heaven. Right there we have another MAJOR conflict to the extreme “Predestination” theology. Jesus who is God in the flesh is speaking to us and teaches us to pray and ask Him for God’s will to be done on the earth. This clearly means the will of God is NOT currently done on the earth if we have to pray for it to be done. Jesus says very clearly that in heaven the will of God is done, but on the earth we have a different situation occurring. Do you understand this? Is God stupid? Did God lie? Many must think that God is either confused or that He just wants people to believe that they are praying for something that is already going to be done on the earth to make them feel important. I tell you the deception occurring in the people who do not know how to read, seeing what it says and to those that try to explain verses like this away to hold on to their fantasy reality is just so incredible to me.
Let’s talk about foreknowledge next. Since God obviously did have a laid out plan for man, does that mean God must control everything to make it happen? Extreme predestination means that God is in control of everything that happens in the world and nothing happened unless it was part of God’s plan. This means Adolf Hitler was God’s plan. This means the terrorist who flew into the World Trade Center was part of God’s plan. This means the death of little children in the world was a part of God’s plan. The level of deception and ignorance to believe in something like that borders on insanity, if it does not cross well over that boundary line. If you believe that God is killing people in the world as a part of His divine plan for man you are a fool. You first off do not know the definition of what “LOVE” is. God who is LOVE (1 Jn 4:8) must demonstrate this highest level of LOVE as an example to us or we are following the wrong God. If God does not abide in LOVE then we are all in major trouble! If people want to redefine LOVE as it if it is permissible to kill people in mass, then we should all be taking up guns and doing exactly like God does. However the Bible says “Thou Shalt NOT Kill” (Exo 20:13). This Hebrew word translated as “kill” means to commit murder. So according to many ignorant theologians God is in clear violation of His own governing laws that He gave to man to follow. When Jesus Christ was born a man through a virgin named Mary (Gal 4:4), God placed Himself under the very laws that Theologians claim is Ok for God to violate. Completely foolish people think that God is some how separate from His Word. In other words God can say one thing and do something that is completely opposite to what He said and it is OK because God did it. Can you tell how much I dislike ignorance and stupidity?
I do not think I ever got to talk about the “foreknowledge” subject in the last paragraph. “Foreknowledge” is the specific knowledge of an event, planned outcome, or schedule before it happens. However, this is very different than man’s definition of “foreknowledge” and let me tell you why. Humans even have a variation of foreknowledge in limited degrees based upon planning. You see you might know that there is supposed to be a party tomorrow at 2:00 PM in the meeting room where you work. You know this because someone planned it and invited you to it. We can clearly see that just because this event is scheduled and planned that it does not necessarily have to occur, because in this world unexpected STUFF still Happens! The day the terrorists flew into the World Trade Center probably caused many parties to be canceled un-expectantly. We need to take this example and apply it to God, if we can. Extreme “Predestination Theology” wants us to believe that everything that occurs in the world is because it was “God’s Planned Event”. Then they have to further say that God does not allow anything else to interrupt His plans since He is in ultimate control of everything. Wow, these are really deep thoughts! What confuses many Christians is trying to determine the difference between foreknowledge and predestination. Just because God knows what will happen, when it will happen, to who it will happen and where it will happen does not mean that God caused it to happen or that someone cannot do something to change it from happening? What does the Bible teach about this?
You might recall that in the O.T. the prophet comes to the King and says get your house in order for God says that you shall surely die (2 Kings 20). Who said this and is it set in concrete? If understand the Bible you know the prophet was just a messenger for God and that God said it therefore God knew what was going to happen before it happened.. Is the king being told the set firm willed plan of God? Or is the King being told one possible outcome? Isaiah leaves the King and the King gets in prayer with God. God then sends Isaiah back and tells the King God has heard your prayer and you shall live another 15 years. So here is where people come up with more stupid interpretations. I have heard ignorant people claim that God has a secret will and God has a revealed will. So God’s secret will was for the King to live another 15 years because this is what happened. But, this is more crazy human reasoning trying to makeup explanations for spiritual things that they do not understand. I tell you stories like this just baffle me to how people can believe in the concepts of extreme “predestination”. Either God changed the predestination of the King or the King did something to change his outcome in life or God just lied. God said you are going to die and the King lived another 15 years after he prayed. So what is it?
Let’s continue to look at what else God says in His word and see if we can determine the truth. By the way “Freewill” theology is one that teaches that man has a freewill choice in their destiny of going to heaven or to hell. “Predestination” means God has already determined who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and therefore man has no clear choices to make. If “Predestination” was true why get up in the morning and do anything that day? Why preach the gospel to anyone? Why even eat food and live? What are we doing here? Let’s go back to the beginning in Genesis 2 and 3. In these two chapters God reveals the fall of man. The Bible says God has created a Garden called Eden and has placed His created man in this location. God tells the man that it is OK to eat from every tree. But, then God says “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you do, you shall surely die”. Right there is a major problem for predestination theorists. Why would God tell the man anything if man was already going to eat from the tree and fulfill the real plan of God? You see according to “Predestination” the man Adam has no choice in what he does, so obviously when Adam fell it was God’s plan all along. So the warning of God to Adam makes no logical sense and is incompatible with the doctrine of “predestination”. Why warn someone they are going to die if they eat this fruit, if this is what God wanted them to do anyway. So that is the basis of the major downfall in the theology of “Predestination”. Why does God write us this book called the Bible to every human that is full of warnings? If man has no choice in fulfilling their destiny, this makes no logical or theological sense? The existence for the entire book of the Bible makes no sense in the theology of “Predestination”. God does not have to speak to people who are already programmed to do what they were created to do? You see in order to believe in true absolute “Predestination” you have to believe in a “preprogrammed” humanity. If man has no choices to make then whatever they do in life is what they were designed by God to do, good, or bad or in different. This is just a real philosophy that is not found in the Bible:
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
Bible verses like this one have to be totally ignored by “Predestination” deceivers. God who writes this verse for us, says “I have set before two choices, one is Life and the other is Death, therefore choose life so that you can live”. Why would God give a choice to a man who had no choices to make in their eternal destiny or earthly existence? That is clearly very STUPID to think that man does not have a choice to make!
Pro 1:29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD:
Here we have another example of how ignorant people fail in our world and teach errors like “Predestination”. Because they “hated” knowledge and ignored the truth they have not chosen the fear of the Lord. Does God say we have a choice to make? Does God say we can choose to be ignorant? Does God put the ball in our court as being our decision to make? It sure looks like that to me.
Isa 56:4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant;
Does God again say that these men had a choice in what they could do? Doesn’t it say that they could have done like others and not pleased God? “Predestination” says man has no choice to make. They are pre-designed to please God or to be thrown in hell. If this is the case why does God not believe this? Didn’t God know He just lied to us in the Bible? What is God stupid or are people stupid?
Php 1:22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
I have blogged on this verse before. In this chapter Paul is in a quandary trying to decide to stay on the earth and continue his ministry to the people or to leave the earth and go and be with Christ which he called “FAR BETTER” for him. Paul says very clearly that this is his choice to make and that he does not know yet which way he will decide to go. Wow, there are hundreds of verses found in the Bible like this one that throws “Predestination” into a downward spiraling airplane that will soon crash and burn. If man has no choices then why does God say that we do in the Bible? No, you see the problem is that people want to take part of the truth of the Bible and exalt it to be the complete truth and this is just a huge mistake. Yes, God has a plan for man! Yes, God know the destiny of every man! No, God did not intend you to go to hell if that is where you end up. In my first blog on this subject I clearly showed you that God had written everyone’s name in the Lambs Book of Life and that the Bible says that God was forced to blot out those who would not receive His free gift of salvation. So if God had predestined you to hell already from the beginning, why would your name be recorded in the “Lamb’s Book of Life” and then be blotted out? Do you understand the problem in that question? Doesn’t God already know who makes it and who doesn’t? After all if God “Predestined” you for salvation then He would just have a book of names that He predestined to be saved and would not have to blot out anyone else’s name who was not predestined. Predestination and foreknowledge are very similar but yet totally different concepts. If I know that you are coming to my house tomorrow, that is different than me making you come to my house tomorrow without inviting you to come. So God can very easily get accused of doing things that He is not guilty of doing. Just because idiots want to teach “Predestination” does not mean it is the truth.
Then there is the difficulty of the fact of “prophecy” found in the Bible. Clearly, God has prophesied many things in the Bible that will happen even in future events to come. I can understand if God prophecies something that He is responsible for fulfilling. This only makes sense to me. God says I will do this and that in this time frame and then it happens. But, when God prophesied things concerning other people, places and things it makes you think that God is controlling these people, places and things to cause them to also occur. However, we have the factor of “foreknowledge” that is not being taken into account correctly. Because God knows how you will react to something, can mean that He can use this knowledge for something that He needs accomplished in the earth. You see a reader pointed out to me that Judas was “predestined” to betray Jesus and to die. In the “predestination” mentality they believe that God created Judas so that he could betray Jesus. Did you know you can’t find that statement in the Bible? If God does this then He is the master designer of a Heavenly Matrix system that puts every man into the specific role they are destined for. The necessary level of control is beyond our imagination for this to occur; God would have to use the power of suggestion, mind control and even mental and physical manipulation would not be off the table for predestination to occur. Is God capable of this, yes I believe that He is? However, is this the God that you know? It is not the God that I know and it is certainly not the God found in the Bible.
So we have covered a lot of different angles found in the Bible that to me clearly dispute the philosophy of predestination. I have given many verses that states man was given choices to make in life. You must therefore decide which way you want to believe. You cannot believe both ways like some would think. You must either choose to believe in the fantasy of predestination and ignore all of the verses that I gave you today or open your eyes to what I have tried to clearly teach from the Bible.
If you want to continue to read the follow-up to this lesson series on Predestination you can go to “Understanding Sheep“.
You can also go and read “Part 4” of the lesson series to study this subject further.
Understanding How to Keep the Sabbath Holy! The Fourth Commandment!
(Ver 1.3) This is now “Part 3” of a series of lessons on Understanding the Purpose of the Law. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would suggest that you go and start your reading with “Part 1” first. What is the Sabbath? Today’s lesson is a response to a readers question about keeping the Sabbath Holy. To many traditional Jewish people the Sabbath is a day of rest on Saturday. To many Christians it is a day of worship on Sunday. To many Muslims it is a Holy Day on Friday. So what are we to do as Christians on this day? Are Christians supposed to view the Sabbath like Jews or Muslims? This is a potentially controversial subject, because many view this subject using extremes. This is traditionally the downfall of the Jewish people. They were so consumed with their attempts to please God that they invented pages of rules to make sure that no one ever violated God’s law to keep the Sabbath Holy. However, Jesus said “Your traditions make the Word of God null and void” (Matthew 15:6, Mark 7:13). If you read the Gospels closely you should see that the main reason why the Jews crucified Jesus, was for the Sabbath conflict that existed between Jesus and their self imposed Sabbath rule violations. They refused to believe a man was from God who would violate their traditional Sabbath rituals. Jesus was criticized more for doing things on the Sabbath than anything else that He did. Of course Jesus purposely violated their rules to demonstrate the Law Giver was standing before them. Jesus was not required to keep their rules, they were required to keep His rules and they were doing a very poor job at that. In Luke 6 Jesus is standing before the scribes and the Pharisees and they are watching him closely to see if He was going to violate their Sabbath rules so that they could accuse Him. Jesus turned to them, looked at them and asked them a very direct question. Jesus asked “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do evil on the Sabbath?” You can clearly see Jesus was making a point that they could not answer. Jesus was saying that their definition of work was NOT His definition of work. You can also see that Jesus infers that doing “Good” was more important than their idea of a law of not working. Jesus confronted this issue with the Jews repeatedly and revealed to them many new things that they refused to see:
Luk 13:15 The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?
Here Jesus calls the Jews hypocrites because of their Sabbath rules. You can clearly see that giving your farm animal some water was a good thing that was acceptable in the eyes of God even if this could be considered to be work by many people. So is doing Good a job or work? Not according to God! Jesus clearly calls religious people who think their external rules are the solution for keeping God’s law hypocrites. Yet people in some churches today still have this same attitude.
Luk 6:2 And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?
So the Jews were consumed by trying to obey the letter of the law and they failed to recognize the one that gave them the law was standing before them speaking to them. So what was Jesus’ response to this question?
Luk 6:3 And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was an hungred, and they which were with him;
You see the Pharisees saw the disciples of Jesus going through a corn field and picking ears of corn to eat and according to the Jewish rules this was a violation of the Law of Moses. Anyone can clearly see that this is obviously a laborious task to pick corn in a field. I do not know if you can read sarcasm or not, but that was a sarcastic remark I just made. Of course it wasn’t really work it was just their idea of what the Law of Moses said. To the disciples they were hungry and saw food and went and got it. It is really not that complicated and Jesus told them, “Didn’t you read what David did”?
Luk 6:4 How he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone?
Jesus looking at the Pharisees told them that David violated the law and entered into the temple to eat that which was reserved for only the priests of God and David also gave to the others that were with him. It is funny that God, who was standing before them, did not strike David dead for violating this law, did He? Normally, if even a priest entered into a Holy place with sin they fell down dead and had to be dragged out with a rope that was tied around their ankle. So obviously God’s view of things is different than man’s view of things, aren’t they?
Luk 6:5 And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
So God’s point is that He is the one that gave the law of the Sabbath, He is still Lord of the Sabbath and only He determines what is acceptable to do and not you. In other words you are not God so do not pretend to be God and make rules up that define what is acceptable on a Sabbath and what is not acceptable on a Sabbath. This is what got the Jews in the major hot water that they were in and we have some Christians in the world today trying to do the same.
Here is the other side to the problem of trying to keep the Sabbath Holy today as a Christian. God says in the Bible that “NO FLESH shall be justified by keeping the LAW” (Acts 13:39). If keeping the Sabbath Holy is the fourth commandment and it is impossible for any man to be justified by keeping it then what are we to do as Christians? That is a really good question. I believe that we should be doing what Jesus did. If Jesus did anything on the Sabbath, we should be doing the exact same things. Jesus spent a lot of time going about teaching and preaching the Word of God and healing those that were oppressed of the devil. According to the Bible this was God doing Good in our world (Acts 10:38)! So doing GOOD is what the church should be doing on the Sabbath and every other day of the week. So everywhere you go and in everything that you do it should be in making an effort to do good for someone that needs good to be done to them or for them in the world. This is what I believe the Bible teaches us about the keeping of the Sabbath. I’ll give you an example, one day I was walking through a mall with my uncle and my son. We came upon a little boy that was crying alone in the middle of the mall. We could have kept walking but I decided to stop and asked him what the matter was. It seems that the child had gotten lost from his mother and was scared because he couldn’t find her. So I called to the nearest store clerk and asked them to call mall security to help find the mother. The young child was eventually reunited and there was a happy ending. So what if I had not decided to do this good deed? I could have hoped that someone else would have come along and done it. Or a bad man could have potentially come along and taken advantage of the situation and this child could have never been heard from again. So what would you have done? What is your definition of doing good? Jesus gave us an example of doing good in the story of the Good Samaritan. You can see in this story that some passed by the wounded man that was hurt and kept going. Those that passed by were a “Priest” and a “Levite” two religious zealots who would not be willing to lift a finger on the Sabbath to help even a hurt man. But, Jesus said the Samaritan came by and helped this man and made an concerted effort to do something good for him. Jesus praised the Samaritan and put down the priest and Levite. Who was justified in the eyes of God that day? It certainly was not the Jewish religious leaders?
Today we have many people in churches trying to do what the Jewish religious leaders did and they are looking for ways to accuse other Christians of violating their Sabbath rules. However, the Bible says “I am Holy so you be Holy” (1 Peter 1:16). So observe what Holy God does on the Sabbath and then do likewise. Be led by the Spirit of God to do good and you will see that God may praise you someday as being a Good Samaritan also. If you disagree you should take it up with God and not me, for I did not write the Bible. God Bless!
Understanding Angels! More About Put Your Angels to Work! Part 6
(Ver 1.1) This is now Part 6 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. I was planning on talking about the negative side of angels today, but God seemed to say that I wasn’t done teaching on the last subject about angels being servants of God. You see I seemed to imply some things that could be taken wrong in my last lesson. I seemed to say that you could tell an angel something to do and they would have to do it. But, that is not the entire truth; usually you find that the truth is always more complicated than your first impressions. In the last lesson I showed you where God said in Hebrews that angels are ministering spirits sent “for” those who are heirs of salvation. The meaning of the word “ministering” meant a servant. We have seen several times where angels were sent from God because of the words of men and women on the earth. So obviously angels are not our personal servants, they are actually the servants of God who do things for us when we speak right words. How do you know you are speaking right words? That is why we need to learn more today. I always like to think that you learn what God says in the Bible and speak what God says in order to be on the safe side. You are much more likely to think and say the right things when you do this. Do you recall what God said to Joshua? God gave Joshua a formula for success. I have heard many people try to preach against taking formulas from the Bible, but yet you must be spiritually blind to think that God would tell one person the way to be successful and this rule not to apply to everyone else also. Read the words of Jehovah God and see what they say:
Jos 1:7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.
To be strong and courageous is the opposite of being fearful and weak. God is revealing a faith principle to Joshua without calling it faith. God tells Joshua that by doing the Law of Moses and not deviating from it, he would be prosperous in whatever he did. To turn to the right or to the left means to depart from going straight down the path that God has instructed you to go in. This gets more Christians into trouble more than many other things. To depart from God’s Words is sin. However, God does not put any restrictions on how you can prosper unless you try to prosper by violating God’s law. In other words you cannot lie, cheat or steal and think that God and the angels will cause you to be a success in life. You see God always gets back to the basics. The basics are always found in God’s Word. If you can follow God’s spiritual laws you will succeed in the natural realm. Apparently this is what Abraham did in our last lesson without having the Law of Moses to follow. Because Abraham did the right thing before the eyes of God by finding a wife for his son among his own people God was able to send an angel to help make it happen. So how do we insure that we do God’s Word? God gives us some more clues in the very next verse in Joshua:
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.
Did you see what this verse says? It says the Book of the Law will not depart from your mouth. Where is the key to your success? It is in your mouth according to God. By reading, learning, memorizing and speaking God’s words constantly, God said you will make your way prosperous and always have good success here on the earth. The term “meditate” means to murmur or mutter under your breath; to keep it in your mind by speaking it with your mouth. It is very difficult to teach any subject in the Bible and not get back to the reality of the importance of your words that you speak. So was the servant of Abraham successful and prosperous in his attempt to find a wife for Isaac? He obviously was, so Abraham followed God’s law of success given to Joshua in order to make this happen. Do you see and understand the connection that I just made and why this applies to a lesson on angels? Do you also remember the verse that I gave you in Psalms?
Psa 103:20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
Does this verse make any more sense to you now? You see this verse does not say that angels only obey words. It says angels hearken unto His Words. But it does not say that God has to speak them? It says “the voice” of His Word and that is totally different than the “voice of God”. What if you begin to say what God says about you, are you now the voice of His word? I believe that you become the “voice” of His word when you say what He says. If you say what God says, I believe that allows angels to do what God said to do for you. So what is the key to success in life? It starts with first learning what God said and then saying and doing that whole heartedly in faith. Remember God said to be strong and courageous and not weak and fearful. There are just many factors in life that we need to learn about in studying this subject. If Abraham was fearful that his servant would not find the wife for his son, guess what there would have been no wife found. So you have a major part to play in being successful in life and you just cannot speak a command to the angels to do something that God has not already told them to do.
Here is another aspect about angels that I have already alluded to that you should learn. While angels have been sent to the earth to minister for those who are heirs of salvation, they are not our direct servants. As we have seen they work for God and only do what He says for them to do. However, if we say what God has said then we have the ability to give voice to God’s commands and they will normally hearken to our words. Here is another key factor to consider in this discussion on angels being servants. Jesus in speaking to his disciples said the following:
Mat 10:24 The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.
Jesus was calling his followers both disciples and servants. Meaning Jesus was the Master and Lord that this verse is referring to. Paul in Romans 1:1 says “Paul a servant of Jesus Christ”. If Christians are servants of God also, what does that make our relationship to the angels of God? We are about to learn another key factor to angels:
Rev 22:8 And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things.
John in writing the book of Revelation says that an angel came to him and he fell down to worship him. However, the angel stops John from doing this and says the following statement to him:
Rev 22:9 Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.
The angel of God says very clearly not to worship him, for he is a “fellowservant”. In other words the angel says we both have the same Master and Lord. The word translated as “fellowservant” means co-slave. It can also mean “ministrant of the same master”. You can clearly see that the correct order of things is that God is always the highest one over all others. What we discover from this information is that we are all working for the same cause and good. Angels can certainly do things that we cannot do and in many ways they have an advantage over us. However, once you see that it is God’s purpose that we are working for, then we realize that both angels and Christians have a common enemy with God. God’s enemies are now our enemies and we are working and fighting against these spiritual beings. We who are Christians are also working to get more people into the kingdom of God, but that is not an angelic assignment to preach the gospel. Preaching the Gospel is a human assignment from God. So our roles are different because we are dominated by different realms of reality. Humans are resident in a natural realm and angels primarily stay in the spiritual realm. I have seen where men can cross into the spiritual realm in the form of a vision and see things that they normally do not see. We of course in our studies have seen where angels can cross into the natural realm and do things for those who are heirs of salvation. So the lines between these two realms can be blurred to some degree, but yet we still have specific primary responsibilities that have been placed upon us by God. These roles will further blur in the future. After the church is taken up to heaven, then who preaches in the earth? Apparently according to Revelation, the angels will be allowed to preach to men on the earth:
Rev 14:6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
So today there are no angels preaching in the world that I know of. But, later I believe you can see that this verse says that will change.
Today I’m going to end this lesson from a story that I learned from a preacher that I consider one the greatest men of God in the past century. This man said that God told him to stop praying for money and to command his angel to bring in his finances. God gave him the verse in Hebrews that we looked at about angels being a minister and other verses that said the laborer was worthy of his pay (1 Tim 5:18). He was struggling financially before this revelation from God and he read a verse in the Bible that said I “If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land”. He realized that he was not eating the good of the land so there must be a problem. So this man was a full time minister of God and traveled to church to church speaking and teaching the Word of God. He used to totally depend upon the pastor of the church to treat him fairly and pay him according to the offerings that were supposed to be given to him. Sometime this worked and sometimes men were not as good of Christians as they appeared on the surface and withheld from him. So this minister when he would go to a church would determine how much money he needed to meets his bills for the week and then place a demand on the angels of God to go and cause the money to come. He would not pray to God and ask for any amounts of money, he would not tell the pastors of the church that he expected any amounts of money specifically; he would just say to his angel to go and work for him and they did it every time. God was teaching this man a principle that is found in the Bible and it works regardless of your profession. If you can find the same Bible verses and believe them, the angels will hearken to your voice also. Just as Rebecca was influenced by an angel to come and minister to the servant of Abraham and all of his camels, the angels of the Lord can cause people to give to you also. Angels will of course never make anyone do anything that they do not want to do already. God will always use people to be a blessing to others who want to be a blessing. In return God can bless them further. You may recall in Genesis that God told Abraham that I will bless you so that you can be a blessing to others (Gen 12:2). This is also not a license to steal or even a get rich overnight scheme. You can take any truth found in the Bible to the extreme and make it a lie. There are also many other truths in the Bible that apply; your heart condition, your attitude, your willingness, your obedience to God and His Word and I could go on and on. This is the problem with many Christians, that they hear one good thing and jump on it like that is all there is. God is not a lottery and we are not pulling a Heavenly Vegas slot machine trying to hit it big. Keep balanced at all times and stay in the Word of God and allow God to teach you what else you need to know.
So here is the next part that you need to know. This will not work if you only try it! This preacher knew God’s word and believed God’s words and then he did them and spoke to the angel. You better get the scriptures in your spirit so that they are resident and firmly set within you before you begin to say them and expect them to happen. That was a very basic lesson in faith and believing God’s Word. There are many who do not understand it in the world but yet there are also many others who do this every day. I am not here to convince you of anything that you do not want to believe in. If you read the Bible and see things differently than I do, that is fine with me. Just do not criticize me like you are God and know everything. How you believe in angels will not affect your salvation, but it might affect your finances. If you have a story about how an angel has helped you, I would very happy to hear about it. Later in these lessons I will try to give you some examples from my personal life of how I believe that angels have helped me in life. I thank you for taking the time to study the Bible with me and pray that it was a blessing to your walk with God.
If you would like to continue to the next lesson you may select “Part 7“.
Understanding Angels! Put Your Angel to Work! Part 5
(Ver 1.0) This is now Part 5 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. What are angels good for? What do they do for us? Do they have specific jobs and assignments? Who gives them these assignments, God or Us? Does everybody have a personal guardian angel? If so why do bad things happen to so many people? There are just so many hard questions to try to answer. I definitely will not answer all of these today. We can certainly find some of the answers to some of our questions and still not understand that there are many other factors involved in what we get in life. The Bible is a book full of highly complex issues and even if we learn one of these factors completely, that does not mean we can explain everything that controls what happens to us in life. Many of these spiritual laws of God have been revealed to us in the Bible, but yet we still do not fully understand them all and how each one works, interacts and reacts with the other given spiritual laws. What do we do? I believe that we just do the best that we can and continue to learn as much as we can as we trust God to show us and teach us what else we need to learn. God certainly has hidden a vast amount of spiritual wisdom and knowledge in this book that contains His Truth, so let’s study it today and see what He says us. Today we will explore some more accounts of what angels have done for people in the Bible and thus see what they can possibly do for us. You see the Bible says that God shows no favoritism and that He is no respecter of persons. Meaning what He has done for one He must do for all. Of course it is more complicated than trying to make everything totally up to God. Sometimes God does things for people only because they have done the right things to allow God to bless them. In order to obtain the same blessing that they got, you must do what they did and that is not as easy as you might think. You might not know everything that did and thus it is impossible for you to do what they did. So do not put everything that happens to you in the world entirely in the hands of God’s responsibility, you also have a part to play in what happens to you and you are required to make right choices as we will learn more about in these lessons.
Heb 1:14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
If you read the context of this verse found in Hebrews you will clearly see that God is talking about angels. God calls angels “spirit” beings that minister. These angels as we have seen have the capability of manifesting into the natural realm and becoming physically seen by humans. But, also note the qualification for the angel’s service being given to us. These angels are only sent for those “who are heirs of salvation”. Wow, that really narrows the scope doesn’t it? Do you qualify as one of these people? If you do then you have angels that are sent to minster for you. Did you notice that it did not say minister “TO” you but that it says “FOR” you? There is a big difference between those two words. It is like saying I have someone working “ON” me vs. someone working “FOR” me. If you look up the word translated as “ministering” it has a great definition. It means “attendance” as a servant. Angels are you spiritual “attendant”. It can also mean “aid” or “official service”. So what is it that angels are supposed to be doing for those that are heirs of salvation? That is of course a trick question. Did you know if you do not tell your “servants” what you want them to do, that it is Ok for them to do nothing and think that is what you want? Only by giving your servants some specific assignments, tasks and jobs do you ever get servants that will know they are doing something that pleases you. God is telling us to put our angels to work for us and you need to learn how to do that. It is very much like owning a large company and hiring people but you not telling anyone what you hired them for. They come to work every day and sit and just wait for something to do. They take home a pay check for doing nothing. I’ve seen many people who I have worked with before who do this. Let’s look at an example in the Bible of how to put your angel to work for you.
What did angels do for people in the Old Testament and why did they do it? By studying the Bible and asking these two questions we are about to find some of these answers. We will find some examples and see how they ministered for these Old Testament saints. We will start by looking at a verse in Genesis 24. By reading the context you will see that this is the story of Abraham when he is very old and he sends out a servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. Abraham makes the servant take an oath and swore that he will fulfill his last request. Let’s start with a verse near the end of the chapter where Abraham makes a statement that is very relevant to my subject today:
Gen 24:40 And he said unto me, The LORD, before whom I walk, will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred, and of my father’s house:
Abraham declares that the angel of the Lord will be sent with this servant to help him find a wife for his son Isaac. How does Abraham know this? Reading this chapter I did not see Abraham pray to God and ask for an angel. Did God tell Him that an angel would go with his servant? I couldn’t find that in the Bible either. You should really ask more questions when you study the Bible. You see I do not think Abraham did anything but declare what his angel was going to do and thus he put his angel to work for him by faith. The servant takes camels and gifts and goes on his journey to look for a wife for Isaac. But, there is no mention of an angel going with him like Abraham said. It appears that the servant went alone. What happened? What we can see in this verse is a great statement of how angels minister “FOR” those of the heirs of salvation. Abraham certainly qualifies for a “heir of salvation”. We can read in verse 11, that the servant goes to a city of Abraham’s relatives where he sits by a well and prays. As you continue to read in this chapter you find that a woman appears at the well. How is it that just the right woman comes to the exact well that the servant is sitting by at just the right time and no others come first? Have you ever thought about that?
The first verse that we read in Genesis said that the angel will “prosper” your way. In other words you do something and the angel will do something to make it successful. Did you see that this is a partnership arrangement? If God and the angel were only responsible for getting a wife for Isaac, it would have been best for Abraham and his servant to do nothing and let the angel do his job. However, this was not how it worked was it? The servant went forth to a land and sat by the well waiting and knew what to pray and say and suddenly the right woman appears first before any others could come. Do you understand that angels can influence people to do things and even say things? Angels do this most of the time by simply putting thoughts and suggestions into your head (mind). It does not say the angel appeared to Rebecca and told her anything. You can assume that the angel came to Rebecca and suggested that she needed to go to the well and Rebecca agreed in her mind and went. You can also see that the angel must have told her what to do and say when she got there to the well in order for everything to work out the way that it did. You can also assume that since every other woman who was usually sent to the well to get water also did not show up first because these other women were given suggestions to wait and they did. It is a fascinating concept being given to us. Angels can affect what people do and when they do it. Did you know that many of the people on September 11, 2001who should have normally been in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were not there for some strange reason? These two buildings normally contained over 35,000 people on an average day by 9 AM. This does not account for the number of tourists and others who could visit on any given day to reach way beyond that number. All of these people who would have normally been there were not there the day that the planes flew into them and less than 3000 died that day. When the terrorist struck the Towers, the buildings were amazingly not full to capacity like they normally were. Was this a chance accident or were there angels trying to suggest that these people needed to be somewhere else this morning? I heard many people say that for some reason they had to run an errand and do something else and fortunately for them it saved them. I find that just too amazing to be a coincidence or a chance accidental occurrence. I completely believe that angels of God were at work trying to save as many people as they could from what Satan was trying to do. You of course can believe whatever you want to about it.
What we discover in reading chapter 24 of Genesis is that Abraham said some very specific words and instructions for his angel to follow in faith and things worked out for his servant in an incredibly orchestrated non-accidental fashion. The odds for going to anywhere and being in the right place at the exact right time to meet a someone that you do know who says and does exactly what you expect is mathematically impossible to say the least. So I believe that Abraham’s words put the angel of God to work for him to cause these things to occur.
Num 20:16 And when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:
When this verse says that people cried unto the Lord, they are said to be praying to God. If you are praying then you are saying words, yes? Apparently angels are sent and respond to words that are spoken by people on the earth. We have actually already seen this fact in the story of Zacharias in Luke and Daniel from an earlier lesson on angels. Here is a key verse that I gave you before:
Dan 10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
The angel was sent by God in response to the words/prayers of someone on the earth. Daniel spoke words and the angels responded to those words. If Daniel doesn’t speak words, guess what no angels are going to show up and do anything. This is a revealed Bible principle of how you put your angels to work for you. What we are seeing is a definitive pattern that informs us that angels respond to our words. So let’s go back to what I said earlier, that Hebrews said angels are servants sent for the heirs of salvation? How would you put someone to work for you in a company on the earth? You hire them with your words and then tell them what you want them to do for you with more words. I believe that this is very simple concept of how angels work for us. You can choose not to believe it and it will not affect me one bit, however it might affect what your angels do for you.
Psa 103:20 Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
The angels of God do things based upon spoken words. Clearly when God speaks they are attentive and listen to what is being said. You can again see in this verse that angels are extremely “strong” beings and definitely not to be taken for granted. So what other factors cause angels to work on our behalf? I’m not sure if we can fully say the answer to that question. I can see that the words that we speak and pray to God have definite effects on what they do. If you have read my other lessons on spoken words, you should already understand and know what we say matters. God clearly tells us that our words affect our outcomes in life. There are certainly more instances in the Bible that I believe I could discuss today. For example, David when he slew Goliath was he that good of a shot by David’s ability or was there an angel from God helping him? You see it does not say there was any angel present, but there was certainly something supernatural taking place that we are not clearly informed of. David certainly said all of the right words before his angel and God so I believe that this allowed them to help defeat the giant Goliath. If God told us everything about every story in the Bible there would be no secrets and no hidden information to learn from the Bible; everything would be obviously right in front of us. God obviously did not do this and conceals information in almost every story found in the Bible. So we are forced to put the puzzle pieces together correctly to see what is revealed to us and what is hidden from us. I believe that God purposely hides information about angels from us so that we do not worship them as gods. So God balances the information in the Bible so that there is just enough to inform us and not too much too exalt angels higher than where they should be.
So I believe very strongly that our words affect our angels and what they do “FOR” us. Only by choosing right words like David, Abraham and Daniel do they respond in ways that are positive to us. I’ll try to show you in my next lesson how what we can say and do can cause a negative outcome on what angles do for us. If you know of other stories in the Bible about angels I would be happy to hear about them. If you have personal experiences with angels I would also be happy to hear about them. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can go to “Part 6“.
Understanding Spiritual Laws Found in the Bible! Part 2 The Law of Marriage!
(Ver 2.0) This is now Part 2 of a series of studies about the reality of spiritual laws found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. In the first lesson that I did on this series I gave you 3 basic spiritual laws that I discovered in the Bible. These were first the spiritual law of faith, the second was the law of the Spirit of Life vs. law of sin and death and third the spiritual law of sowing and reaping. I know I did not fully cover any of these subjects extensively, but I believe I gave you enough information for you to go further and explore them in your Bible. I will say upfront that this is an advanced lesson series that is intended only for spiritually mature Christians that have studied the Bible extensively. If this is not you I would recommend that you go and read a more basic subject to learn things that will help you mature. It is very much like Paul told the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3:2 that he was unable to teach them meat because they were still in need of the basic milk from the Word of God. Please be the judge of yourself before you continue. I do not want to offend anyone with an advanced Bible subject that they are unable to spiritually chew.
I would like to warn you at the beginning of this lesson that I will primarily be addressing spiritual subject truths as the primary focus. But in order to understand these advanced spiritual truths we really first need to understand some basic natural truths also. Therefore, I will be jumping between the subjects of natural marriage and spiritual marriage. It might appear confusing at first but this is the way Jesus taught using parables. Jesus would teach very advanced spiritual subject using only simple farming tools and concepts. So I thank you for your understanding in advance.
Today I want to readdress a Bible subject that I have blogged about before, but it bears repeating for those who have never studied the subject of the law of marriage. Marriage is a spiritual law found in the Bible from cover to cover. Often times Bible students only look at the Law of Moses and think that is the only law that God has established in the Bible. However, when God created man, Adam and Eve, He established a multitude of spiritual laws which have only been revealed after Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Why do you think that Jesus could not reveal and teach everything that He knew? It was primarily the fact that God could not let the secrets of the Kingdom of God out of the bag until God had first died and established a Kingdom. All Satan would have had to do was to not crucify Jesus Christ on the cross and that would have ended God’s plan of salvation and redemption for the human race. Satan would have had a future and we would have had no hope for any type of future. You must understand that even though God prophesied the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus hundreds of years before it occurred; Satan did not understand it or he would have not done it. Here is a verse of scripture that I think is very relevant to this point of my conversation:
Gal 3:23 But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
You see the Law of faith that I talked about in the first lesson was a spiritual law that existed when God created Adam. But, God never revealed this law until after Jesus was raised from the dead. Faith was not a new concept; in fact the law of faith is recorded in every part of the Bible. If you read Hebrews 11 this chapter is often times called the “Faith Hall of Fame”. It goes through instance after instance, example after example, of men and women found in the Bible that had faith and used it. So you can clearly see that just because faith was not revealed like Galatians 3:23 says, faith still played a key role in the life of every Old Testament saint. They either believed God or they did not and the results that they got were demonstrated for us to learn by. So the Law of Faith is not a new concept for the New Testament church, it is just one that we are better understanding.
Marriage was also a hidden spiritual Law of God. However, I have discovered that God has placed great priority on this subject. Why does God place such emphasis on a subject that modern men and women seem to take so casually today? Why is the devil trying to pervert the God established institute of marriage between one male and one female into a same sex union? Why do people get married today and divorced tomorrow like it was normal way of life? It seems that way over half of the marriages in our world today end in divorce and this is happening even in the church. I do not feel that these are things that please God. How many have been married multiple times in our society? Why is it that when a couple gets divorced that it appears to become the easy way out for the next time something is not going their way in their next marriage? Do you realize that there are no perfect people in the world? I think people get married to someone they do not know and eventually find out what they are really like and then realize that they shouldn’t have done that. So they leave their spouse and go looking for mister wonderful or misses trophy but they will never satisfied because these people do not exist. Divorce typically breeds more divorces. Children learn divorce from their parents and the parents pass the curse of divorce down to their children. Divorce becomes a repeated cycle because some think that just because their parents got divorced so that means it’s OK for me also. So that was part of my non-popular introduction to a natural problem that I recognize in our society. We simply do not understand the significance of a Godly marriage covenant contract.
Many times I find that people do things out of ignorance and they think that ignorance is a valid excuse for why they did what they did. You will find that this rarely works when you are standing before the judge in a natural court of law. A judge sees the law, knows the law and sees the actions you took to break the law and then assigns the penalty for your transgressions of that law. If you disregard the law and do what you want to you will eventually get caught and have to pay the price. This is the way it is with spiritual laws in the Bible also. In Hosea 4:6 God says “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”. Knowledge is the opposite of ignorance that God says destroys people. So therefore, knowledge is the power and ability to do the right thing. If you know speeding in a school zone will get you a huge fine, it is best to slow down and avoid that penalty. Every law has benefits and every law has punishments or consequences. This is true whether you are talking about the law of gravity or the law that says thou shalt NOT steal. The attitude of many people is that they like to push the envelope of how far they can go and get away with violating the laws of nature. They like the thrill of jumping out of airplanes and free-falling and they do it over and over until their parachute fails to open and then they do not do it anymore. I wonder why?
So we talked all around a lot of the basics that surround laws. I hope you can understand the importance of learning about spiritual laws in the Bible from my simple three or four paragraph introduction to today’s subject of the Law of Marriage. God says many things about the covenant bond of marriage in the Bible and it is inadequate to take just one verse to try to think we understand the whole entire subject. But I will need to start somewhere so I will look at a verse in Romans 7 first:
Rom 7:2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.
This is a very easily misunderstood Bible verse? A spiritual law is a designed principle of God that conveys a cause and effect observable and repeatable reality for all of those that are affected by the law. In other words God says something and if you follow it you gain the benefits from it and if you ignore or abuse it you suffer the consequences from it if you abide under the jurisdiction of that law. I do not know if you understood what I just said, but it was important. In Romans 7:2 God teaches us that when two people are married according to the law of Moses that they were intended to be joined for life. This verse was actually a two way street and it was not just applicable to only women.
This verse was written to a covenant woman so that is why the male covenant husband is not directly mentioned. You may not understand my last statement either, but you should read some of my other blogs and you could be closer to knowing these more advanced truths. I will briefly try to explain. You see the nation of Israel was designated to be God’s covenant wife in the Old Testament (Jer 31:32) and this verse here in Romans was written to those who were previously married to God the Father. If you look at verse 1 of Romans 7 you will find Paul’s target audience to be those that “know” the law. To “know” the law is a covenant relationship term written to only the Nation of Israel. Gentiles did not “know” the law and were never in covenant with the Mosaic law or with the living God. So these next verses in Romans 7 after verse 1 do not apply to ANY Gentile believer. But yet these verses can still teach us all and we all can learn from them.
God is always faithful to His covenants but God will break the marriage covenant if His covenant partner does not keep their part of the marriage agreement. Like any natural marriage a spiritual marriage covenant takes two willing committed partners. If only one is willingly committed and the other is not, then what is the other faithful partner supposed to do? That is a new complicated twist to the equation, isn’t it? This is what God was faced with in the Old Testament repeatedly. The nation of Israel left God’s covenant so many times that it is difficult to count them all.
If you look in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Jeremiah and other places you will soon discover language that called God’s wife Israel a “harlot”, “whore”, “adulteress” and many other very unflattering words. Many people do not realize that a covenant is a marriage and that a marriage is a covenant. Learning God’s definitions for words is a vital part of knowing about spiritual laws and we must do this by discovering God’s definitions of the subject. We will begin with a verse in Malachi:
Mal 2:14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.
As you read the Bible you discover that God has placed very important and significant clues in some of the most unlikely spots like this minor prophet book of Malachi. God says that your wife is the one that you are in covenant with. Perhaps the problem is that you do not understand what a covenant is? A covenant is a legally binding eternal contract that is legally divisible by death of one of the covenant partners. When God makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 there are animals that are killed and split down the spine in two bloody pieces. Then the two covenant parties are supposed to walk between the pieces and this signifies a blood covenant bond and union. Now if one party breaks the covenant they are saying to the other party that it should be done to me what was done to these animals laying on the ground. Wow, that gives each covenant partner a very strong motivation to keep the covenant. If only marriages were done this way today.
God was married and in a blood covenant relationship with the natural nation of Israel in the O.T. but His wife Israel did not take this covenant relationship seriously and this resulted in Israel’s divorce (Isa 50:1 and Jer 3:8). God ended the covenant marriage with Israel and this is also a pattern for natural divorce. Anytime a spouse leaves their spouse I believe this is a legal pattern for when divorce is permissible. Leaving your spouse shows your lack of commitment to the promises made. God has done all of this however as a pattern to another coming covenant that would be established as an eternal spiritual contract between us the church and Jesus Christ and we’ll talk more about that in a bit.
Mal 2:15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
This next verse in Malachi alludes to a principle that is very important to understand. It says “Did He not make one?” Within the context we can surely see that God is speaking to us of the law of marriage found in Genesis 2 when God created Adam and Eve and Adam looked at his wife and said this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh because she was taken from his body. So reading and understanding Genesis God says that a woman is one with her husband. You can also say that a man is one with his wife; it is definitely a two way street being referred to. This was God’s original design and this was God’s original plan. God took one body and made two and this was the physical and spiritual laws of marriage being defined. When people get married, God declares that they have become one flesh:
Gen 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
When we started reading this lesson we began with a verse found in Romans that said a woman was joined to her husband as long as he was alive. This verse in Genesis 2 is the reason why God could say this. This is the law of marriage covenants, the two will be one. This is why God is writing to the Hebrews in Romans to tell them about this law. Since Israel was married to God the Father in the O.T. we can therefore conclude that God had become one flesh with his wife Israel. Do you understand that statement and the importance of understanding the implications behind that statement? God was joined to a natural nation of people under the law. Whenever you are one with someone whatever happens to you also happens to your spouse and vice versa. Whatever you have they also have. This is just the basis of a sound Biblical marriage. I can see why Israel would want to join in this relationship, but why would God want to join in this relationship? God was not under the law, but obviously He chose to join Himself to a woman who was. That is an amazing question to ponder. You might recall what Jesus said about this subject, he said “I did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill it”. You see you probably do not understand the purpose of the law. I wrote a lesson on this subject called “Understanding the Purpose of the Law of Moses”. You might want to go read that and it might help you to understand what I’m going to say next. In order for God to cast Satan into hell, God must first convict Satan of a punishable crime under the law. Did you know that our courts cannot make up laws to throw you into jail? Back in our history child pornography use to not be a crime, therefore no one went to jail for that obscene behavior until they passed a law making it a crime. Did you know that applies to Satan also? Just because he sinned, there is no punishment for sin until he is in a state that says that he committed a crime. Even though child pornography has always been sinful and wrong, it was not a crime until the law was passed and you were convicted of it. I just do not know if you understand what I’m saying or not? But, it is so important that you try to get what I am teaching to you.
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.
The Bible has many difficult and hard sayings in it and this is surely one of them. The direct implication is being given to us that God died in Jesus Christ. We obviously understand that it is impossible for God to die and cease to exist. This is certainly not what this verse is saying to us. What this verse is saying is that because the Spirit of God was in Christ on the cross, these Hebrew people who this is directed at are now free from their Old Testament covenant marriage with God, so that they can now be legally “married to another”. To be married to another is a clear reference to becoming the bride of Christ who was raised from the dead, the firstborn from the dead. This allows Jewish believers to become legally married to our Savior Jesus Christ without becoming an adulteress like this chapter speaks of. You see you cannot divorce someone and legally marry another because God says you are one flesh. This is a complex puzzle and a riddle of Biblical proportions being given to us. God, who is one God, tells us He died to implement a new covenant through Jesus Christ and one of the reasons He died was for the Hebrews sake. Because of His death on the cross, it is now legal for any Old Testament Hebrew to enter into a new eternal spiritual union with Jesus Christ. If Jesus hadn’t died then they would have been joined to God the Father and God the Son simultaneously and that would have been adultery according to the law. Go through this chapter in Romans and read every verse very carefully, it says some things that are very powerful and they do apply to you regardless of who you are. These verses apply to natural Israel and they apply to us the church. These verses also apply to natural people being married to other natural people. All of these are marriage covenant relationships.
From what I can read in the Bible, there are only two legal reasons for getting out of a marriage to marry another, and these are 1) infidelity or 2) death. If your spouse is unfaithfully sleeping around on you, you should not be married to them. Then God clearly tells us that marriage is a covenant contract “till death do us part”. We can of course see our world is more complex than those two simple rules. There are certainly cases where one spouse can be abusive physically or mentally and that is not a healthy environment for a safe peaceful family. Recently in the news here a man shot his wife and then killed himself. Clearly that was a tragedy that should never have happened. If people knew more about God and the Bible, I believe these things would not ever happen. People are guilty of making emotional illogical and irrational snap decisions out of anger or other emotions that do not convey the life and love of God. So we live in a world that contains both good and evil and this is our greatest challenge. Trying to determine what is right and good vs. what is wrong and evil and this is what we do every day of our life. We can learn from God how to deal with every situation in life and this gives us hope of a positive outcome for our decisions. I hope that you can at least begin to see that marriage is something that you should not enter into on a casual whim. God says that once you are married, in the eyes of God you become one flesh with that person for the rest of your life. Obviously today in our loose immoral society there are people like rock stars who are joined to hundreds of others and do not know it.
1Co 6:16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.
Marriage in the eyes of God is simply having sex with someone whether we believe it or not. That statement really goes over big in our modern world of casual sex today, doesn’t it? Please read this verse very carefully. God only refers to the law of marriage found in Genesis 2:24, four times in the entire New Testament. These can be found in Matthew Why is this verse the only reference that is ignored by pastors, teachers and Christians today. According to God’s Word, He says very plainly that if you go and have sex with a prostitute that you are now one flesh with her and in marriage covenant. What if a man has had casual sex with 1000 prostitutes, is this still true? I believe that it is. Wow, how many times some people have been married in the eyes of God is probably unbelievable! God is using a natural truth of sex to teach a spiritual truth that is greater. God does this over and over and over in the Bible and this is just another example of that.
We can use the context of this verse to prove the last statement. We should be able to learn that God is speaking about a spiritual marriage covenant relationships between Christ and the church. Back up in verse 15 directly before this verse. You should find that God is telling the church not to be joined to a harlot. God teaches us directly in this chapter that we are members of His body and that we are one spirit with Him in verse 17. Yet according to verse 16 we still have the choice to go make the members of His body to be one with a devil. These verses are spiritual warnings from God. But yet since men have been given a freewill by God, they are still capable of making wrong choices.
Natural things were created by God to provide views into unseen spiritual realities. These natural and spiritual things and laws of God were intended by God to be parallel truths with the greater truth always being the spiritual. I believe that natural sex is equivalent to what the Bible says is spiritual knowledge of God. Having simultaneous multiple natural sex partners in this world I believe is the equivalent to worshiping God and idols at the same time.
There is a basic law of Bible interpretation called the “Law of First Mention”. Using this law we can learn many facts about God’s Law of Marriage. Adam and Eve were God’s established pattern for marriage and this was between one man and one woman. God’s design of marriage was for it to last eternally. If Adam had chosen not to sin and rebel against God, they could have been alive today to demonstrate the plan of God. But since Adam failed in the natural realm, Jesus came to the natural realm to restore God’s law and plan for marriage in the spiritual realm. The way it was in the beginning is how it will be in the end. It should be the goal of every marriage to be patterned after the design of God’s purpose. However, it still takes two that are committed to each other to fulfill this law. A marriage with only one covenant member being committed like God to uncommitted natural Israel will always fail.
Please understand that I do not want to sound like I’m being self-righteous or condemning anyone that has been married more than once or that has had sex with multiple partners in this lesson. The Bible says that to those who are “in-Christ” and walk after the Spirit, there is therefore no condemnation extended towards them (Romans 8:1). There are many spiritual laws in the Bible and you cannot just teach one and omit all of the others. In my first lesson on this subject I gave you a key verse that said “The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has freed us from the Law of Sin and Death” (Romans 8:2). The Blood of Jesus covers all of our sins that we have committed and we all have sinned (Romans 3:22). So just because someone has been married to one woman for over 50 years does not make them better than you, even if you have been married 6 times. The mercy, compassion and love of God are very strong spiritual forces. The faithfulness of God to forgive us of our past transgressions is one divine trait of God that we should all possess. God said “I will not remember your sin, as far as the east is from the west I have put it away from me” (Psalm 103:12, Isa 43:15). If even God does not remember our sin that you have already asked Him for forgiveness for, then the only part left is for you to not condemn yourself for your past. God only expects us to learn and grow and to use our past mistakes so that we do not fall into them again. So I do not know if I helped you today or said anything that was truly beneficial to your situation, but I pray that I did so that you will continue to follow after God and to keep trying to know Him better. God Bless!
Understanding Angels! Satan the Anointed Cherub! Part 4
(Ver 1.2) This is now Part 4 of a series of studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. We have covered a lot of information that is not going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. I personally believe that you cannot discuss the subject of angels and ignore the one angel that has caused God and man the majority of their problems. Today I want to study and discuss the angel Lucifer as being one of the created chief beings within the angelic class of creation of God. I believe that when we study the subject of angels without studying about Satan, we miss out on understanding an opposing force to God and that which is good. Many of the angels mentioned in the Bible are good and do many positive things for God and us. However, there is a counter force to this good in the world and this is very important to understand. I have actually already mentioned Satan in my last blog. You might recall that God sent Gabriel to give Daniel a message and the Bible tells us that the Prince of Persia withstood him for 3 weeks until finally Michael came and helped. The Prince of Persia was a symbolic reference to Satan. The Bible reveals much about this spiritual being and it would take a long series of lessons to include everything but, we should still learn as much as we can about him, so today will be your introduction to him. We will begin our study looking at some potentially controversial scriptures found in Ezekiel. These are potentially controversial in the fact that they again do not name Satan directly. This is one of the techniques that God uses to conceal information in the Bible and that is to call one person by many different names, titles, descriptions and symbols so that you do not know directly who he is talking about. However these words written in Ezekiel are clearly about someone who is not a human, so most knowledgeable Bible scholars agree these verses are references to the unnamed spiritual being Satan. We will start reading with verse 12 of Ezekiel 28:
Eze 28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
I’ll start with the word “lamentation” first. This is a very interesting word in that it has an implied meaning of a musical dirge that is usually sung at someone’s funeral. It usually involves much “wailing” and “sorrow” for the loss of this individual being sung about. It would appear to me that God is prophesying the impending demise of someone who as I said I believe is Satan. The prophet is told that this lamentation is concerning the “king of Tyrus”, but clearly reading ahead it cannot be anyone that is natural or human. Tyrus occurs 22 times in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and Zechariah and that is too many verses to look at them all, so we will not go through all of these verses in this lesson. The next statement is the beginning of the prophesy against this individual and it informs us of some of his past qualities and achievements. It starts very interestingly with the words “thou sealest up the sum”. This is a mathematical accomplishment that has negative connotations surrounding it. It clearly implies that this individual has brought to an end something of increasing value, count or a numerical total; whatever this is of something not directly named. In our past studies we had discovered that the number of the angels in heaven were said to be innumerable, but yet they are numbered with an end in Revelation 12 when God tells us that 1/3 of them have fallen to the earth with Satan. This is what I believe that this is saying to us, I believe that Satan has done something that has caused an end to anymore angels being created. Remember angels were called the sons of God in Job and Genesis and this implies that they are all a part of God’s spiritual family in heaven. We should know that any family on the earth continues to grow and increases in total number as along as the family continues to marry and have children. Is this a reference to what God has done with His spiritual family? All of this is mostly just my opinion on the interpretations of this information and other scriptures that I have found in the Bible that we have not looked at yet, so you do not have to buy into what I just said at all.
The next statement in this verse is not very good information for us if this is describing Satan. God says that whoever this is, was “full of the wisdom” of God. To be full of wisdom is a goal that I am attempting to achieve as a disciple of Christ. In fact it should be one of the utmost goals of any Christian to obtain first knowledge, then understanding and finally the wisdom of God. Wisdom is always the ability to make right decisions based upon your knowledge and understanding. So if this is Satan, I wonder what happened to change the good qualities that God put in him to the evil qualities that we see today. What this also tells me is that Satan is not stupid. He might have made some foolish choices, but God already had taught him a significant amount of spiritual knowledge before he sinned. Do not underestimate the cunning craftiness of this angel. He has been around much longer than you have and has much more experience at deceiving people than you have at resisting deception. Let’s go to the next verse in Ezekiel to continue:
Eze 28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Now we get to some more revealing controversial statements and why people do not believe that this is a human being that is being prophesied about. This individual is said to have been in Eden the garden of God. Since we are literally hundreds or even thousands of years after the time of Adam when this is written, that is why most Bible scholars agree that this is not about a man that is alive at the time of Ezekiel. But, I also want to point out a very subtle difference in this verse. In Genesis 2 and 3 the place where God placed Adam was called the “Garden of Eden” and never “Eden the Garden of God”. Am I being too picky or is God trying to tell us something else new. You see I do not believe that God forgot the name that He gave it in Genesis, so this must be a different place. Obviously both are reported to be gardens and both are named “Eden” but what we must understand is whose responsibility and control is over each garden mentioned. Eden the Garden of God clearly means God had control over this garden, but now if we go back to Genesis 1 and read what do we find? We must realize that Adam according to Genesis 1 was given control of the earth, the authority to rule the earth (Gen 1:28) and the responsibility to guard and protect it from invaders (Gen 2:15) and thus the earth was no longer a Garden of God’s responsibility. Adam now held responsibility over the earth and Eden; do you understand why I bring this up? I believe that God had a garden that Satan walked in and ruled long before the one that God gave to Adam. If you know anything about the Bible you know that earth was made as a pattern for things that already existed in heaven. You can see this in Hebrews and Galatians and other places. So I believe that “Eden the Garden of God” is not the “Garden of Eden” where Adam was said to be. Now again the “serpent” or Satan did show up in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve but this verse in Ezekiel does not say that there was any man present when Satan was there originally. It must be different gardens.
I could go through and say many other things about this verse, for instance this individual has a covering of 9 precious stones. There is a fascinating parallel given to us by God of the earthly Israel’s High Priest’s breastplate that also was covered with precious stones. In fact these 9 stones that covered Satan are an exact match for 9 of the 12 stones found on the High Priest’s covering (Exo 28:17). Did you notice what I just said? You see I believe that this verse in Ezekiel reveals to us that Satan was a High Priest for God in heaven before he came to the earth. Are these stones and coverings an amazing coincidence or is there some hidden information that God is revealing to us about Satan. You see if you do an analysis of the High Priest’s breast plate you can see that they had 4 rows of three stones each. Each row consisted of a different set of stones and each stone was different from all of the others. We are told that these 12 stones on the High Priest’s covering were engraved with the names of 12 tribes of Israel. But, if you cross off the stones found on Satan’s covering from the stones found on the High Priest’s breastplate you find that Row 3 is missing completely. That is definitely not an accident, it is impossible mathematically for this to be a coincidence. What does it all mean? That is another really good question to try to figure out. You see you can conclude that Satan lost three things that Israel had or Israel was given three things that Satan didn’t have. Either way you come up with the same results. However, I just don’t have the time to even try to talk about that in this blog nor do I know all of the answers to that question so I’ll definitely be moving on today.
Finally this verse ends with some important new information about Satan and all angels. Satan was a created being. This word created is the exact same word found in Genesis 1:1 where God says “In the beginning God created, the heaven and the earth”. In general terms this is also the exact same Hebrew word used to describe God’s man Adam. This same Hebrew Word is used to describe the origination of both individuals so we can clearly assume a connection between them. In Genesis 5:1-2 Adam is said to be “created” just as Satan was said to be “created” in Ezekiel 28:13. However, I do not know if they were created in the same way and I definitely do not believe that they were created at the same time. You see God tells us very specifically that Adam’s body was formed from the dust of the ground. This was definitely from the existing earth and I believe that God created this dust a long time before He created Adam. If you do not understand this, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject of “The World that Was” mentioned in 2 Peter 3:6. After Adam’s body is formed then comes his wife, Eve. However, she was also not created from something new since her body came from that which already existed, the body of Adam. So Adam and Eve were not a new creation. So it could be different than Satan? We do not know this for sure, but I’m just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together and that is what I have concluded so far. You also have to understand that the body of Lucifer is a spiritual immortal body and not a natural body that dies like Adam’s. So they are clearly very different at the same time as being very similar to each other. What I see in this information is that God says there could be a difference between Satan and Adam. Satan was definitely a created being but it does not tell us when he was created, or how he was created and where his body originated from. All we know for sure right now is that Adam was a being made from that which already existed and his body was clearly modeled after the preexisting angels in heaven as we have discovered in our previous studies on this subject. However, both Satan and Adam are called sons of God and both are therefore made in the image and the likeness of God. That may not go over very big with some people, I know. It must be important to note the way God created Adam or He would not have included this information in the Bible. Couldn’t God have said “Man Be” and then God see a man appear? So why does God take existing dust and form the man’s body from it and then breath into his nostrils to give him life? Then I want to ask you this about Adam, why did God create a new son Adam and give him a wife named Eve, if he already had a family of angels in heaven? Believe it or not this was a pattern for what God was going to do in the spiritual realm with Jesus. You see God tells us the law of marriage in Genesis 2, that a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two shall become one flesh. If Adam is the son that cleaves to his wife, then God was his Father that he left to be joined to his wife! This means that Adam would leave his Father’s house and be married to a wife (a woman) who would be the mother of the entire new natural human family on the earth not a part of God’s family in heven. What is God doing? God is establishing a new family outside of His current existing family in heaven. This is very important to know and understand from a Bible perspective of what Jesus has also accomplished. I guess I will stop there and let you do more research or read some of my other blogs on this subject.
Eze 28:14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.
Now we are beginning to see some more information about Satan that is very important to understand. Anointed comes from a Hebrew root word that means to smear with oil. David was anointed king this way by Samuel. But this word here means to “spread like wings” and it is the only time this word occurs in the whole Bible. However, it is still important to see that Satan is said to be “anointed” of God. This is a direct comparison to Jesus who was also said to be “anointed” of God with the Holy Ghost and power in Acts 10:38. So now we have Satan being compared to Jesus the Messiah. This is a clear Satan and Jesus connection. You probably do not fully understand the concept of being anointed by God. God anoints people in the earth to perform specific tasks like to pastor a church. What this represents is a special divine ability to perform the duties being assigned to them. So we learn from this verse that angels can also be anointed by God to do specific jobs and assignments. An anointing can involve supernatural ability and even the power or divine knowledge or wisdom to do what you do not fully understand how to do. This says a lot about Satan and his abilities.
Then Satan is called a “cherub” and this is a very unique name for a class of special angelic beings. Not every angel falls into this class so we are beginning to see some new truths about angels. The angels that appeared in Sodom to get Lot out I do not believe were cherubs. Also, in the previous lesson we learned that Gabriel and Michael were described as “Chief” angels. This just means they were a much higher rank than the others that were under them. This word for cherub only occurs in around 66 verses in the O.T. The first time it occurs is in Genesis 3 and God places a “cherub” and a flaming sword outside the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. Apparently someone wanted to take forcibly from this tree and live forever so God placed an angelic guard of the class of Satan’s ability to protect it. It was obviously not Adam that God was guarding this way from and you can read my other blogs and find out why I can say that. I believe that Satan was after this tree and God was guarding the “way” to the tree to keep him from partaking of it.
So what is a “cherub”? That is another million dollar question for the day. From what I can tell from reading these 66 verses in the Bible, a cherub is a type of angel which has “wings”, but this could also be symbolism for an anointing of God for a specific job or purpose. God told Moses to make the golden Ark of the Covenant with two winged cherubs on the top with the mercy seat of God in between them. This is clearly a natural pattern of something that we should know concerning spiritual things. These are all symbolic representations of spiritual realities.
Exo 25:18 And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
In Psalm 99:1 it says God sits between the Cherubim. The Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant was made by God’s instructions and described to us in Exodus which was recorded by Moses. These patterns reveal to us information about angels and God’s relationship with Satan before he sinned. I believe that God’s throne in heaven was between two anointed cherubs and one of these use to be Lucifer. Now Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and to me that means Jesus has taken Lucifer’s old place of authority and power. Again that is my opinion on stuff that I’ve read from the Bible.
I want to skip forward in Ezekiel 28:14 to the part that God speaks about Satan being in the Holy Mountain of God. We should be smart enough to know that this is not an earthly mountain. God did come down to Moses on Mt Sinai and God called this mountain holy at the time but, Satan was never there. No this holy mountain is Mt Zion in heaven and this is the spiritual covenant mountain of God. When God speaks about Mt Zion, He says many things. For example, “I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a precious corner stone” (Isa 28:16). So we know that Zion has had a new building project started on it from scratch by the Lord Jesus Christ. This represents a “New Covenant” and it eliminates the old covenants with everyone else.
Let’s continue looking at Ezekiel 28:14 and how God describes Satan to us. God told us he was an anointed cherub and then said that his job or assignment was to “cover”. This Hebrew word means to cover as a protector or as a guard. It can also mean a fenced in hedge of protection. It can also mean to entwine as in join together. These are all amazing definitions. They imply a covenant relationship and that is very important to know. I definitely believe from the information that I have seen in the Bible that God was in covenant with the angels of Heaven, including Satan. In fact if you read Galatians 4 very carefully you will see that God reveals information about heaven that calls this city God’s wife as a type or pattern of Sarah as being Abraham’s wife. She is called the freewoman in this analogy. The Heavenly Jerusalem is what this city is called in Hebrews. In Galatians 4 it is called the Jerusalem that is above. This is the real spiritual city of angels and it is inferred to be a wife of God the Father. If you understand covenants you know that God was in covenant with the natural nation of Israel and the earthly city of Jerusalem. This earthly city Jerusalem is called the “bond woman” and is the type of Hagar and Abraham who had a slave child. Angels were of the city of the “Free Woman” called Heavenly Jerusalem. Galatians 4 tells us that God had two wives and that these were two covenants.
Eze 28:15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
This is the last verse in Ezekiel that I am going to touch on today. Since I am running a little long I will make these last parts brief. You can clearly see that Satan was not created as Satan. The original angel Lucifer was perfect in all of his ways. That means he did things the right way, he made the right choices, said the right things and walked upright before God. But, God says “sin” was found in him and that is the root of God’s problem with Lucifer. How do you end a spiritual family covenant relationship with a spiritual being in a Godly and legal way that does not cause God to become as equally as sinful? Do you understand the wisdom of God? God is so much smarter than us that He came up with a plan that would solve our sin problem and His covenant problem simultaneously with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son. I’ll end this blog with this last thought about Satan:
Isa 6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
Here in this verse found in Isaiah we see a new word describing what appears to be an angelic being. This is also a winged creature that clearly flies using their wings. It is not clear that this is describing Satan unless you look up the definition of the Hebrew Word “seraphim” in Strong’s. This word is many times translated as “fiery serpent” and that to me describes Satan very well. We clearly know from Genesis and Revelation that Satan is the “serpent” so we have an association to a new titled reference for this spiritual being. A fiery serpent is a great symbolic representation for Satan.
So we have learned enough for one lesson about angels, and probably more than some can accept. I will briefly review some of the high points:
Satan:
- Was a created being (Eze 28:13)
- Not created with evil in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was found with iniquity in him (Eze 28:15)
- Was in covenant with God the Father (Gen 2-3, Gal 4)
- Was anointed by God for specific purposes (Eze 28:14)
- Was in a class of angels called “Cherubs” (Eze 28:14)
- Was also described as a “Seraphim”; winged fiery serpent (Isa 6:2)
- Was a Priest unto God (Eze 28:13).
- Was called Lucifer a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Named Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star” (Isa 14:12)
These are just a very few things that we picked up from today and the previous lesson about Satan. If you want to you can go and take a look at my list of Names, Titles, Descriptions and Types for Satan found in the Bible. I know I said a lot of things and some of them are hard to accept because I cannot fully cover every related subject in a single blog. You do not know everything that I know and I cannot teach you everything that I know in one blog so just keep reading and I’ll try to do a better job at filling in the gaps that I’m sure you feel that I have not covered fully. If you have specific questions I would also appreciate hearing about them. Maybe this way if I hear where I am the weakest I can address those areas first. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 5“.
Understanding Angels! The Named Angels in the Bible! Part 3
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 3 of a series of lessons on understanding Angels in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”. Today I want to discuss not something new, but a basic concept surrounding angels. This concept states that angels all have names and that these names mean something. Just as people on earth have names which are given to them when they are born, angels also have very specific names that I assume was given to them by God. Of course the Bible does not reveal the names of every angel and since there are an innumerable number of them, I’m glad that it does not. Throughout the Bible you discover that people did not normally just make up their children’s names. These names were given to their children for a reason and it often involved the circumstances surrounding their birth. So we discover that we can learn things about people from looking up the definitions of their names. I believe that this applies to angels also. I do not think that the angels got their names by accident or chance. We are not told but a few names of the angels, but we are told enough to help us to understand these concepts. The Bible says there is nothing new under the sun. I take this to mean that what God has designed in this world were patterns for things that already existed elsewhere or in past times. So what we see and observe in our world are not new things, new ideas or new concepts, but are things that have existed before. That is very hard thing for many people to accept and even Christians today because they have widely been taught that creation happened 6000 years ago and God created the angels and people, heaven and earth and everything else at this time. That would really be good, if that was what the Bible actually said, unfortunately for many Bible teachers it is not; so their teaching produces nothing but points of confusion. What I am going to do today is start in the book of Psalms and show you a verse that informs us that angels have names:
Psa 147:4 He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.
You may recall that angels were symbolically called “stars” in Revelation 1:20, 12:4 and several other places in the Bible. The stars seen in our heaven symbolically represent these created spiritual beings called angels. They are also according to this verse all “named”. God knows the names of every one of them and this is an amazing feat since there are so many of them. Scientist can only roughly estimate the number of the stars in our universe; there is absolutely no way that they could count them all, since none of our telescopes reach to the ends of the entire universe. So you cannot count what you cannot see. Plus the fact that they estimate the number of stars to be between 10 raised to the 22nd power and 10 raised to the 24th power. Both of those are huge numbers.
Let’s turn to Luke and start to study about a named angel that you have already heard of. This angel reveals some things that we have potentially already discussed as well as some new things to consider. For example, this angel has a name and this is the first time we have discovered that reality. In the first chapter of Luke is the story of Zacharias and his wife. They are older mature people in Israel and Zacharias is a priest for God in the temple. One day while he is in the temple suddenly something happens that he never experienced before:
Luk 1:11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
The angel of the Lord suddenly appears within the physical dimension of space and time and Zacharias sees him standing there. We have seen the angel’s ability in the Bible to appear or manifest physically in our world and this is another example of this. Since the context of this verse says that there are many people on the outside of the temple and none of them are said to have seen the angel enter the temple, we can only assume that this angel from God steps out of the spiritual dimension and into the temple at the appropriate exact place and time. So what would be the normal human reaction to something like this?
Luk 1:12 And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him.
What would be your reaction if you were in a room alone and suddenly a man appears before you out of nowhere? You can certainly understand that this would be troubling to say the least. The natural human reaction would be the emotion of fear. As you study angels many times when they appear to humans, they would have to say to them “fear not”. In other words they were saying “we are not here to do you harm”. This is probably why angels are not sent more often by God. I just don’t think that people could handle the supernatural appearance of a spiritual being, even if they are sent from God.
Luk 1:13 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.
This angel starts speaking to Zacharias and tells him God has heard his prayers. We can obviously see an example of another angel being sent to the earth in response to words/prayers of a man in this example. I do want to point out that I do not believe that Zacharias prayed for God to send him an angel. I have not found any verses in the Bible that anyone ever prayed for God to send angels to help them. When Jesus was about to be crucified He did say this:
Mat 26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
So Jesus said He could have prayed to His Father and God could have sent 12 legions of angels to help Him from being crucified. A legion can vary in numbers but generally it would be anywhere from 3600 to 6000 men in a roman legion. So you multiply that by 12 and you get a lot of angels. As you have seen two angels were sent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so that many angels would be a very strong force. It is interesting that Jesus said He could have done this but yet He never did. I would still say from the Bible that God says “Those who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God”. Meaning we do not pray for guidance by angels. If God chooses to send you an angel, then it is probably for a bigger reason than you want to know right now.
We have not talked about Daniel yet, but God sends him an angel for his prayer also. We can very easily assume God has heard this man Zacharias’ prayers and has sent His messenger with the Words of God for him to hear. The angel continues to tell Zacharias what will happen in the next 3 or 4 verses. He is told that he will have a son and that he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. He will not eat or drink unclean things and he will lead many people to God. After hearing all of this Zacharias should have been very happy, however he starts to question the angel and basically asks “How do I know this is true?” That was the wrong question to ask the representative of God. Here is the angel’s response:
Luk 1:19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings.
The angel in effect says “Who do you think you are talking to?” He then tells us and him his name and his normal daily duties. This is the angel “Gabriel” and he normally stands in heaven in the presence of the Most High God. In other words God the Most High sent one of the highest angels to bring him a personal message concerning his prayers and he wants to question and doubt us? The angel implies “How do you think I knew about your prayers, what are stupid?” Ok, I added some of my thoughts and interpretations to that response, but you can certainly understand why. Zacharias was a priest of God was intimately familiar with the story of Abraham and Sarah and how old they were when they had their promised son Isaac. So why would this old man doubt God’s ability to do what he has already proved that he could do? Sarah was 90 years old when she had Isaac. Age is not a determining factor for God’s ability to answer your prayer. I believe this is what upset the angel more than anything; it was clearly Zacharias unbelief and total lack of faith in God that displeased God.
Luk 1:20 And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.
So the angel gives Zacharias a sign that he was not expecting to happen. Here we have another example of the supernatural power of angels. In Genesis we saw how the angels blinded all of the men that wanted to have sex with them and here the angel tells Zacharias that he would not be able to speak until what was told him came to pass. What was the difference in this story and the story of Abraham? In Genesis God changed Abram’s name to Abraham which meant “Father of Nations”. So God got Abraham to believe what was said to him, but Zacharias did not believe so his mouth was shut. Abraham went around saying to everyone “My name is Abraham”, “I am the father of nations” which was what God said and then he had a son and it happened. Zacharias could have done the same thing if he would have just believed the angel. It is difficult not to talk about words even when you are studying angels because every subject in the Bible overlaps every other subject. Your words and your beliefs have a determining factor to what occurs in your life. Also note that the angel said that the words that he spoke would be fulfilled in the earth. God spoke what was going to happen through an angel in the earth and then it happened. Do you know this is how God works in our world? God sends His words first into the world and only then do they come to pass. We live within a Word Based World system. This is why Gabriel shuts the mouth of Zacharias so that he could not counter the words that were spoken to him with his unbelief. I could say a lot more on this subject, but I’m already off of the main subject of angels so I’ll leave it at that.
So the angel of God was named Gabriel and he had a problem and solved it by making Zacharias dumb. So again we see supernatural powers being exhibited by an angelic being. It is very interesting to note that the name “Gabriel” means “Man of God”. It also has root words meaning a “warrior” and “strength”. We can see from this information that again angels are not trivial beings to be ignored. It is also interesting that they are called “men”. If an angel appears to you and tells you that God has said something, I would suggest that you do not treat it with the same level of unbelief that Zacharias did. If you question the words make sure you ask the right questions. You might recall that when the angel appeared to Mary, she also questioned the words, but said it differently. She asked “how will this be since I know not a man”. That was a valid question and not one of unbelief. She just wanted to know how God was going to do what he said to her. Then after the angel told her how God was going to overshadow her with the Holy Ghost and she would conceive, then Mary said “Be it unto me as you have spoken”. In other words she said “I believe it”! Believing God is one of the most important things that you can ever do in life and this might have been the most important thing that I said in this whole lesson. Let’s talk about Daniel’s experience now:
Dan 10:11 And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.
The angel Gabriel is sent to another man on the earth named Daniel. While it does not name Gabriel directly in this chapter you can see this is who it is by reading Daniel 8:16 and 9:21. Again Gabriel is being sent in answer to a man’s words/prayer. God directs the angel Gabriel to bring Daniel an answer and this story reveals to us that sometimes answers from God take “time”. We like to think that God lives outside of time and that God is omnipotent so He can do anything instantly, but this story proves God can’t do just anything in our world instantly like we would like to think.
Dan 10:12 Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.
As you can read and see when Daniel prayed the angel was sent by God on the very first day. However, we can learn in this chapter that Daniel has been fasting for 21 days before the angel actually shows up. That is the problem with many religious minded people’s theology. There is a 3 week delay from the time that Daniel prayed, God answered and the answer arrives. Why is that? That is the million dollar question of the day. You see this chapter tells us that the “prince of Persia” withstood the angel Gabriel from coming to Daniel. Persia of course is where modern day Iran is located. But, this is not a human being and it has to be a powerful spiritual being with a spiritual army of resistance to keep another powerful spiritual being from coming from heaven.
Here is the second most important thing that you should learn from today’s lesson. Did you notice what the angel said? The angel said I was sent for your “words”. Uh oh? We’re back to words again. Did you know that angels get assignments based upon your words? If you didn’t know this you just learned something new that is very important. We’ll definitely talk more about this later so let’s keep looking at the name of the new angel in this story.
Dan 10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia.
So God dispatches Michael another chief angel from heaven to help Gabriel to get to Daniel. So Michael and Gabriel are two chief named angels from God found in the Bible. The name “Michael” has the following meaning in the Hebrew “Who is Like God”. To me that tells me something new about angels. Angels are made in the image and likeness of God like men were. You can of course take this definition two ways I know, you could say it like a question or you can say it like a statement of fact. However we have one angel Gabriel that means “Man of God” and another angel named Michael that means “Who is Like God” and both of these have implications of our descendant Adam described to us in Genesis 1 and 2. So you do not have to believe it like I believe it but, based upon what we have learned I have to conclude that angels were created being before men and that they were made in God’s image first. They are also called a “prince” of God. You will see this is a term of authority and power. They are rulers of some dominion or domain that I have already alluded to in the first lesson. Since they came from heaven we can assume at least that this rule use to be the kingdom of heaven. But, God told us in Gen 1:16 that the Moon and the Stars will rule the night on the fourth day of creation. The Stars definitely symbolize angels. So the fourth day was a symbolic time of when Jesus came to the earth. However at this time of Daniel was before Jesus came to the earth and this prophecy of Genesis had not been fulfilled. I do not know if you understand that statement and I don’t have time to explain it. You are welcome to read my other blogs to see if you can grasp these concepts.
What we have seen is the names of two of God’s angels from heaven mentioned to us in the Bible directly. These are actually the only two angels of God that are directly named that I know of. The other angels mentioned in the Bible were angels of God, but have fallen so they are not God’s anymore and we will look at them briefly:
Isa 14:12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
I believe that Lucifer is the name for Satan before he fell from heaven. I will do a more in-depth study of this spiritual being in a separate lesson. What I do want to point out in this verse is something I find very interesting. Lucifer is again called a son of God in this verse, but it is not a direct named instance. It is more a symbolic name based upon information from other verses in the Bible and it reveals something to us in it that we would not have fully known otherwise. What you surely realize is that God hides information in words using techniques that I describe in other blogs. In 1 John 1:5 we see a verse that says “God is Light”. Then what we learn from this verse in Isaiah is very important if you can accept it. The word “morning” means “early light”. This is a symbolic revelation of God and Satan. We know that God has neither beginning nor any ending and the Bible calls Him the “Ancient of Days”. All of this tells us that God has been around a very, very long time. But, if you think symbolically about a day cycle, when the sun comes up and then sun goes down; God is describing the timeframe of Satan’s creation using these terms of a symbolic day. God is saying Lucifer was a “son of the very early light”. This informs us that Lucifer has been around not as long as God has but so much longer than Adam or the rest of us could ever have imagined. Scientists tell us that the age of our universe is estimated to be in the billions of years. I imagine that Lucifer has been around at the very least that long and probably longer just based upon this simple information. It is important to note that Lucifer is called a son of God like we saw the other angels called in Genesis and Job. It is also important to note the meaning of the name “Lucifer”. The word “Lucifer” means to brightly shine as the morning star. Wow, that is an amazing statement that almost boggles my mind. You see in Revelation 22:16 Jesus says “I am the Bright and Morning Star”. How can both Lucifer and Jesus have the same names? That is of course a very difficult question to answer especially in a blog like this about angels so I will not even attempt to give you an answer to that. What I do want you to do is see the hidden complexity within the Bible and to show you that we have only scratched the surface to what is written there in and what it all means. So far we have seen angels named Gabriel, Michael and Lucifer so let’s continue quickly and look at the other name found in the Bible of angels:
Rev 9:11 And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
Here in Revelation 9 it speaks of too many things to go through them all. The book of Revelation is a heavily symbolic book of references. Most of this information found here is widely controversial since hardly anyone has been able to agree on what anything means. However, this error is mostly attributable to man’s private interpretations of God’s Word. What I see in this verse is the fact that God is speaking of an angel. This angel has a name and is called “Abaddon” in the Hebrew and “Apollyon” in the Greek. This name means “destroyer” or “destruction”. I am fairly convinced that this is just another name for Satan personally. I believe that Satan is the one that has destroyed kingdoms and laid waste to the earth making it null and void in Genesis 1:2. When I talk about Satan in the next lesson I will try to show you scriptures that seem to indicate Satan is responsible for these things.
So we have seen potentially 4 angels directly named in the Bible. Two Gabriel and Michael are on God’s side and the other two Lucifer and Abaddon are definitely not good angels.
We have learned a few new things in this lesson so let’s review them.
Angel (s):
- Have Names (Luke 1:19, Rev 9:11)
- Names mean something
- Gabriel means “Man of God”
- Michael means “Who is Like God”
- Are called Princes (those who rule under the King) (Daniel 10:13)
- Stand in the Presence of God (Luke 1:19)
- Can make people dumb (Luke 1:20)
- Lucifer was called a son of the early light (Isa 14:12)
- Lucifer means “Bright Morning Star”
- Abaddon means “Destroyer” (Rev 9:11)
- Are sent by God because of the Words of Men on the earth (Daniel 10:12, Luke 1:13)
- Bring messages from God and it matters if you believe them (Luke 1:18-19)
If you would like to continue reading this series you can go to “Part 4“.
Understanding Angels! The Angels in Sodom! Part 2
(Ver 1.1) This is Part 2 of a series of advanced studies about the reality of angels found in the Bible. If you have not read this series from the beginning I would strongly suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1”. In the first lesson I introduced you to some potentially new and very interesting concepts concerning angels. The Bible certainly has a lot of information on this subject so it is only a matter of researching and seeing what it says in order for us to better understand this subject. Today I want to start by expanding on the concepts that I gave you last time which stipulates that an angel can manifest in a physical form in our world. Today will be another witness to this fact. I believe that I clearly showed you scriptures in Genesis 6 that says the angels took human wives and had sex with them to create a race of giants. So we learned that angels in the Bible directly resemble human males on the earth. As you may recall the Hebrew word translated as “angel” is a word that means “messenger”. In today’s lesson we will further explore a basic reality that has some important concepts in it. In Genesis 19 we find the story of Lot in Sodom. Lot and his family had parted company from Abraham and moved near a city of the plain called Sodom. The next time we hear about Lot we find that Lot has moved into Sodom. It turns out that this was not a good choice for Lot to make. If it was not for Abram’s relationship with God, Lot would have been killed with all of the other people of this city. But, we might also not have Jesus coming into the earth either, since Lot was the primary ancestor of Ruth who marries Boaz and from them comes David the King and later Jesus of Nazareth. So that is where this next verse starts the story of the angels that visit Lot in Sodom:
Gen 19:1 And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;
As you can see two angels have manifested or transformed into their physical form and can be seen in the physical dimension by Lot. I have to assume that angels have physical glorified bodies that have the ability to be visible to natural people or to somehow change and not to be seen by natural people. We know that Jesus today has a physical body, but it is a glorified natural eternal body. Jesus in this glorified body was able to suddenly appear inside a locked room of the disciples after His resurrection. Did Jesus walk thru the wall or just step into the 3 dimensional space at the just the right spot? You see I do not believe that we fully understand the 3 dimensional space concept fully. I believe you can find verses in the Bible that say this dimension can be folded up and that is a radical concept. Jesus then told Thomas to touch and feel Him for He said “a spirit does not have flesh and bone”. Jesus was saying I’m not a spirit alone, I have a physical body. So we know the glorified body of Jesus at the least had skin, flesh and bones like we do and we can only assume all of the features that we have. This could be like the bodies of angels also. I sometimes like to think that the natural realm is a dimension of space that spiritual beings like Jesus and angels are capable of stepping into or stepping out of upon their will. But, it is more complicated than that, because the unseen spiritual realm is also all around us in this natural realm that we live in. The Bible seems to indicate that there are disembodied spirits in our world today who do not possess a physical body as these angels appear to have. We will look at these beings in other lessons and we will further discuss these types of spirits, often called demons. These two angels in Genesis 19 just happen to come to the city in the evening and Lot is right there to see them coming. I never think that things like this are just coincidences. Lot is very gracious to them and I do not know if Lot knows if they are angels or not at the beginning of his conversation. I believe at the first, Lot did not know they were angels, but certainly at the end of the story Lot had no choice but to believe who they were. Lot at first was probably just being cordial and hospitable to some strangers that are new to the city of Sodom.
Gen 19:2 And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.
Lot offers his house for them to stay the night since it is already very late in the evening. It almost appears that Lot understands the immoral condition of the city and the dangers that these strangers have come into it.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
It fascinates me to no end that angels can eat physical natural human food. This just goes a little further to show us that our bodies are not an original design or the first of their kind. Angels existed before any humans existed. So God already had a pattern and a design to form the body of Adam. We know that Jesus after He was resurrected from the dead that He also ate physical food with His disciples (John 21:9-11). Apparently eating and drinking is something we will be able to do in heaven and throughout eternity even with glorified eternal bodies. Whatever we eat there I hope there are cakes a pies.
Psa 78:25 Man did eat angels’ food: he sent them meat to the full.
What is it that angels eat in heaven? God gives us at least a partial clue in this verse in Psalms. If you read the context of this verse it is speaking of God raining down manna from heaven to feed the children of Israel. This is clearly called angel food. So God’s mighty angels eat food even in heaven.
So we have seen and learned more information that angels have bodies that resemble our bodies. They are physical and their look and feel must be very similar to our bodies and they must be able to walk among us and us not even know that they were angels. Nowhere in this chapter does it say that these men glowed in the dark or radiated the glory of God or had any feature that made them different than us. Nowhere does it say that they had wings or any appearance that did not resemble our appearance totally and completely. These two angels here in Genesis 19, walked into the city like any other man would. They sat and ate dinner like any other man would. We have clearly seen that angels can eat human food and people can eat angel food. So these are some amazing facts found in the Bible to consider. So I think about stupid practical things sometimes. If angels eat natural food do you go to the bathroom like we have to? I do not technically know the answer to that question either. It would appear to me that if you eat something and put it into your stomach, something must happen to it. The natural stuff can’t just disappear and vanish? So to me there must be some digestive process and some waste process to function correctly. We have obviously seen that angels have the organs and bodily parts to produce semen so that means to me that they have other organs that are either similar or identical to ours also. These are just funny things that I ask myself and maybe these are things you have asked yourself also?
Gen 19:4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
So I’m not planning on going through every verse in this chapter, just a few of the key verses, but continuing with the next verse you can see that it says the angels were going to lay down. Now that is not something I have ever thought of extensively, do angels sleep? Maybe they do and maybe they don’t and I cannot technically answer that either. I know the Bible says that in the New Jerusalem to come that there will be no night because the light of God will be our light for eternity. Was this the way it was in heaven before God created the earth? I guess we will continue with our story of Lot and Sodom. Now is where the story changes and is often used to teach about the perils of the homosexual life style. The men of the city witness the fact that there are two new men in town. So obviously they are visible to everyone and not just Lot and his family. This proves that they are physical and that they looked like everyone else in the city.
Gen 19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
So the men of the city press Lot to know where the new men are that came into the city. This verse says that they want to “know” them. This does not mean to meet them and be friendly; it means to have homosexual sex with them. This is exactly why the angels were there in Lot’s house to begin with. These angels were sent to Lot to get him and his family out of the city before they destroyed it. We will soon see that more clearly as we proceed forward.
Gen 19:6 And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,
So Lot has a major problem, he goes to the men of the city and starts to talk to them to try to convince them to change their minds.
Gen 19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.
Lot recognizes and knows of the evil of the city. Lot having lived in this city has known what they do to each other. This is one of the strongest witnesses in the Bible that homosexuality is a very perverted lifestyle and is wrong in the eyes of God. Homosexuality is an abuse of the design of God’s intended usage of the human body. Just as you can abuse drugs, alcohol, food, or anything else, you can abuse your own body. An abuse is always the use of something for a purpose that it is not designed for. People obviously just ignore verses like these in the Bible to promote and justify their own alternative modern life styles. It appears to me that these modern lifestyles are the same old lifestyles that were destroyed in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot offers his virgin daughters to the men, but the men want only want more men. The lusts of the flesh are very strong in the world. Obviously these men had no self-control over their ways.
Gen 19:10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door.
Here is another verse that confirms that these angels are not just spiritual beings. They have physical presence to open the door and pull Lot back into the house and then to shut the door. But, physical or natural power is not all of the power that they have as we are about to discover:
Gen 19:11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.
You see angels also have supernatural powers and that is very important to note. These angels came to Lot’s house on assignment from God to get him and his family out of that city. When confronted with a large crowd of men who wanted to have sex with them, the angels solved Lot’s problem by causing all of the men to be blind. Since they were unable to see Lot’s front door anymore, I guess sex was not as important to them as they thought before. It is funny how stupid people can be, isn’t it? As long is everything is normal they can only think about their desires, the only thing that these angels did was give these perverted men something new to think about and it was not a good thing for any of them. When I read accounts like this in the Bible, I try to relate the information to other spiritual beings. If God’s angels can cause physical changes to a body, can Satan and his angels also do this? We will see later in this series that Satan can.
Let me summarize the remainder of this chapter. The angels of God come and take Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city by physical persuasion. It also says that two of Lot’s daughters were married and Lot could not convince them to leave the city. Their husbands thought Lot was crazy and it did not turn out very good for them. The angels actually tell Lot the following:
Gen 19:13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.
As we study angels in the Bible you will see that angels have significant supernatural power and ability. They are not something to ignore. They clearly have the power to destroy entire cities of the earth as this verse says. So we learn something new about angels, not only can they bring messages from God to people on the earth, but they can also fulfill assignments or tasks directed by God. In other words they can do the will of God to people on the earth. In this particular story God is the supreme Judge and has passed judgment upon the wicked people for their alternative lifestyles. God sends just two angels to destroy both cities completely. Certainly angels have great power especially when backed by God.
2Pe 2:11 Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.
The Bible clearly teaches us that angels are not trivial little creatures. Just for grins I searched the internet for pictures of angels. Guess what I found? The majority of the pictures on the internet were cute little harmless looking winged creatures or female angels with beautiful features. I went through hundreds of pictures from people’s imagined conception of how they viewed angels and none of them match the Bible description of an angel which has great power and might. In 2 Peter 2:11 God tells us that angels are much stronger than we are. There really is no comparison to our might and their might and you should get a hold of this concept. You are no physical or spiritual match for Satan and his angels without God in you. Only with God the “Greater One” in you can you stand up to these spiritual beings. So let’s review a list of features and characteristics that we have clearly learned about angels in the Bible so far.
Angels:
- Are Called sons of God (Gen 6, Job 1, 2)
- Of God are different than other Angels not of God. (Gen 16:7)
- Are the Symbolic Stars of Heaven (Gen 1:16, Rev 1:20, Rev 12:4)
- Rule the Night with the Symbolic Moon (Satan). (Gen 1:16)
- Come From and live in Heaven (Heb 12:22)
- Number are innumerable for a man to count (Heb 12:22)
- Are used as Messengers For God’s Word to Man (Gen 16, 19)
- Have the ability to Travel from Heaven to the Earth and back (Job 1, 2)
- Can Manifest and be Seen by the Natural Eye (Gen 16, 19)
- Look Like Human Males (Gen 19:5)
- Walk Like Men (Gen 19:1, Job 1:7)
- Are Able to be physically touched. (Gen 19:16)
- Are Very Strong and Mighty (2 Peter 2:11)
- Were Sent to Destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 19:13)
- Have Supernatural Powers (Gen 19:11)
- Can Eat natural Food (Gen 19:3)
- Have the Ability to Have Sex with Human Females (Gen 6:4)
- Produced a race of Giants in the Earth. (Gen 6:4)
- That Had Sex with Natural Women are Locked In Hell (2 Peter 2:4)
- Of Satan will be swept to the earth and their number is 1/3 of the total population. (Rev 12:4)
In the next lesson we will continue to discover more information about these spiritual beings, so I hope that you will continue reading. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading the next lesson in this series you can go to “Part 3“.
Understanding Angels! A Bible Perspective to the Reality of Angels! Part 1
(Ver 1.2) This is “Part 1” in a study series on the subject of “angels” found in the Holy Bible from cover to cover and Genesis to Revelation. People generally do not believe in things that they have never seen or that they do not have any proof of existence. It is very much like the subject of God who is a Spirit (John 4:24) and many people do not believe in Him either. However, the Word of God known as the Bible says a lot about these spiritual beings, we call angels, and it informs us that they definitely are real and that they do certainly exist. The rest of this lesson will cover things found in the Bible about angels that you should know. Who are they, what are they, where did they come from, when did they come into existence, what is their purpose and whatever else God leads us to discuss about them. I personally know people who claim to have seen angels and their descriptions of these creatures are not like the fat little baby angels you see in many picture books or art diagrams. These creatures are generally very strong, large and tall. Their strength is so much greater than the strongest man on the earth that there is no comparison that can be made. In this lesson we will discuss a lot of scriptures and many of them you might or might not already know. However, I will probably say some things that you probably have never heard or thought about before, so you should read the entire lesson series before you pass final judgment. So let’s look at the first occurrence of the Hebrew word “H4397” that is translated as word “angel” in the English KJV Bible. The Strong’s definition for this word is “messenger”. In the ancient Hebrew lexicon this word is defined as “one who walks for another”. That appears to define one of the primary roles of angels in simple terms. If we search the Bible, we will find that the first direct mention of this word is found in verse 7 of Genesis 16:
Gen 16:7 And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur.
The Hebrew word translated as “angel” is used 213 times in the Old Testament. So, that is a lot of scriptures to read and learn from. But that is not all of the references that can be found in the Old Testament. This is because these beings go by many other names, titles, descriptions, symbols, etc. For example, the first time I noticed a reference for angels was in Genesis 1:16 as the mention of “stars”. This symbol for angels occurs especially in Revelation 12:4 where the tail of the dragon sweeps 1/3 of the stars from the heaven. Most wise Bible scholars agree these stars are references to angels using figurative language symbols.
There are at least two references to angels in Genesis 3. In verse 1, Satan is referred to as a symbolic “serpent”. Most should know Satan is the fallen angel named Lucifer, but we will hopefully go into this more later. Then in verse 24 of Genesis 3, we find God placing “Cherubim” with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life. This is a specifically a ranking order within in whole of creation called angels. And this class of angels appear to have a different assignment and ranking than other angelic beings like a “messenger” class of God’s angelic creation. We will discover that God is a very organized creator. There will be angels of differing ranks and responsibilities.
All of this introduction information tells us that angels were widely active in the O.T. times and that these creatures are still implied to be active today based upon what we will find the book of Revelation described future. While not every occurrence is translated as “angel” of the Hebrew word, there are enough that are this way that I cannot mention them all.
As we learned, the word “angel” means “messenger” in the Hebrew; they are spiritual beings that are normally sent from God to deliver a message to man. So, an angel could be viewed as a “Word carrier”. You could also say a “Word courier” or someone who delivers God’s Words to the people on the earth. You could compare angels to an earthly company like “Fedex” who delivers messages around the world, but of course angels are much more than that as we will find out. It is interesting to note two things found in this verse. First is that God qualifies the word “angel” with “of the Lord”. Meaning there are other types of angels that are not “of the Lord”. We will discover more about this shortly, but note that God claims some angels to be His and others that are clearly not His. Later we will also see that within the organization of angels, there exist ranks, classes and orders.
The next thing that is interesting to see in this verse is the Hebrew Word translated as “found” in this verse. This word does not mean the angel had to search for Hagar to finally locater her. According to Strong’s this word means “to come forth”, “to appear” or “exist”. Did you know that you cannot normally see angels in the world, but that this does not mean they do not exist around us at all times? It is critical to note that this “angel of the Lord” came forth and appeared in the natural realm so that Hagar could see him and hear him with her physical eyes and ears.
What we will learn soon are that Angels are normally not visible, probably because they were created by God on a higher frequency of movement/vibration. All physical substance contains vibration frequencies. Some are more easily seen, and some are impossible to see with the unaided eye. But according to this verse and some other verses that we will look at later, God may cause or permit some angels to slow their spiritual frequency so that it allows them to become visible in the natural realm. This means that angels can be visible at times or be invisible at other times. How they do this, and it is accomplished, I have no idea?
There are many details in the Bible that we are not informed of directly and this is one of them. We have to assume that they have some power or ability that allows them to do this. You can read further in this chapter and also see that this angel of the Lord brings Hagar a message from God, and he informs her of what will happen to her and her son Ishmael in the future. God who sees the end from the beginning can tell you this information, but this is not the normal way that God does things most of the time; I believe that this is an exception to the way God does things.
So, we have just looked at the first direct reference in the Bible about angels, however this is not the first time they are mentioned in the Bible so we will back up in Genesis and read some new very important verses about angels. What you must realize when reading and studying the Bible, is that God calls the same things in the Bible by multiple names, titles, descriptions and each of these reveal new qualities or features of that person or object being referenced. So, let’s read a verse that reveals angels to us in a totally brand-new way:
Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
God starts this chapter by informing us that the children of Adam and Eve began to multiply upon the face of the earth. There were both males and females born to them and then these children married and had more children and thus continued the multiplication of the earth’s population. This is of course what God told Adam and Eve to do; to be fruitful and multiply, and to replenish the earth’s population. So, they were being obedient in this part of God’s commandments, I wonder why? Now we are going to get into the part about angels, for the preceding verse was put there to set up the next very important verse:
Gen 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
In the next verse in the Bible, we learn some very valuable information about angels. I’ll start by giving you the time frame for this information. These verses are occurring within the first 1000 years of human history. Since Adam lived to be over 900 years old, he must have come close to witnessing the beginnings of what was taking place on the earth during these verses. The very next thing that you should recognize is that angels are called “sons of God”. We know that Jesus was the Son of God, but notice angels are also called “sons of God. It is the same designation of title, but in an entirely different context. However, we know Jesus was God, but angels were never God. We know in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 that Lucifer was a created being. We also learn Lucifer was “anointed” by the Spirit of God. This would appear to indicate angles to be very similar to humans.
Notice this fact that the Bible calls us (the church) “sons of God” also (1 Jo 3:2). Why is this? This is directly attributable because God is called our “Father”. In Hebrews 12:9 God is called the Father of spirits. Angels are definitely spirit beings and people are spirit beings also, so God qualifies to be Father of both.
The next important thing to recognize about angels is that they can manifest themselves physically in this world as we saw with Hagar. But Genesis 6 provides greater details. It appears that angels can appear in the same form apparently as human males on the earth with the same sexual reproductive equipment. Some try to explain that these “sons of Gods’ are not angels, but you can see that they are by other verses in the Bible. This term “sons of God” is used only a very few times in the O.T. Other than twice in Genesis 6, the term “sons of God” can be found only three times in the book of Job when Satan appears before God and the “sons of God” come with him. Most knowledgeable Bible scholars will agree that this reference to “sons of God” is speaking of angels also.
It is very apparent in this verse that angels have physical bodies as well as spiritual bodies. I still believe this is just one body that is able to transition to slower frequencies that are visible in the created natural realm. However, angels are clearly not mortal like sinful fallen humans. Even angels that have sinned like Lucifer travel from the earth realm to the heavenly realm daily (Rev 12:10) I believe from what I have read in the Bible that angels are spiritual beings that are capable of traveling between the earth and heaven where the throne of God is located at their own will. I also believe that these angels can manifest themselves in a physical form on this earth when given a divine assignment. But Genesis 6 is an example of unlawful angelic manifestation in the physical realm as we will learn soon.
So, this verse in Genesis 6 says the angels of God looked at the women on the earth and thought they were “beautiful” and they took them for their wives and as we continue reading this caused a perverted race of human and angelic beings to come to be in the earth. It is interesting to note that it does not sound like these women had much choice in this matter. To me it sounds like a victory of the spoils of war type of mentality that came upon the angels. They clearly thought they had a right to these women. Knowing the strength and power of angels we can understand why. Read this next verse:
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So, this is a very hard saying indeed. One that is truly difficult to comprehend. The “sons of God” are said to “come in unto” the daughters of men. This is a very interesting concept being given to us by God. It is spoken of in the terms of Noah “entering into” the ark (Gen 6:19). This means God views the woman’s sexual organ as a door into her body. In fact, it is designed by God as a two-way door; a man or angel enters in, and babies come out. These exact same words are used in Genesis 16:2 when Sarah tells Abraham “go in unto my maid” so that I may have children of her”. We can clearly see that this is natural sex using God’s perspective. So, we know that the angels (the sons of God) had physical sex with women on the earth and they created a race of giants.
I wonder sometimes, if there are male angels which clearly there are, do female angels exist? That is a question that I do not know the direct answer to yet. I do not ever recall reading any description of an angel in the Bible that resembled a female. But the Bible says that there are an innumerable number of these creatures in heaven, so we do not know everything, do we?
From my Bible studies I have to conclude that there are female angels but the only proof that I have found so far, is that the Bible says Heaven existed first and it is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22) and this city seems to be a pattern of the one that God created on the earth that I call the “earthly Jerusalem”. If the earthly Jerusalem has females, I can only conclude logically that this was a repeated pattern of the original heavenly city Jerusalem also. So, in my opinion there has to be female angels, but I do not yet have a direct Bible verse for that yet, so you do not have to accept it.
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
So where did all of these giants come from that were in the earth? They had to come from the sexual union of Adam’s daughters (female descendants) and the angels (sons of God). It is very apparent to me that this union between God’s new creation and the angels was an illegal sinful act and a perversion of creation, that God would have to do something about. I can see two potential reasons for this union by angelic beings with humans. It appears to be motivated by their hatred of God and humans, using their willful and intentional act of rebellion to try to destroy God’s new creation. Some can try to say that Satan and the angels were attempting to pervert the bloodline of man, and this is the only reason for what they did. It is very easy to assume or jump to the conclusion that they were in effect attempting to eliminate the pure blood line for Christ to come into the world. However, I’m not convinced that Satan or any of the angels knew Jesus (God in the flesh) was coming into the world at that time. Remember there were no Bibles written when all of this was taking place. Moses wrote about this many years later for the first time.
So ,their motivation for taking human women could have been just a conquest or sexual desire and the fact that they thought and believed that they could get away with it. Angels, Satan and demons are not “all knowing” beings and God has not yet prophesied the Messiah to come in writing at this point of human time. It is true that the plan of God was already in place before the foundation of our world. However, there is no written word, no recorded law of God, no divine prophets speaking the word in the earth other than Enoch, that I know of. We do know that there were a few statements of God being spoken directly t Satan, Adam and Eve about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent. And that is certainly motivational information that Satan knew someone was coming, because what is the seed of the woman? So, unless Satan understood what God was saying about the seed of the woman, how would Satan know to start corrupting this bloodline? We can assume that Satan understood the words of God and that is why the angels did what they did to the women on the earth, but I have no verses to confirm either of these motivations at this time.
In this same chapter of Genesis is the beginning of the story of Noah. I do not believe that this was just a coincidence. I believe that Noah was chosen by God to preserve the bloodline and the seed of Adam. God decided that He must intervene into this perversion by wiping out the human race with a universal flood. God selects Noah and his 3 sons as those who would preserve the seed of Adam. Looking at the genealogy of Jesus given to us in Luke 3, God shows us that Jesus mother Mary lineage goes all the way back to Adam through Noah and Shem who have preserved God’s plan. In other words, there are no angels in the line that Jesus came from. So, what happened to the angels that sinned and took the women of the earth as their wives? We are actually given a clue to this event in the N.T. when Peter writes the following:
2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
God tells us that the angels who sinned were forcibly thrown into hell and bound with “chains of darkness”. It is interesting to note that this verse informs us something very important for you to understand. Angels, demons, and Satan have never been to hell, do not want to go to hell and are trying everything in their power to stay out of hell. Hell is not a good place that anyone that is halfway normal wants to be. Too many people think that Hell is Satan’s dominion or kingdom, but you can clearly read in Revelation that even Satan has to be forcibly thrown into this place. So, Satan and demons are not normal people, but they do not want to be in hell any more than I do. Think about it, Satan was used to walking streets of gold in heaven why would he want to go to hell? Did you notice that this verse said that these angels who sinned were cast into hell and chained so that they could not leave? Does that sound like they wanted to be there, it does not! The sin of the angels is not directly named in this verse found in 2nd Peter, but the next verse starts talking about Noah so we can clearly assume that the sin was having sex with the natural women on the earth when they clearly should not have in Genesis 6. It is not rocket science to read Genesis 6 and 2 Peter 2 and figure this out.
So here we have Genesis 6 the first occurrence or mention of angels in the Bible, or is it? You see I believe that the first mention of angels in the Bible is a symbolic occurrence way before this in the first chapter of Genesis. The first two chapters of Genesis is the account of the creation of our world. Within the first chapter of Genesis is a prophetic timeline of the entire history of mankind on the earth. If you do not understand that statement, you should read some of my other blogs on the subject. God uses symbolism in the first chapter from the things that are mentioned, and these things occur in a very specific ordered timeline that reveals a lot of great information to us. I believe the first reference to angels occurs in verse 16 of Genesis 1:
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Where are the angels you ask? That is the tricky part of the mysteries within the Bible; God has hidden significant information within verses that we do not understand until He reveals them to us. In this verse God speaks of three heavenly objects found in our sky. Did you notice I said “Heavenly”? Where is God’s throne? God’s throne is in “Heaven”. So, we have three natural symbols that convey spiritual beings and meanings. I will not discuss the sun or the moon in this lesson, if you need to know who these objects represent you should go read some of my other lessons. However, the “stars” are innumerable in our night sky. That is a key word that describes the angels in heaven.
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
God tells us in Hebrews that Heaven contains an innumerable number of angels. This means that God only knows the number of them, and we just do not have the time to count them all. In other words, the number of angels is not an infinite number; it is just a very big number. So here is the reason that I bring “stars” into today’s lesson. If you read later in the Bible in Revelation, you will see how important it is note:
Rev 12:4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
As you can clearly see the tail of the symbolic dragon who is revealed to be Satan causes a 1/3 part of the stars of heaven to fall to the earth. These are not real stars in our night sky; these are only symbolic stars that represent angels. In the Bible “stars” many times represents angels symbolically. This is definitely true in Genesis 1 and Revelation 12 and many other places also. In this verse of Revelation, it clearly tells us that the number of the angels is not an infinite number because a specific fraction 1/3 of them is fallen from heaven to the earth. If you can divide a number by 3 you have to know what that number is that is being reduced. Again, this is just basic logic and the laws of mathematics.
This has been a basic introduction to the subject of angels using the Bible. I have only speculated about one thing and that is I believe that there must be female angels but that I have not found a direct Bible verse to prove that. The other facts in this lesson definitely are scripture-based teachings found in the Bible. We have learned that there are many angels that exist, in fact more than we can count, however not as many as God can count. We have learned that some of these angels do not belong to God anymore. Those that are faithful to God are numbered in terms of 2/3 of the total population of angels. The other 1/3 of the angels we are told are cast down to the earth. We also learned from Peter’s writings that some angels have already been cast into hell for creating a perverted race of beings in an attempt to corrupt the seed of Adam. So we have seen two witnesses so far that say that angels can manifest themselves in physical forms in our world. That is a very important fact to keep in mind. Here is another witness to this fact:
Heb 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
I’ll end today’s lesson with this thought, God says for us to treat strangers like they could be a heavenly representative from God. It is very clear to me that God is saying you never know who you are entertaining and that they could potentially have a message for you from God. I base this on the fact that I believe that an angel’s number one assignment is to be a messenger of God since that is what the name “angel” means. We will discuss more scriptures about angels in my next lesson and hopefully see what else the Bible says that they can do. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading this series about angels, you can go to “Part 2“.
Understanding Hard Sayings in the Bible! Eat My Flesh and Drink My Blood!
(Ver 1.1) This is “Part 4” in a series of advanced Christian lessons on “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible. This lesson today is not a new subject for me to teach on, for I have covered parts of this topic of hard sayings in at least one other lesson. But, I want to back up today and introduce you to the general concept of “Hard Sayings” found in the Bible before I teach any more about them. The Bible contains many sayings that are very difficult for people to accept, so in many Christian churches they simply ignore them. You see I did not invent the term “Hard Sayings”, it came from a teaching that Jesus directly gave to His disciples and in doing this, Jesus taught us that the Bible contains many “Hard Sayings” within it. There are other Christian books and authors on the market that are available with this title about “Hard Sayings” in the Bible. I have not read them, but some of them must be good. What I want you to realize is today’s lessons came directly from God and the Bible and not from the teachings of another man. So what is a hard saying? A Hard Saying can be described as any words or verses that are very difficult to understand or to accept because of what is being taught or stated within them. Many times hard sayings in the Bible are natural controversial subjects which have a hidden spiritual message that is being conveyed. Jesus actually gives us the classic difficult or hard saying Himself in the Gospels and in doing so teaches us some very significant things about this subject that we should all learn. Here is what the disciples said about the lesson that Jesus gave to them:
Joh 6:60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
As you can see the disciples listening to the words of Jesus said that this teaching was very “hard sayings” to accept and they asked “who could hear them”. They are in effect saying the words of Jesus are very difficult to believe, comprehend, accept, grasp or even understand. What were these words that Jesus was teaching on that were called “hard sayings” by His followers? I mean if His followers had trouble accepting them, what about us? What made the words of Jesus so difficult to grasp for these inner circle of disciples? I guess we should start by reading what Jesus was teaching about that the disciples called “Hard Sayings”.
Joh 6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
These are truly very “Hard Sayings”. If you try to take these words literally you will attempt to say that Jesus was teaching cannibalism. However, one of the key elements to correct Bible interpretation is knowing when something is symbolic and when something should be taken literally. . This is something that is not always as easy as you would like it to be. Symbolism is a key element used throughout the Bible to conceal and reveal spiritual information to us His disciples. Jesus is speaking symbolically about spiritual things in this verse and we will need to explore several other Bible verses to get the correct interpretation to these symbols. But, this verse is the prime example of how the natural mind of man can get easily confused when reading the Bible. The Bible says this about the natural mind of man:
Rom 8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
What is a carnal mind? A carnal mind is one that thinks 100% naturally. To apply natural things to a spiritual book is said to be an enemy of God. I see blogs on the internet about Bible studies and they are clearly the enemies to God. They are applying human logic and reasoning to explain away the true spiritual meanings and that is a major problem. So the important lesson from this verse is for us not to think like men, but to renew our minds and change to think like God. God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thought are not our thoughts, but that does not mean we cannot come up to God’s way of thinking. It only means that we do not know how to do this until we learn it from God. God did not give us a book that we could not understand ever. He only wants us to change in order to see the real truth. This change involves a higher level of spiritual thought and hopefully you are growing in this area.
What we discover from Jesus’ statement are that two major components are being spoken of. These are the “Flesh” of Jesus and the “Blood” of Jesus. Then we are instructed to eat and drink these two elements. I purposely chose the word “elements” because many Christians know these are symbolic representations for our communion services where we take bread and wine and partake of the Lord’s body and blood. Christians do this as a symbolic representation of a greater spiritual truth that I will discuss in more depth today. Jesus actually taught us some very profound things while partaking of the “Passover” meal with His disciples. Jesus breaks the unleavened bread of Passover and says “this is my body” eat. Then Jesus takes the cup of the covenant and says this is my “blood” drink. Jesus in doing this was not saying this is my literal body and blood; he again was just using symbols to convey spiritual meanings.
In the Old Testament Psalms, it says “Taste and see that the Lord is Good” (Ps 34:8). So how do you taste anything naturally? In order to taste something you usually put that something in your mouth and then swallow it, if it is good or spit it out if it is bad. God appears to be using more symbolism in this verse of Psalms. We know that God is a Spirit (John 4:24). How do you then taste a Spirit and see if He is good? For that matter how does the real you, the spirit inside your body taste the Lord and see if He is good? That is exactly why Jesus uses these natural things to help you to understand the spiritual things that you have no experience with before you are saved. You have plenty of natural experience with eating if you are a healthy human being. Jesus chose to teach us using these natural things to give us a view into the spiritual things that we do not see. These things obviously have to be similar in characteristics even if they are totally different from comparing natural to spiritual things. God using His vast intelligence created natural things for us to get glimpses into spiritual things. So Jesus is saying in order for you to be healthy spiritually you must eat my flesh and drink my blood and in doing this you will have spiritual life. Our problem right now is we just don’t know what this means and that is where we are going now. I will explain the symbols given to us by Jesus to help you to understand these spiritual things.
What is the “body” of Jesus Christ made of? Where did the body of Jesus Christ come from? These are two key questions to discovering the true meaning of what Jesus was teaching when He taught us to eat His flesh. I will start this lesson with a description of the flesh of Jesus from the book of John:
Joh 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
You can very clearly see that God tells us that His Word became “Flesh” and walked among us. In fact, if you backup to verse one in this chapter, you find that it says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. You cannot separate God from His Word in this verse. God and His Word are “One” in the same. This is one of the reasons why it is impossible for God to lie. God is saying that He became Flesh by sending His Word to join or unite with the egg of the virgin woman Mary. God’s Word became the spiritual and natural Seed that became the flesh that was crucified on the cross. Do you remember when the angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would “overshadow” her and that she would become pregnant? What was Mary’s response to the Words of God sent through an angel? She said “Be it unto me according to thy Word” (Luke 1:38). The angel tells Mary that God will “overshadow” her. This term means to supernaturally envelop. Mary could have said “I don’t believe that” and God would have been forced to find another woman. But, Mary says “It will be as you have spoken”. So the Words of God were accepted into the spirit of the woman Mary and she believed them and then the Holy Spirit came upon her to conceive the child Jesus. God sent His Word to a woman to become Flesh and this is why Jesus was speaking to the disciples that you must eat my flesh. The flesh of Jesus was the “Word of God” made manifest in this world. The Flesh of Jesus was the Word of God Visible to your natural eyes. This was what Jesus was trying to teach us using these natural symbols that exist in the world. Of course at this time when Jesus taught this, the disciples lacked the keys to the knowledge to understand this truth and therefore this was a “hard saying” for them to accept. We still have this problem in the body of Christ even today. We have many Christians who do not accept things because they do not understand them. For example, speaking in tongues is a prime example of this. Because some do not understand it they criticize it and even teach against it. That is a very foolish thing to do. God excuses your ignorance for a while then it may come time for judgment when you attack your brother. I would dare not teach against anything that I do not fully understand to the best of my ability. What I have hopefully shown you is that the Flesh of Jesus is the Word of God so let’s look at the blood of Jesus and what this represents.
Jesus was not teaching you that you should drink His actual blood; there are laws in the O.T. that say that you should not eat meat with the blood still in it. So Jesus has to be speaking figuratively or symbolically. So what is the “Blood of Jesus”? What does the Blood of Jesus represent symbolically? These are another two questions that are critical to understand if you want to understand what Jesus was teaching when He says to “drink His Blood”. We know from the Bible that it is the Blood of Christ that has paid the price for our sins (Heb 10, Rev 1:5). But, what made the blood of Jesus of sufficient value to accomplish this and not some innocent sinless animal like a real lamb? A real lamb has no sin and it certainly has blood. God told Israel in the Old Testament to sacrifice these animals as a type or a pattern for the real “Lamb of God” who was to come. Jesus Christ is called the “Lamb” several times in the N.T. (Rev 21:9, 21:14, 21:22, 21:23, 21:27 to name a few). Here is another verse that speaks about Jesus being the lamb of God:
1Pe 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:
This verse informs us that the Jesus was our sinless Lamb and that His blood was precious. What made Jesus’ blood precious? To be precious means to be very valuable. Anything that is very valuable costs a lot. The Blood of Jesus is said to be a “Mighty Cost Paid” for our sins. So what made the blood of Jesus more valuable than that of a natural lamb? Isn’t blood just blood? That is the million dollar question for the day and if you can answer that question you will understand many things about the Bible that are also hard to accept. Let’s look at a clue that God gives us to this answer in the O.T.:
Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
So here is a clue to the answer to the million dollar question. God tells us that the “Life” of the flesh is in the “blood”. Without blood your flesh has no life. People know this fact fairly well in our world. If you are injured badly and bleed excessively, you will die. So no blood means no life. This of course is a very interesting paradox being given to us. It would appear that after Jesus was raised from the dead that His “blood” was no longer necessary for His continued bodily functions to operate and to exist; after all most of His blood spilled out onto the ground on the hill of Golgotha while hanging on the cross. Then after His resurrection Jesus told the Mary Magdeline not to touch Him (John 20:17) until He went to heaven to present His remaining blood before God’s real temple in heaven (Heb 9:12). After Jesus returned to earth from heaven it was OK, to touch Him, because He told Thomas to “touch me, a spirit does not have flesh and bone” (Luke 24:39). Notice that Jesus never mentions His blood again, why is that? So I do not know if the resurrected Spiritual Body of Jesus has blood in it today or not. It is an interesting question to consider. After Jesus was resurrected he ate food with His disciples, but yet could walk through walls and appear in a locked room. So what will our resurrected body be like? I can only guess it will be like Jesus’ body. I think that I got off the main subject so I’ll continue with what the Blood represents now.
The Life of the Flesh revelation that we just read about in Leviticus 17:11, we now know that the blood represents Life. We can now ask, whose Life was it in the body of Jesus Christ? We know from the Bible that it was “God’s” life that was in the body of Jesus (Heb 10:5). So when they crucified Jesus the man, they crucified God. God gave us His life in exchange to buy our lives. That was an awesome display of a loving God. No one else qualified to pay the price for our salvation. No one else had the sufficient sinless qualities. No one else could pay the price of such great value that was necessary for our redemption so God came Himself and did what we could not do. I do not know about you, but I am extremely thankful that He did this.
1Jn 5:20 And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.
The Bible is a highly complex book of spiritual information and putting it together correctly is one of our greatest challenges. If God who had no beginning or ending, could come to the earth and experience pain, suffering and death for our benefit then who are we to question was this necessary. If God did not think it was necessary He would have done something else. God experiences death for a reason and you should be smart enough to know that it was just not for our benefit alone, but also for His benefit. God is smart enough to multi-task like no one else that I have ever known. God can accomplish many things with one designed act of love and mercy. So if you want to think that God came only to die for your sins, you can think that and be wrong. Death is a legal separating force for covenants. Do you understand why God had to break covenant with Satan? First, you probably did not realize that God was in covenant with Satan, but this is a Bible fact if you look for it. I guess I’ll get back to my real subject today about flesh of God and the Blood of God. In 1 John 5:20, the True God is spoken of in conjunction with a direct connection to eternal life. One reason that God died was so that we could partake of His Eternal Life. Before God died on the cross, no man on the earth possessed God’s Eternal Life. I know that God took men in the O.T. on credit like Enoch and Elijah to heaven. But, even these men were looking forward to what God would accomplish in the future through Jesus Christ.
1Jn 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
He that has the Son of God now has this eternal life of God. This is what Jesus was talking about when He said for us to drink his blood. Jesus was speaking of His blood as being the life of God that we should be able to spiritually drink and become a part of us internally in our spirits. What happens when you drink natural water? It becomes a part of your natural body. If you do not have water to drink you die physically. These are all symbolic representations of what happens to you in the spiritual realm when you drink the Blood of Jesus. So what is the Blood of Jesus? It was His Life, but what is that to us now on earth right now?
1Jn 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
I have already shown you scriptures that told us that the Body of Jesus was the Word of God. Now we see another revelation concerning the Blood of Jesus. If the life of the flesh is in the blood then you can substitute Life and Blood interchangeably and still be correct. It would appear to me that everything reverts back to God’s Word. If you want God’s Life you better study God’s Words and get them into your spirit. This was the key to the lesson that Jesus was teaching on when He said “eat my Flesh” and “drink my blood”. Spiritually speaking we would not be able to do this any other way but by eating and drinking the Word of God and the Word of Life. You may recall the Words of Jesus, when He said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mat 4:4). Jesus is again giving us clues into the “hard sayings” that He was teaching in John. Jesus is comparing natural bread that we eat with our physical mouths to the spiritual bread from God. God’s spiritual bread is His Word and we can only eat this by getting God’s Word into our spirits. Jesus said by partaking of the spiritual food it will bring life to us. God’s words are that spiritual food that we need to eat and to drink in our spirits.
So if nothing else today I hope and pray that you learned two things. The Bible contains “Hard Sayings” that are difficult to grasp and accept on the surface only reading of the text. But, then you should have also learned that God has provided explanations in His Word to what these Hard Sayings mean. You have to study, you have to search the Bible for the key words and then you have to allow the Holy Spirit to direct you to the truth. In doing this you come much closer to knowing the truth as Jesus taught us in His Word.
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
God Bless,
If you would like to continue reading in this series about “Understanding Hard Sayings” found in the Bible you may go to “Part 5“.
What you should know about the Truth in the Bible? How will you know it when you see it?
(Ver 1.5) This is Part 2 in a series of lessons on understanding truth in the Bible. If you have not read from the beginning I would suggest that you go back and start with “Part 1” first. I have had way too many people try to tell me that the Bible is the truth, but yet none of these people can agree what it is that the Bible says. Isn’t that a problem to you? We have one group of people who profess only we know the truth ad another group who believes the opposite who say only they know the truth. This makes it very difficult for you to convince anyone that is not a Christian that the Bible is true and that they should become a Christian. Of course this is what Satan wants to happen and that is why he works so hard at confusing Christians and potential Christians. Truth is a very complex subject and an extremely advanced subject for any Bible study. Truth is such a complicated concept simply because there is no one but, God who knows it all. That leaves the rest of us in a state of varying degrees of ignorance and nobody likes to admit they are ignorant of anything. So as a result we have churches standing up in pride saying only we have all the truth and the rest of you are just a bunch of heretics.
There are many Christians who profess that the Bible contains God’s “Absolute Truth”. This is technically not a true statement if we base it upon a complete dictionary definition of the word “absolute”. The term absolute dictates both “complete” and “perfect” truth. But we should realize that God knows many other truths that were not yet recorded or made known to us. Instead of calling it absolute truth I would prefer to call it “ultimate” truth and I will try to explain this more clearly as I continue in the lesson. The Bible is clearly the only source for any ultimate spiritual Truth from God. Even if the Spirit of God speaks to someone a truth it will never contradict what He has given to us in the Bible already. I believe this and I preach it. I will also define the term “ultimate truth” as being truth that never changes or a truth that can not be overruled by the knowledge of any new truths. But the stated existence of even “Ultimate Truth” would also imply that there are other types of truths that are not at this level or truths that could be trumped by new knowledge. This would mean there could exist levels of potentially changing truths depending upon human perspective, understanding or even knowledge and you need to understand this. I believe that our perspective of truth changes even when God’s truth stays constant and that both of these occur at the same time. God’s truth will never change but our knowledge will change or at least it should.
Then there are those who look into the Bible and claim that every word in the plain textual natural meaning is the complete truth that needs to be known and they imply that that there is no other hidden spiritual truths within the plain text that can be found. Others say that everything written in the book is 100% the truth. But, I do not believe that is completely accurate according to what the Bible itself teaches us. Some people will automatically think that I am preaching some kind of heresy to say that the entire Bible is not 100% truth. But, they fail to understand the complexity of God’s Word so they make wrong assumptions and say things out of religious ignorance and I forgive them. You see I certainly do believe that the Bible is God’s inspired word and that it does contain the truth, but this truth is not all that easily visible on the surface only readings of the Bible that most Christians do. You see the Bible clearly describes to us numerous times that this book contains spiritual parables, proverbs, mysteries, secrets, puzzles, riddles, hidden wisdom, and many things that are not clearly self-evident without God showing us what they say and what they mean. That is why we have over 22,000 different Christian denominations in the world today and everybody thinks they know what is important.
So the first thing that you should learn about truth is that you do not know it. I guess I should qualify that statement and say you do not know it “all”, because you might know a very small part of it. I personally believe the amount of the truth that we all know combined when compared to God’s knowledge of the truth is like a thimble full of water being compared to all of the water in the oceans of the world. I mean come on, you do not know the number of hairs on top of your head and God knows the number of hairs on top of over 6 billion people in the world today. We all know just little bits and parts of the complete whole truth and too many times we think that we know way more than we do. According to the Bible, God is the infinite holder of all knowledge and all truth. But, the Bible also says that God’s ways are not our ways and that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa 55:9), and this is one of the human’s greatest problem and weakness. So if we know anything that is actually a part of God’s truth it is usually a result of God’s grace giving us insight and revelation into this information. Without God opening your understanding you will fail to see or know the truth. One of our biggest problems as human beings involves the fact that we are not God, but try to act like Him on many occasions. Do you understand that statement? Since only God knows everything, we are extremely limited to know only what He has revealed by His grace. Fortunately for us, God has revealed a lot of valuable information to us in His Word for us to know in these last days. But that still does not mean we know everything by far. Here are my foundational scriptures for today’s Bible lesson:
Joh 8:31 Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
Joh 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
In this statement by Jesus concerning us knowing the truth are some valuable clues of us understanding this subject of what truth is. First off it says or at least implies that you do not yet know all of the truth and I will talk more about that soon. The basis of this statement almost implies that we can never know all of the truth, but at the same time it seems to imply that we will at some given point in time come to know what the revealed truth is by God’s grace. It is almost a paradoxical puzzle being presented to us. According to this verse, in order to know the truth, we must continue in the Word of God. To continue in the word implies an ongoing or even a never ending process of learning, or so it would seem. But by continuing in the Word of God we are further implied to come to an end or reach a level that God called “Know the Truth”. Have you arrived at this level of “Know the Truth”? If you think you have you have probably been deceived. The reason that I say that is because this verse says that this “knowledge of the truth” will set you and I free? Are you free? What does it mean to be free? Free from what or who? Those are extremely good questions and more difficult to answer than you might think. According to Jesus and the Bible, you are not 100% free right now! Meaning you are limited or controlled by something that is holding you captive today. What is this speaking of? I personally believe it is our ignorance that is holding us captive and when we learn what God has hidden for us to learn we will then understand what we need to do to become free. I would venture to challenge you to do some Bible study and find out what you need to be freed from. The reason that I say that is that no one ever escapes to freedom from captivity who does not first know that they are captives. What I learn from this verse is that Jesus teaches us that there will come a time when we learn and understand enough that will cause us to be free from someone or something and we will be able to clearly see when this happens. So if you think that you are already free you do not know that you are a captive. If you think that you have arrived at this “know the truth” level what are still doing here in this world?
So I alluded to a statement that there were different types of truth in my introduction. I believe that there are many types of truth in the world and that this truth changes based upon two things that I will attempt to introduce you to today. For example, 150 years ago it was impossible for man to fly and that was the known truth. However, today people fly everyday all over the world and that is the new or changed known truth. What changed to make this new truth of flying available to everyone? Does anyone in the world today still believe we can’t fly? It was our knowledge that changed. The real truth never changed, the real truth was that man could always fly. It was just what we thought was the truth because of our ignorance or lack of information forced us to believe the wrong truth. However, 150 years ago it was true, but today that view is not true. Do you understand these things that I’m telling you? Since our knowledge has increased in this area we have learned that the laws of aerodynamics overrule the laws of gravity and this allows us to fly. 150 years ago we only understood gravity and this was only a small part of the truth and we based all of our beliefs of the truth upon our limited knowledge. We never invented aerodynamics, so the laws of aerodynamics are not new, we just didn’t understand them and how to use them 150 years ago. So it was our ignorance of these existing laws of truth that kept us from flying 150 years ago and nothing else. Do you understand this? This is actually very important information to see and to apply to what you learn and know from the Bible. This is a prime example of how studying the Bible is today and why some people believe this way and others believes the complete opposite. There is always an absolute truth, but based upon your current level of knowledge you may not understand it and therefore still don’t believe that people can fly. There are way too many Christians like this in the world today.
God is so much smarter than we are that He can write things in a book over 2000 years ago that we do not clearly understood and yet the words are right there in front of us this whole time. I have just demonstrated to you that knowledge matters to determine what the truth is. Another example that I could give you is that men and women in the world today are more like 4 year old children when compared to God’s infinite knowledge level. If a college professor came to teach a 4 year old child some advanced calculus would the 4 year old grasp any of it? This is another major problem with modern Christianity found in the world today. Their spiritual maturity level is not sufficiently increased so that God can teach them anything about what is the real truth. So I mentioned the fact that there are different types of truth in the world and I will talk briefly about that. There are changing truths, inter-related truths, dependent truths, independent truths and universal truths to name some that I have discovered while studying the Bible. I’ve already discussed the changing truth concept based upon our level of knowledge so let’s talk about another factor that helps us to determine truth.
Let’s take a look at the concept of gold. Gold has great value in our world and that is a truth based on the way we see it. But, the actual value of gold is not known because it is viewed as an ever changing commodity that is manipulated by the markets of the gold traders on the earth. So the true value of gold is an unknown quantity and probably impossible to determine in our world. Why, because the quantity of available gold is tightly controlled and the prices are artificially manipulated to be high. I would dare to say that God knows the true value of gold but unless God revealed this, it would be only our best guess. However, I have read in the Bible that God paves His streets in heaven with gold, so that would mean that since we paved our streets on the earth with asphalt that God views gold to be His asphalt. So God’s perspective on gold is entirely different than our perspective on gold and this is why the Bible is so entirely difficult to understand. Gold must be so abundant in heaven that it is used for paving roads and here on earth it is viewed as a rare commodity. So your view of the truth is totally dependent upon your knowledge level and then your perspective of the subject being studied. I just showed you an example of how God’s perspective on something is vastly different than ours, so let’s adjust to see things like God sees them. Knowledge and perspective are two things that are critical to understand when studying the Bible. My current level of knowledge of the Bible may be more or less than your current level knowledge of the Bible, but my perspective of the Bible can be more accurate if I choose to see things the way God sees them. I have known many people who knew the Bible much better than I did, but understood practically none of it because they had the wrong perspectives. They viewed things naturally instead of seeing with God’s spiritual perspective. Therefore, correct Bible interpretation is dependent upon your level of knowledge and your perspective of the verses being studied. What happens if you do not agree with my beliefs? Nothing, but this just proves that at least one of us is wrong and possibly both of us are wrong and only God is right based upon what I have just taught you. As we continue to study in the Word of God we should be converging to the top of a spiritual pyramid type organizational or knowledge chart. We should be coming closer together to the agreement of what is the truth and the knowledge of the truth, to reach the upper point that God called “know the truth” pinacle point.
In my last blog about heaven I talked about the city called Jerusalem in the Bible. Let me ask you a new question about this city. Since most people do not know that there are three different cities called Jerusalem in the Bible, how can one man teach about Jerusalem from the Bible when they do not know this information? Does it matter what we teach if we are void of some of the key facts on the subject? Does it change the real Bible truth because someone teaches something that they think is the truth, but is not? You see you might believe something with all of your heart and you might be totally wrong because you do not know a couple of key scriptures that will solve your ignorance problem. You see that is the problem facing every Bible teacher, our ignorance forces us to teach a subject based upon our current level of knowledge and our current perspective. But, the mistake some Bible teachers make is when they teach at the level that they know like it is the complete truth and everyone else is totally wrong. You see the Bible contains more than one truth and all of the truth must fit together correctly. The Bible also has numerous hidden truths and these must be revealed by God in order to understand other truths. You cannot ignore one truth to teach another truth, all though people do this all the time. I’ve used this example before; I have heard more than one preacher read how the church is the body of Christ in the Bible. I believe these verses whole heartedly, but then they jump to wrong conclusions and say that means we are not the bride of Christ. Their ignorance causes them to criticize those who teach things contrary to what they believe. They say that if Christ has a bride we have a bride since we are the body of Christ and that is very wrong. What these men of God lack is knowledge of how the church became the body of Christ and this would solve their problem and their view of the actual truth. To them what they teach is the truth or they would not be a Christian. However, ignorance and knowledge levels play a huge role in us knowing the real truth. This is the basis for the majority of all of the problems faced within the church today; those who do not know much teach like they know everything and they cause nothing but vast confusion.
What have we learned today? The primary thing should be that “absolute truth” doesn’t change. But, our view of the truth changes as we change based upon the two primary factors that I have taught you about today. As your knowledge increases of the Bible, your understanding of the Bible should also be increasing. If your understanding of the Bible is not increasing, then check up on your perspective on the subjects that you are studying in the Bible. Could it be that you are seeing things in the Bible from your perspective and not God’s perspective? You should be smart enough to be able to judge yourself and determine if you are doing the right things that I have just discussed. It is only by the church of God making the right adjustments that God can accomplish what He has planned for us. I am a firm believer that before Jesus returns for us that the church will become one unit in one accord, victorious overcomers over Satan our enemy. This I believe is the clue to Jesus statement of “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”. There must come a point in time when we know the truth, in order to experience this freedom that Jesus described. This is what I am working towards; this is my goal for you and me today. Continue learning the Bible and continue growing in the knowledge of Him who is faithful and true and I will be back with more of the knowledge of God in my next Blog.
The Most Important Things You Should Know About Heaven!
(Ver 2.0) Today is a new subject for me, even though I have taught on parts of this subject in other lessons. I believe that it is so important for people to clearly know about heaven; that I have decided to talk about it again using new terms and perspectives to give people another chance to grasp these concepts found in the Bible. Does God exist and if so where does He exist? This of course is an extremely complex subject for humans to comprehend since we are a naturally born people limited to the constraints found within a physical world and the Bible clearly says that God is a Spirit (John 4:24). So how do natural people come to understand spiritual things? Spiritual things are not the same as natural things. God lives outside of time constraints and space constraints. There are many people in the world who do not believe there is a God. They base these beliefs on the fact that they have never seen God, cannot see God, do not ever hear from God or have any other proof or evidence that He exists. They further expound that since God does not do anything to stop the evil in the world, He must not exist. Of course, the flip side of this extreme is another extreme of people believing that God is causing all of the evil in the world and therefore they do not want anything to do with Him either. But, all of this is purely by God’s design in order to give man a free and fair choice. God purposely hides Himself from our view, if He did not do this you would have no choice but to believe that He existed. All of that said, God has spoken to us directly in a written book form called the Holy Bible. I have studied this book for close to 25 years and have determined that there is no way that this book did not come from God directly. There is just too much complex information for it not to have a very intelligent designer and an author who could be no one but God. However, there are certainly many others in the world that view this book as a collection of fantasy and made up stories because they do not understand anything that is in it. This is again by God’s design; and it gives people who want to see the truth the opportunity to know Him and those who refuse the truth the right to go to hell. It is a very perplexing method of operation, yet I cannot question God’s ways since He is entirely smarter than I am. So today I want to discuss some very important things found in the Bible about Heaven, what it is, where it is and what do we need to know about it? We might talk about some of the characteristics of heaven like the existence of many mansions being there and how the streets are paved with gold and God’s throne is surrounded by angels, but I do not think these are the most important things to know about heaven so if we do talk about them, they will be later or in another follow-up lesson. I want to start with a verse found in the N.T.:
1Pe 3:22 Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
Why is it necessary for all the angels and spiritual powers to be made subject to Jesus, the Son of God? That is a very interesting question to consider. The Bible certainly has some very difficult statements to try to explain and this is certainly one of them. I will state what I believe and say that if every spiritual force and angel was already subject to God, I do not believe it would have been necessary for God to put them under His Son Jesus. Wow, I just got off the subject for a quick side trip to get you to think about something you may have never thought of before. So let’s go back to the beginning of this verse and notice that the Bible says that Jesus has gone back into heaven and is now located at the right hand of God. This verse very clearly informs us that there is a real place called heaven and that Jesus is there right now. We know from reading the Gospels in verses like John 3:13 and 6:51 that Jesus said before He was came to the earth that He came from Heaven. So heaven is where Jesus came from and heaven is where He went back to after He died and rose from the dead. Since the Bible says in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses let every word be established, I will give you another witness to this fact that we just read:
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Jesus, again is very clearly described to be at the right of God at this moment in time. Where Jesus is now is also the location of the throne of God. A throne is always a place where a King rules His Kingdom. So heaven was the Kingdom of God, before Jesus came and died on the cross. However, God tells us that now the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). So it appears to me that God is said to be moving His Kingdom location and I will talk more about this later.
Heb 9:24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:
The word “heaven” appears in the KJV Bible more than 550 times. However, it is not always in reference to the spiritual location of God’s throne. The word “heaven” can refer to at the minimum 3 different realms or dimensions and you must be smart enough to figure out which one God is talking about by the context of the verse being read. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:2 that he was caught up to the “3rd heaven” where he saw things that he could not verbally describe to us with human words. That makes heaven sound pretty awesome if you can’t even describe it. We can see in this verse in Hebrew 8:24 that Jesus is said to enter into a “Holy Place” not made by the hands of men. So God is now telling us about heaven as a spiritual place. This verse informs us that heaven has a temple that is the original pattern of the objects made on the earth by the hands of men in Jerusalem. This heavenly temple is called the “true temple” which would imply to me that the earthly temple in Jerusalem must be the “false temple”. But, I guess I won’t go there either today!
2Th 1:7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
As we have seen Jesus ascended into heaven after His resurrection and is now at the right hand of God. However, the Bible informs us very strongly that Jesus is coming back very soon. Not long from now this Jesus who went up to heaven will come back down the same way that He ascended, the angels told the disciples this in Acts 1:11. This verse in 2 Thessalonians tells us that when Jesus returns He will bring with Him many mighty angels. So we have just discovered a revelation that heaven is the home or a house that is full of the angels of God and that these spiritual entities are not insignificant beings. They clearly are said to be very mighty, meaning they are very strong. Here is another witness to this fact:
Heb 12:22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
So heaven is not described to be a small place. This place also has a very specific name and is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem”. This spiritual place is described to have a mountain named “Zion”. This place is clearly described to be the “City of the Living God”. This does not sound small or insignificant either, especially since you cannot number the population of this city. This city “Heavenly Jerusalem” is said to be the home of an innumerable number of angels. This is the mighty spiritual force army that will return with Jesus when He comes back. It is also critical that you note the name of this spiritual city. This city is called the “Heavenly Jerusalem”. Did you know that heaven had a name? This is another reference to the “true” heaven that we just read about previously. Why does God have another city called Jerusalem? I guess I should ask, why did God name the earthly city Jerusalem the same as His heavenly city Jerusalem? You do understand that the heavenly city Jerusalem certainly existed before the earthly city came to be. Isn’t that an interesting question to consider? This spiritual city seems to be called the real or true city of God. This is what I believe, God created a covenant with Abraham to bring forth a natural nation called Israel who would build God an earthly city that would be a pattern of His spiritual city Jerusalem in heaven. I believe that God did this for several reasons and I will probably not be able to get into all of these today. But, one of the reasons I believe was to show us a city that was like another city that we can’t see. Why is there just one city in our entire world that has the focus of every eye on it? Why does this city “earthly Jerusalem” gain so much attention? It is because it is a pattern of the “heavenly Jerusalem”. Just as the earthly city Jerusalem has had numerous attack and people come against it, I believe the heavenly city of Jerusalem is being attacked. Just as the earthly city of Jerusalem is being forced to stop building and expanding, so the heavenly city of God was attacked in the same way by Satan and his army. The majority of the world governments are proposing that the earthly Jerusalem be divided. If you study the Bible, God is also being forced to divide His heavenly city. So let’s look at another witness to this heavenly city of God called Jerusalem:
Gal 4:26 But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Here is another verse of scripture in the Bible that describes Heaven as a place that is somewhere above. Again it specifically names this city and calls it “Jerusalem”, but this time it qualifies it by calling it the Jerusalem Above! So we automatically know that it is not the Jerusalem that is on the earth or the Jerusalem below. Heaven is again said to be a city called Jerusalem, where the throne of God resides with an innumerable number of angels. But, this verse in Galatians tells us another major clue to a puzzle we didn’t even know was a puzzle. This city is called the Mother of the church. You do not understand yet how important that statement is, unless you understand God’s spiritual family structure. What we have just learned, is that the Heavenly Jerusalem is called the “Mother” of all of those in the Church of Jesus Christ, so this means the heavenly Jerusalem is not the Church! Did you understand what I just said? I’ll show why this is important to note very soon. What is a mother? A mother is a woman who has had a child or children. Wow that is one of the most important things you can learn today, if you can grasp this concept. A city is a woman, a woman is a city. A spiritual city is a spiritual woman and she can have spiritual children. But, remember that this heavenly city Jerusalem was comprised of a spiritual nation of angels which included Satan. Uh oh? I just let you in on some more information that I’m not ready to discuss yet. Let’ me shift gears and talk about another woman briefly that is said to also come from heaven:
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
First take note of what this verse says. A city came down from heaven and this city is called a woman, a bride and the wife for a husband who we will see later in this chapter to be the Lamb. This woman has the same name as the other two cities that we have already been looking at. This name is of course the “New Jerusalem”. Why is all of this that I am trying to teach you important to know? Because it helps you to know who you are in Christ and where you fit in God’s New Kingdom which I am attempting to reveal to you. In Revelation 21:2 we either have the same city Jerusalem or a new and different city called Jerusalem being described to us. From my current understanding of the Bible this is clearly a different city than the one that I just showed you in Hebrews and Galatians called the Heavenly Jerusalem and here is why I believe that. First off did you notice that this woman in Rev 21:2 comes down from heaven? Did heaven come down or did the city called New Jerusalem come down from heaven? Wow, you see heaven did not come down it is still there. What happens when a woman gives birth to a baby? Does the baby come down the birth canal and out to the waiting doctor? So we just read in Galatians 4 that this heavenly Jerusalem is our mother, meaning she gave spiritual birth to us. Let me ask you a basic question, do you have babies first or do you get married first? I guess I should ask which one should come first and not how it works in our world many times. If the heavenly Jerusalem is a woman who gave birth in Galatians 4, then she should not logically be the woman who is getting married in Revelation 21. Get it? You see the woman called Heavenly Jerusalem must already be married in order to have had children. This is not rocket science so you should be at least following my logic a little bit. If you continue to read Galatians 4 and see what it is describing to us, you will hopefully see that it is using the life story of Abraham as an allegory for a type of God. So let’s review the story of Abraham. As you may or may not recall, Abraham had two wives and two sons. One was from the much younger Egyptian slave girl Hagar and Galatians says this is a type of Jerusalem on the earth (Gal 4:25). The woman Hagar is called a “bondwoman” and she gives birth to a slave son who is not the heir with the promised son. Sarah who is not named directly in Galatians 4 is the type of the “Freewoman” and is called the Jerusalem that is above. This means that Sarah (the Heavenly Jerusalem) existed prior to Hagar (the Earthly Jerusalem) and they both now have children, but Hagar’s son came first and then Sarah’s son came after. We should know that Abraham represents God in this allegory since the Bible tells us that He was married to natural Israel (Jer 31:32). What you must see is that both of these cities called Jerusalem existed simultaneously and are called women who are in covenant with and married to God. Why is God telling us this information? It must be very important for us to see and to understand clearly. What you should notice in Galatians 4 is that God is quoting an Old Testament prophecy found in the book of Isaiah.
Gal 4:27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.
As you can see God is quoting Isaiah 54:1 in this verse. This verse tells us that there are two women, one a barren woman (Sarah) and one a married woman (Hagar). As we have seen God is using the allegory found in Genesis 16 of Sarah and Hagar to reveal this information to us in Galatians 4. Sarah the older barren woman as we have seen is the one that is said to now have more children than the bondwoman Hagar. So the Bible tells us that these are two covenants and you automatically jump to the wrong conclusion that this is the Old Covenant between God and Israel and the New Covenant between Jesus and the Church. However, that just doesn’t make any sense based upon the information we have just read about these women. The Heavenly Jerusalem (Sarah) existed prior to Israel’s covenant with God on Mt Sinai (Hagar). This city had to exist prior to Jesus coming to the earth, dying and establishing a New Covenant. Then in Galatians 4:26 it says very clearly that this “Heavenly Jerusalem” is the mother of the church and not the church. So whatever covenant this is referring to, it is definitely not the New Covenant between Jesus Christ and the church and it is also not the old covenant between God and Abraham in the Old Testament. So that complicates things tremendously since no one has ever taught on the fact that the Bible mentions three different covenants and not just two. You see, this third hidden covenant has to be God’s covenant with the angels in heaven that existed before Adam ever came along.
Rev 21:2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
So let’s go back to Revelation 21:2 and notice that God is describing a city coming down from above that is called the “New Jerusalem”. What does the term “New” mean? It means it is not the Old Jerusalem. Which one was the barren old Jerusalem (Sarah), it was the Heavenly Jerusalem that was above. Are you beginning to see and understand the concepts being given to us? God has problems with the “Heavenly Jerusalem” and the “Earthly Jerusalem” so He creates a “New Jerusalem” to replace them both. Let’s look at the verse that comes right before this one in Revelation 21:
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.
Again why replace the old heaven and the old earth with new ones if there are not problems with the old? What you do not realize is that God is a just God. He does everything in a decent legal ordered way. If God does not follow strict rules He would be no different than Satan the thief who comes to kill steal and destroy what you have. I have often asked myself and God this question, “If you found sin in Satan why didn’t you cast him into hell and get rid of him?” The only answer that I got back from God was that He could not legally do this and I do not have time to try to explain that statement in this lesson. You can go read some of my other blogs where I give you some clues to the answers to that question. But, it has something to do with this hidden third covenant that God had with the angels and I’ll leave it at that for today.
So getting back to Revelation 21:2; we can review that this verse is also describing a city called “New Jerusalem” who is also described as a woman who is to be married to the Lamb of God (Jesus Christ). A marriage is also a covenant defined to us in the Bible, so we know this is God’s New Covenant with US! So what have I taught you so far? We have three women, three covenants, three cities all named Jerusalem. One is called “Earthly Jerusalem”, another is called “Heavenly Jerusalem” and the last one is called “New Jerusalem” or “Holy Jerusalem”. This implies that the other two women were not the Holy Jerusalem of God and were definitely older than the “New” woman Jerusalem. Why is this important? Because God tells us that this city will come down from Heaven to be reestablished back here on the new earth. In this new city, God tells us that there will be no unrighteous people, no uncircumcised people and no ungodly people, only those that have been purchased by the blood of the Lamb. Finally there will be no Satan, no hurt, no harm, no thieves, no robbers, no murderers and no rapists, no one to do evil. There is where the Bible describes that we will spend eternity with God.
2Pe 3:13 Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
So even as Peter wrote about looking forward to this “New” heaven and “New” earth so we should also look for the coming new city of God that dwells only righteousness.
Many people want to know, where is this heaven that now is located? We have clearly seen in the Bible that it exists and that Jesus is there right now at the right hand of the throne of God. This place is large and holds an innumerable number of angels. It also holds the spirits of all of those righteous people that have died on the earth. They are there as witnesses (Heb 12:1) that are rooting us on in our spiritual journey. The people in heaven do not see what we see on the earth. Spiritual people are oblivious to natural things. Natural things are not important to spiritual people anymore. So people in heaven do not know what kind of car you drive, what kind of house you live in or how much money that you have in the bank. They do not know if you are married or single, and they do not care. The angels and people in heaven are only concerned with your eternal destiny. Have you made Christ your Lord and will you spend eternity with us. Whenever a sinner comes to know Christ, the Bible says that heaven rejoices. So heaven knows about spiritual things.
So where is this Heavenly Jerusalem located? The Bible actually does not specifically tell us, primarily because we would not really understand its spiritual location. As you recall this Jerusalem was said to be “Above”. But, since we live on the earth which is a round ball, every direction you are standing on has an up direction. So is heaven all around us? We are actually given some clues in the Bible and I will end this lesson with the information about the location of heaven:
Psa 75:6 For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south.
Psa 75:7 But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.
Many times God gives us direct information in Bible verses of specific things like God is a Spirit. However, other times God gives us indirect information and we learn from what is not given in the verse. This is the case here in Psalm 75:6. God tells us three directions that promotion does not come from. That only leaves one direction called “North” and that gives us an implied location for the direction of heaven. As you can see clearly God leaves this direction out of the statement and then in the following verse we have a contextual statement that God is the one that promotes one person and puts another person down. So I take these verses to indicate to us where we can find the location of heaven to be from God’s perspective. I assume this to mean you go to the North Pole of our planet and look straight up and this would represent the nearest proximity of the location of heaven.
Isa 66:1 Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?
So we have another verse in Isaiah that seems to indicate the direction of the throne of God to be an implied North. If you can see that the North Pole could be considered the top of our planet, the earth is said to be the location of God’s footstool. So God is sitting on the throne up above us.
I have covered a lot of new information from the Bible about this place called Heaven and shown you many things for you to think about. These are some of the most important things that I have found about this place in the Bible. However, I believe that if you read Revelation 21 you can see that heaven is not our final eternal destination. It would appear that God is preparing a new heaven and a new earth that we will live within eternity on. The Bible says that our eyes have not foreseen the things that God has prepared for them that love Him (1 Co 2:9). So it sounds like a really awesome time in store for us. I don’t know why anyone would not want to go to this place?
Binary Systems in the Bible! God and Computer Concepts to Learn and Live By!
(Ver 1.2) This is now “Part 2” of the lesson series concerning modern computer concepts found in the Bible. In the first lesson I talked about how computers are rules based systems. Nothing exists by chance or by random within a computer by design. Every component of a computer system interacts with the other parts using strict rules and guidelines. What I have been doing is attempting to show how these same principle conform to God’s design of the Bible. Therefore I desire to teach computer concepts and show you how to apply them in your relationship with God and to increase your understanding of His Word. I believe that God understands computers far better than we do and I also believe that He knew that we would have computers in these last days before He comes back to the earth. I strongly believe that God created these amazing machines for us to learn with and to share the Gospel with others and that is why I take the time to write things that some of you may not fully understand if you are not a computer programmer also. I have learned that computer programmers have a different approach to Bible study, usually more logical because we are forced by our jobs to think this way. It is not necessarily a better way to think, but it is certainly very different. In my last computer related post I talked about “Rules Based Systems”. This is a vast complex subject that applies to the Bible and interpreting the Bible correctly in very direct ways. If you would like to read this lesson first before continuing with today’s lesson, you can go and start with “Part 1”.
In today’s lesson I want to discuss some very basic computer concepts and show how they also apply to the Bible. A computer in its simplest form is a binary machine. What may you ask is a binary machine? This is a machine that relies entirely on one of two numbers, either a 0 (zero) or a 1 (one). At the most rudimentary levels of every computer that is all there is; just two numbers. The computer is therefore solely dependent upon the simplest of all number systems the binary number system. You see the most rudimentary element of a computer is a single “bit” of information and this “bit” can either be off or on (zero or one). Computers of course are tremendously more complex by the sheer numbers of these “bits” that exist within a modern computer, but that is not my subject today. What I want to do is focus on Binary concepts in relationship to the Bible. The Bible is very much like a complex computer system. It is probably the most complex book that you will ever attempt to understand, but many of the concepts given in it can be reduced to a simple binary number system choice. Today I want you to focus on what is a Bible binary system? Here are some definitions of a “Binary System” from the internet:
- The number representation system, used in computers, with only two digits, 0 and 1
- A system of arithmetic used with computers, also called base 2, that is based on the digits 0 and 1.
- A system in which information can be expressed by combinations of the digits 0 and 1 (corresponding to “on” and “off” in computers).
Fortunately for most programmers today, we are not required to program a computer at the bit or binary machine level. If you have ever done this you know how complex it can be. We do not even use the computer machine’s language to program a computer anymore, because we have higher level languages that are translated to the machine level. While some of today’s computer languages can still manipulate information at the binary level, most do not normally do this. So why am I talking about binary systems in a Bible study Blog? That is probably the biggest question that you have right now. While not everything in the Bible can be simplified to a binary state, many things in the Bible can. For example, God says this:
Deu 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
If you do not yet understand binary concepts, you probably just read over this verse and missed the basics that God is trying to get you to see. In this verse found in Deuteronomy God places before all people a choice. A choice involves making a selection between two or more things. In this case there are just two choices that can be selected and this is a binary decision. One choice is “Life” and the other is “Death”. This is a very basic binary concept; we could say that life is the number 1 (one) and death the number 0 (zero). This is the way all computers work. It is based upon a simple light switch on or off idea. You flip the switch on you get light, you turn the switch the other way and you get darkness. It is the most basic choice in life that you can make. Another binary concept found in this verse is “blessings” = 1 and curses = 0. So God suggests that we choose life and blessings and that sounds much better to me too. There are a number of binary concepts like this found throughout the Bible. Starting in Genesis 1, there is the mention of Light and Darkness. Light = 1 and Darkness = 0. Day and Night are the same concepts in different words. Here is the binary concept in this verse:
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The Binary theme in God’s Word is used extensively throughout the Bible. You might also remember in Genesis 2 God put two trees in the Garden, one the Tree of Life and the other the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. What we can see from these trees is that they represent a choice. God says do not eat from one or you will die, which implies the other is good to eat from. These are very simple concepts given yet they have far reaching consequences based upon what you choose in this life as you can recognize from Adam’s poor choice to eat from the wrong tree. What I find interesting about God is that He never forces you to solve a complex riddle to be saved for example. God simply says here is my Son Jesus Christ sacrificed for your sins, make Him your Lord and believe I raised Him from the dead and live. Don’t believe and die and go to hell. These are the basis of a simple binary choice but with very, very severe consequences to making the wrong choice. A binary number can only be 0 or 1, off or on. So they are directly opposed opposites. You cannot be in both categories simultaneously. It is a universal truth that you are either in one or the other states of existence. It is a classic division of opposition. Zeros are always the opposites of Ones. Light is the complete opposite to darkness and you do not have both at once. Back when I was an Assembler programmer I used binary bits as flags to the state of something. If set to “off” the state would be false, “on” the state would be true. That is probably too much computer terminology for many of my readers, but it is useful to describe what God has presented us in the Bible. I pray that you understand the simplicity found in the Bible. Here is a list of some of the Binary States that I have found as common themes in the Bible:
|
Binary 0 |
Binary 1 |
| Evil | Good |
| Death | Life |
| Curses | Blessings |
| Night | Day |
| Darkness | Light |
| Lies | Truth |
| Unbelief | Faith |
| Flesh | Spirit |
| Sin | Righteousness |
| Kingdom of Satan | Kingdom of Heaven |
| Wide Path | Narrow Path |
| Captivity | Freedom |
That of course is not a complete list, just introductions to some things that you can clearly see are taught in the Bible that represents a clear binary choice from every man or woman. So I believe that the Bible is a highly complex book of information which also contains very simple binary choices being presented to everyone. You just don’t have to understand the whole Bible to become saved! It is more a simple choice or acceptance of some of the basic Bible information, called the Gospel. Too many Christians want to say that people are not saved because they do not believe exactly like we do. All that does is prove your ignorance of the Bible. You assume that you are God and that you know everything when you preach with this attitude and you are sadly mistaken. God will demonstrate your ignorance on judgment day if you are not very careful. Do not cause other Christians to stumble because they do not believe what you do. I try to teach this way, but I have had many religious spirited people attack me for what I say sometimes. I have decided not to post negative critical comments on my blog anymore. I read them, see if I can learn anything from them, and sometimes respond privately or in a follow-up post on my blog. It is very difficult to help people who criticize other people because they think that they know everything already. However, since they do not know everything that I know, or have experienced everything that I have experienced, they really should not try to judge me. You can learn from Moses and the children of Israel in the wilderness. What did they do right and what did they do wrong? God only met with Moses on the mountain top and the others were not in on the private conversations unless Moses shared them. The people one time gave up on God and Moses because Moses was gone too long for them. They started to build idols and worship other false gods. Why was this? Was it a lack of Patience? Was it a lack of knowledge? I mean it could have been several problems combined. They obviously mumbled and complained and probably criticized God and Moses while he was gone. What was the net result of all of their opposition? Most of them died in the wilderness and never saw the promise land. So what is different today with some Christians mumbling and complaining about other Christians today? What do you think the result will be for those who do this? Do you think it will be the same as the children of Israel in the wilderness? I guess I should get back on the subject that I’m supposed to be on.
Maybe I’ll wrap this up for today. I do not want to overwhelm you with new concepts. When I say that the Bible is like a large complex computer system most people will not understand my analogy. However, I know it is true. Within this complex spiritual book of information God has placed a series of simple Binary choices before all mankind. These are the basics of life; the simplest choices can make the greatest differences in our life. By choosing life, blessings, light, salvation and Jesus you have gone through a binary selection and made the right choice. It is a simple choice that turns you from one state to another and I pray that you choose wisely. God Bless you today as you learn to choose!
Are there Any Rules in Life to Follow? A Rules Based System To Life!
(Ver 1.3) This Part 1 in a series of lessons on modern computer concepts that are found in the Bible. If I learned anything from being a computer programmer for over 20 years, I learned that everything in this life has very strict rules or it is useless. In this life you do not get to do everything that you can do just because you can do them. You do not get to drive on any side of the street that you want to. You do not get to drive through any intersection as fast as you want to when you want to. You do not get to do many things because rules exist to keep you from hurting yourself and others. This is the basis of the majority of the problems in this world today. The problems of the world are caused by people who do stuff to other people just because they have the ability or power to do them. It comes from a self-centered ME mentality! The world is all about ME! What I need, what I want, what feels good to ME! People then use their attitudes of Me to take what they need or want from others without thinking about what they are doing to the ones that they are hurting. If everyone takes this attitude, then only the strongest survive to live. This attitude of ME is a self-centered absence of the feelings of the God kind of “LOVE” for anyone else. As long as people care more about themselves than they do about others, they will remain apart from the life of God. Today I want to talk about a computer programming concept called “Rules Based Systems” in relationship to what God and the Bible say about the concepts of them or the absence from them. Why are rules important to live by? Why do rules exist? The Bible is a highly complex book of spiritual information and it cannot be interpreted correctly without knowing God’s rules for interpretation. I’ll start by giving you a definition of this term from the internet:
rule-based systems are used as a way to store and manipulate knowledge to interpret information in a useful way.
I believe that God taught me about rules based systems as I learned computer programming. A rules based system is one that adheres to a strict set of laws in order to work correctly. When I first started learning computer programming in High School, I started with the Basic programming language. I also played with another early computer language called FORTRAN. Then I started working for a company and going to night school to learn mainframe programming. I learned Mainframe Assembler and COBOL and became an expert in both of these languages. This was of course way before there were any PC’s in the world. What I learned from programming languages, is that they have very strict rules that must be followed, or guess what they do not work. You create your program and then compile your program and get nothing but a long list of errors back. This is not fun, when this happens, but it happened a lot until I learned to follow the rules more closely. As I became more detailed oriented, I learned to pay attention to the little things that use to be where I made most of my mistakes. I would just automatically learn to look for them and try not to repeat them. I do not think that I ever got so good that I wrote a new program that complied cleanly the first time, but I did get much better. So why am I describing my work experience to you? Because it helps me more with Bible interpretation and understanding the Bible that you can imagine.
Did you notice two key words in the definition of what a rules based system was? The two key words are “knowledge” and the “interpretation” of the knowledge. A rules based system helps us to process vast amounts of information and then come up with the correct interpretations of that information. So what is the Bible? The Bible is the Spiritual knowledge of God written down in a book for us to read. However, the Bible is widely interpreted in many different ways resulting in contrasting and conflicting points of view. That is probably the major problem in the church today. Everybody has their own opinion to what the Bible means. Why is that? It is because of a complete disregard to the rules of Bible interpretation. Some people know one rule and they sometimes follow it and then sometimes they do not. They are very inconsistent. Other people know of no rules and they are all over the board with their interpretations. Only a few know more than one rule to Bible Interpretation and try to adhere to them consistently.
While I read and studied the Bible, I started to recognize patterns of a rules based system. Since God does not give us a list of the rules in any one place in the Bible, the correct understanding of the Bible must start with figuring out what are the rules that God has established for us to follow. You see I know that every computer language has their own individual set of rules to follow. However, I also learned that many of these rules cross languages and apply to other languages. Even though each language was uniquely defined, the application of the rules applied across the board. So in order to even begin to understand the Bible, you must first establish God’s rules for interpretation and not your rules. This is the first step of understanding God and the Bible.
Do you realize that God follows the rules that He has established? That is the beauties of God; He is a highly intelligent being. His ability is so far beyond our most powerful computer. I see the world around us and I recognize an intelligently designed world full of natural laws, systems and sub-systems. This is the basis of any large complex computer programming system also. Anything with an intelligent design has organization and rules. So why do people not recognize that the Bible is also an intelligently designed rules based system? Obviously they do not understand the importance of rules and following them. If you are a Christian you should be following rules in everything that you do. Following rules does not save you; it just helps you live the life that God intended for you on this earth. Christians who do not follow rules are no different than unsaved people who rob banks because they want money or rape women because it feels good to them. I know that is an extreme examples of bad Bible interpretations, but yet I feel that strongly about the subject. I do not mean to reduce rape and robbery to minor offenses, I hope you understand the point and forgive the analogy.
So what ire my main points today?
- Start by Recognizing that the Bible is a Rules Based System.
- Then find out what the rules are!
- Next follow the rules with all diligence!
When I was computer operator, on the top of our mainframe CPU, there was a big sign that said “THINK”. Wow, if more people would do that one word! To think before you act or speak is a widely ignored talent of many people in the world today. I have many blogs on the subject of Bible Interpretation, I hope you that you will go and read them and then learn to follow them. Life is a rules based system of existence. This is the intelligent design of God. If you learn the rules and follow them there will be great benefits to being a doer of the word of God and not just a hearer only. By learning the rules and following rules I believe that the Body of Christ will finally come into agreement to what the Bible says. So I challenge you today to apply what you’ve read today. By learning rules and living within their guidelines you make the Bible useful as God had intended it to be. You take the words of an intelligent God and you can finally begin to understand them. There is no greater benefit than knowing the real God.
If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2” now.
Psalm 1: Learning the Secrets to Success In Life!
(Ver 1.4) There are more subjects in the Bible to study than there is time to study them. Today I want to discuss the first chapter of Psalms. The book of Psalms is a series of thoughts from God written down by the prophets of God for his people. Moses is known to have written some of the Psalms, and David is known to have written some of the Psalms. The book is a vast wealth of information and has many very profound revelations and prophecies within it. The Book of Psalms is written like the other parts of the Bible, in a seemingly random pattern of unrelated thoughts, but yet Jesus said these are those that testify of me (John 5:39). So we should be able to see Jesus in every book of the Bible and practically every chapter. Today I’m going to go through a few thoughts on the first chapter of the Book of Psalms. This is not a long chapter so it will not take a long time for us to review it and see what God says to us:
Psa 1:1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
What does it mean to walk in the counsel of the ungodly? What is counsel? The word translated as counsel is a word that means “advice”. Advice are words of guidance or the suggestions on what you should do in life. There is no shortage of “free advice” on TV and the internet. However, for God’s people we are not supposed to get our advice on what we should do or where we should go or even what we should invest in from ungodly people. If you are looking to your unsaved friends, co-workers, newspapers, magazines or TV shows like Oprah for your counsel or guidance for your life you are being deceived. Then this verse says Christians should not stand in the way of sinners. That does not mean we are obstacles to them, it means don’t do what they do. Just as we do not follow the advice of people who are ignorant of God, we do not observe them and do what they do. Jesus put it this way, if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the ditch (Luke 6:39). This is just having basic good logic, common sense and is sound judgment to follow. God’s Word is the only truth that you will ever need to help you make every decision. Of course this gets more complex than that, but the Word of God is the foundation for building your life and there is nothing else that can replace it. If you base your decisions upon anything else you have already been deceived and you cannot blame God for what happens to you, even though many people still try to.
Psa 1:2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
You see this verse says exactly what I just tried to say to you, but in a more direct way. The basis of your life is the Word of God. The Bible says “I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on me” (Isa 26:3). Isn’t that saying the same thing that this verse in Psalms just said? How do you delight in the Law of the Lord? It tells you that you keep it in your mind both day and night. That is a mental exercise and a thought process that is easier said than done for most people. There are just too many distractions in life to fulfill this verse completely, or at least this is what many people think. Their mind has been cluttered with many worthless things that do not mean anything, nor do they have any redeeming value to them. These are the designed distractions of the enemy used to get your mind off God and His word. Why do you think there are so many mindless TV shows on today? They are intentionally designed distraction of the blind leading the blind. Reality TV has gotten so immoral that I refuse to waste my time with it. However, there are so many people watching these TV reality shows, it drives more of them to be created every year. This generation appears to be consumed with the trivial mindless words spoken from people who do not know God or even want to know Him. I was watching Jay Leno the other night and he had a Jay Walking on that had people from off of the street being asked basic questions on American History. Nobody could answer any of the basic American History questions, but everyone of them could answer and tell you who was on the TV show Jersey Shores. What a mindless generation we have allowed to be raised in this country.
Psa 1:3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Here is why I like the Bible so much! It has verses like this in it and ignorant spiritually blind people do not have a clue what it means. If you have ever really read the Bible seriously you know that people are often times symbolically called trees in the Bible. For example, people are the symbolic trees of the field who clap their hands in Isaiah 55:12. As you can see in this verse, people are only prosperous in life if they have done the verses prior to this verse. Are you interested in being prosperous? Some of the secrets to prosperity are found right here in this chapter and that is why I am talking about them today. This verse is a parallel verse to one I always associate with it found in Revelation 22. We can read in Revelation 22 about the “tree of life” standing on either sides of the river flowing from the throne of God and we can see that these trees produce their 12 kinds of fruit every month forever. God is making a connection here and hopefully you can see it. The people in the church are the trees being described in this verse. We are to produce our spiritual fruit for God here and now in this life and forever throughout eternity. It is a never ending process of spiritual replication.
The last three verses in chapter one are in stark contrast to the “Trees Planted by the Waters”. The last three verses speak of the ungodly who do their own things, their own way and do not care for others. They are described to be “chaff”. This is found to be a descriptive term for that which you consume with fire. I do not like to think about people going to hell, but yet it clearly says in the Bible that people go there who do not want to follow God’s ways. So it comes down to a decision on every human on the planet and many of them do not understand the severe consequences of the choices they have made. I use to be one of those who rejected Christ and thought the church was stupid. Now I have learned that I was the one that was stupid and have been able to see finally that I have made the correct choice. More than likely I have told you nothing new today from this chapter study, but have only helped to remind you that if you are a Christian you also have made the right choice. God bless you today!
Myths about Jesus in the Gospels! PT 2 An Omnipotent Jesus vs. an Anointed Jesus?
(Ver 1.2) This is Part 2 in the series of advanced Bible Study lessons discovering the real Jesus of the Bible. These studies also spend time countering the myths of the false Jesus taught in many churches today. If you have not read the first lesson in the series I might suggest that you go and start with reading “Part 1“. There are a number of things taught about Jesus from the Bible that are clearly fabricated by Satan to discredit the real Jesus found in the Bible. In my last lesson on the real Jesus, I discussed a poor Jesus vs. a Jesus with money. I know I did not fully cover the subject, but I gave you some key scriptures that are very important to note when discussing the subject. I believe that Satan wants to portray the Jesus of the Bible as a homeless man who owned nothing and then he tries to use this image to imply that the followers of Jesus are never supposed to rise higher than their master the teacher. So if Jesus owned nothing Christians are supposed to own nothing and I do not follow that religious philosophy simply because that is not the Jesus of the Bible. I believe there are many scriptures in the Gospels that dispel the fact that Jesus owned nothing and I gave you many of these for your consideration. Please do not accept anything that I teach without you seeing it in the Bible. Verify everything that I say using your own Bible to confirm it. This is the only way that you are insured that someone is not deceiving you.
Today I want to attack another myth taught in many churches using the truth in the Bible. These churches teach that Jesus came to the earth as God in His full omnipotent Godhead power and they claim that He proved it by demonstrating to us countless miracles and supernatural signs like speaking to the wind and waves and walking on water to name a couple of prominent examples. I am going to start this discussion with a scripture that you probably do not associate as being important to this subject of Jesus’ omnipotence found in the book of Acts:
Act 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
So I will not debate that Jesus was God in the flesh, if you do not know this already you should go read and study your Bible to find this for yourself. I have written about it in other Bible lessons, if you want to go read them. This verse in Acts is very clear, yet totally ignored by those who profess an Omnipotent Jesus theology. Omnipotent means “all powerful” capable of doing anything in His full Godhead strength. Was this the Jesus of the Bible when he was born in a manger and grew to be a man? If it was why did God have to anoint Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and Power? This verse implies that if God had not anointed Jesus, he would not have been able to heal anyone. It clearly says that it is the spiritual anointing power that healed the people and not the man Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus is God in the full manifestation of omnipotence there is no need for any anointing, is there? If you do not see this, you do not know how to read. It just isn’t that difficult to see.
Do you know what “Christ” means? Jesus is called the “Christ” in the Bible. This is the Greek word for a Hebrew word translated as “Messiah” in the Old Testament. Do you know what “Christ” means? What is the definition of the word “Christ”. This word “Christ” means “anointed”, to rub or smear with oil. When David was anointed to be King by Samuel he poured oil over David’s head (1 Sam 16:13). This was an outward symbolic representation for an internal spiritual process that was taking place. This is also what happened to Jesus. Do you remember when Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan by John the Baptist and the Holy Spirit in the form of Dove descended from heaven? (Mat 3:16) This was God anointing Jesus of Nazareth the man with the Spirit of God and Power that we just read about in Acts 10. So why was it necessary for God to descend from Heaven if the Spirit of God was already in the body of Jesus in full omnipotent power? I hope you are seeing the problem with the erroneous teaching of many ignorant people in the church. Let’s verify this belief based upon the words of Jesus himself:
Luk 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Here we have Jesus speaking to the people in the temple. Jesus opens the scroll and finds the place it is written about Him in Isaiah 61:1 and He begins to read. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”. In this verse Jesus is claiming using prophecy what we just observed in the Baptism of John. This claim was given that the Holy Spirit had descended upon him from the heavens in the form of a dove to rest. Jesus is very clearly stating that God has anointed him to do certain things and He begins to list these things that He is anointed by God to do. So if Jesus could do everything using full omnipotent deity power, Jesus must have lied and He did not need to read a verse about being anointed, does He? I thought God could do anything, especially an omnipotent God in full Godhead power. I hope you are beginning to see the falsity of what many try to teach you on the internet and in some churches. It is absolutely critical to see and understand the real Jesus so that you can understand the real you. God used this anointing power throughout the Old and New Testaments to give His power to men. God still anoints people to do things today in the world. But, my lesson is not about God’s anointing on us, it is about why it was necessary for God to anoint Jesus so let’s continue.
There are many things in the Bible that are difficult to explain with a single lesson because there are more than one inter-related subjects to also discuss or we do not understand what is being taught. In the Gospels we find that Jesus went around and healed many people but, what was the “determining factor” for why some got healed and some did not. First let me ask you did you know that Jesus did not heal everyone that was sick? I will prove this to you as I go. Was it God’s choice on who to heal and who to leave sick, lame and crippled or was there other factors involved that we do not yet understand? The Bible says very clearly that God does not show “favoritism”.
Lev 19:15 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.
Act 10:34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
Jas 2:9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.
Does God ask people to do things that God does not do Himself? I don’t think so, if it is a sin to respect one person over and above another, then God commits sin if he heals one person and does not heal another. So we clearly have a problem, when reading the Gospels, since Jesus did not heal everyone. So there must be another factor that can explain this situation and not leave us confused. Do you recall when Jesus was walking in Mark 5 with one of the rulers of the synagogue named Jairus? Jesus was on the way to his house to heal his daughter and there was a very large crowd of people following Jesus and touching Him. In this chapter is an incredible story within a story. Why is everyone touching Jesus on every side? Was Jesus just a man with rock star status to them or were they all after the healing Power that Jesus told everyone that He was anointed with? You are going to have to make up your own mind why people are touching Jesus, because the Bible does not directly tell us. However, while everyone is touching Him and He is walking to the house of the sick girl, a woman with an issue of blood comes up and forces her way through the crowd and touches the hem of His garment. Jesus stops and turns and asks a very funny question for an omnipotent and omniscient God to ask, “Who touched me?”. Was this a blunder by Jesus or did He not know who it was that touched Him after all the disciples said “Master the crowd is touching you on every side”. In other words the disciples see people touching Jesus everywhere, but they did not understand what just happened and only Jesus and this one woman knew what just transpired. However it is clear that Jesus felt the power leave but did not know where the power went based upon the question.
So I am going to make a longer story a shorter story for the sake of time. The woman with the issue of blood feels the power of God go into her and heal her and Jesus feels the power of God go from Him and heal her, and yet Jesus does not know who it is that got healed. Why is this? It only make sense if you understand the Bible correctly, otherwise it is just a point of confusion. Jesus we have seen was anointed by God with the Holy Ghost and Power (Acts 10:38). Jesus told us that the Holy Ghost had anointed Him in Luke 4:18. We also saw the Holy Ghost descend upon Jesus like a dove in Matthew 3:16. So we have 3 witnesses that say that Jesus was anointed with the Spirit of God. So Jesus had the power of God clearly upon Him with the anointing. But what was it that caused one woman in the crowd of hundreds to receive this power while the others did not? That is a very important question to understand the answer to. Fortunately Jesus gives us the answer:
Mar 5:34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
Jesus gives us the answer to the million dollar question of why this woman received her healing and the hundreds of others who touched Him did not. Jesus said that the determining factor was her “faith”. So now we have a new problem what is “faith” and why did she have it and the others did not. Since that is not my primary subject, I’m not going to get into that fully in this lesson today. What I want you to see is that yes Jesus had Anointed Power, but that this power was only accessed by one woman with her individual “faith”. So apparently it was not all up to sovereign God in what happens in the world, is it?
My primary subject today is the myths concerning Jesus’ deity power, so I’m going to continue with teaching on this line of thought and leave “faith” to another day. I told you earlier that Jesus did not heal everyone and we clearly saw an example of this with the crowds touching Him in Mark 5 with only one woman getting healed. So now I’m going to show you a much stronger witness to the fact that Jesus was not God in His omnipotent power on the earth. If you continue reading in the book of Mark you will find starting in chapter 6 verse 1 that Jesus is said to come into his own country. This is the home of Jesus, the place where He lives in a house like I showed you in the last lesson in this series. He enters into the synagogue and begins to teach the people and the people automatically begin to question, him saying where did He get this wisdom? You see all of these people saw Jesus grow up and watched Him from a time of a child and knew Him and his family intimately. Why is Jesus teaching the people? I think people who do not understand “faith” don’t understand that before healing comes, teaching comes first. Jesus would always teach the people from the Bible, that God has anointed Him to heal and if they believed it, they could be healed and if they did not believe it they could remain as they were.
Mar 6:4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
Jesus is the prophet in this verse that is without honor in his home city. The people were too intimately familiar with Jesus and His natural life to allow the new “anointing” to work. These people let the old natural Jesus influence who He was to them today. Little did they know that this was the Messiah spoken of in their Bible. These people let their ignorance rob them of the blessings of God. They did not know He was born in Bethlehem and they did not know His father was God. They just assumed they knew him and they made the wrong conclusions. This is one of the greatest danger that many people face today. I see this attitude in and out of church.
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.
The Bible does not say that Jesus would not do any mighty works there; it literally says it was impossible for Jesus to do any mighty supernatural healings in this setting. In other words, no blind people came again seeing, no crippled people walked again, no deaf people could hear, nothing occurred but Jesus laying His hands on a few minor sick people to be healed. So obviously the Omnipotent Jesus was on vacation during this chapter of the Gospels or people just ignore the real Jesus to make up their fictitious version of Him. You can clearly see that Jesus was not omnipotent in this verse or He would have been able to heal everyone regardless of what they believed.
Mar 6:6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.
When Jesus saw their unbelief He was amazed. So what is the opposite of “faith” that got the woman healed in the chapter before this one? You can see that the woman with the issue of blood believed what she heard and these people in the Jesus home town did not believe. That is probably the most important thing that I will teach today, but that is not my primary subject, so I will continue.
What I have demonstrated to you is a version of Jesus that the Bible depicts as being the real “Emanuel” God with Us! This was a man who was God, but clearly was not God in His full Godhead power. Do you understand that it would be impossible to kill the man Jesus if He was here in His full Godhead power? If Jesus was the omnipotent God in person on this planet no would have been able to crucify Him and no one would be saved today. It is very clear to me that God stripped Himself of His divine powers when He choose to manifest on the earth as a human being like you and I. I am going to end this lesson on this note about the resurrection of Jesus. Did you know that after Jesus was raised from the dead He never did any more supernatural signs or wonders here on the earth? Jesus walked the planet after being raised from the dead for nearly 40 days and never did one single supernatural act to prove His divine nature. I mean why didn’t Jesus appear to everyone that just crucified Him and say look I told you so? You see after Jesus was raised from the dead He was again the omnipotent God. But then He told His disciples “that all power in both heaven and in the earth had been given to him”(Mat 28:18). So why is it that people teach that Jesus already had all power before He was crucified if Jesus said it was given to Him after being raised from the dead? Can’t you read and see that Jesus said this power wasn’t fully given to Him until after He was raised from the dead? You cannot have it both ways! Jesus had to be a man with human limitations before the crucifixion and then the power was returned back to Him after His resurrection or you just have to ignore more parts of the Bible that do not agree with your ridiculous fantasy. If Jesus had all power before His crucifixion then there is nothing to give to Him after His resurrection and Jesus is a liar. Wow, I don’t know if you really understand the things I teach or not, but it would be great if you did! God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series of lessons about the Myths of Jesus in the church you may proceed to “Part 3“.
Myths about Jesus in the Gospels? A Rich Jesus vs. a Poor Jesus?
(Ver 1.3) This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible lessons on “Myths taught about Jesus” in the modern church. There are a number of things taught from the Bible that are clearly fabricated by the devil to discredit the identity and character of the real Jesus of the Bible. By portraying a fictional Jesus, Satan can keep the church from seeing, seeking and following the examples of the true Jesus. For example, it is widely preached and taught in many churches that Jesus was a very, very poor man and did not own anything of value. However, is this really what the Bible teaches us or is this just what Satan wants you to think so that he can keep you poor in the world today? What advantage does Satan gain by portraying a poor Jesus to the church? I believe that as long as Christians think Jesus was poor they will follow in his example to remain the same. Poor Christians are ineffective and unable to be a blessing to others and therefore very harmless to Satan or even to help the lost unsaved people under his control. Satan desires every Christian to take a vow of poverty to go and live in common dwelling community with others in the same way. In doing this they are unable to feed the poor or help preach the Gospel to the world on the outside. Poor nations are the same type of pattern in this world as poor Christians. This is very evident in the displayed wealth distribution of the nations as studied on the internet. Only the richer strong nations can be a factor to effect any positive change to any other nation that needs help. The poorest nations are the ones that are found the homeless, starving people that are begging for the other nations to come and help them. This is why Satan causes many churches to promote a false Mother Theresa type of sainthood thinking it to be the perfect model type of a real Christian. There are just too many churches that promote a vow of poverty philosophy and somehow believe that this self-imposed vow of suffering makes their people more pious or worthy of being saved. However, I’ve got bad news for you, if Mother Theresa would have had 5 billion dollars to help poor people she would have been much more effective and reached so many that she was never able to reach. Bill Gates helps more poor people than Mother Theresa will ever dream of. There is just no substitute for having money in this world to help and bless other people. Of course money without knowing God is completely worthless. I am not a prosperity preacher or teacher. I hardly mention money on my website and I never ask you to send me anything. Therefore, do not put me into a category of any other stereotyped Bible teacher. I simply like to look for what the Bible says and then teach that regardless of the message. If the Bible said that Jesus was poor then that is exactly what this lesson would be about. How about we just find out what God says in His Word and believe that. Can we just do that?
If you do not have any money or do not work to earn any money then you are living in poverty and usually called a beggar that is seeking and asking churches, charities, relatives, other people or the government for a free helping handout just to eat and to survive. Is that what Jesus did? Can you search the gospels and ever find Jesus begging from anyone? I mean try to find it and then tell me where it is. There are at the minimum two different ways to learn from the Bible. You can learn from what the Bible directly says or you can learn from what it does not directly say. If the Bible does not teach us that Jesus begged then why would you think that you should beg? This type of baseless poverty Jesus teaching would be very much like teaching since the Bible never teaches us that Jesus went to the bathroom, we must all not go to the bathroom and hold it to be like Him. No this is the challenge of resolving our ignorance to allow us to become realistic in our beliefs to see what the Bible actually says about how Jesus never begged for anything and then find out how that applies to us. So I want to take you through some scriptures in the Bible and show you some new perspectives on some things that should hopefully permit you to find and see the real Jesus of the Bible. You will soon find that this real Bible Jesus was not a poor man who owned nothing. Please let me show you in the Bible:
Mat 2:11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
There are many verses in the Bible that I could start with, but I’ll start with this one in Matthew about the men from the east coming to visit baby Jesus after He was born. If you read you will find that these men traveled a great distance because they had seen His star in the east and they followed it to where Jesus was. Most Christma manger scenes have Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem with the animals that were present and they have the wise men coming to the manger with their gifts. However, did you notice in this verse in Matthew 2:11 that these men came to see Jesus in a house? There was no manger in this verse or the context. Apparently from this information we can see that Jesus at the very least was a child who lived in a house with his mother and father. So far this is not a homeless and destitute poor Jesus that we have been taught, is it? Next did you notice what these men brought to Jesus? It says they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. That does not sound like a poor Jesus either? So if men traveled a great distance to see a newborn king, would they have brought small insignificant trivial gifts or large extravagant gifts fit for a living king? What would impress the family? If you do not believe me try taking a wrothless gift to the queen of England and see how it is received. You are foolish not to believe a gift for a king has to be great. Therefore, I do not think that Jesus was either homeless or poor as a child growing up; I hope you can see what the Bible says also.
Let’s shift gears to the older Jesus and see what the Bible says about the men that Jesus chose to hang around with. One of the key men that Jesus personally selected was a man called Peter. Peter was a key figure and we can learn a lot about him in the Bible. Peter was married, a fisherman with his brother and he lived in and owned a house:
Mat 8:14 And when Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever.
So reading about Peter in the Bible we can clearly see that Peter was a businessman who made a living and had a job and thus was not homeless or a man of poverty. Jesus came into Peter’s house and healed his mother-in-law. So the house was large enough to accomodate more than just his wife. Jesus did not pick men who were homeless and poor to associate with, so why do people think Jesus was homeless and poor? Somehow it makes people feel good on the inside to think that Jesus had nothing, owned nothing to depended upon others for everything that He needed. This is exactly how Satan wants you to envision your Jesus so that you will never rise above the level of His poor example.
So do you think that Jesus ever owned a physical house and dwelling place? Some place where He lived for three years? An actual building called a home built with walls, windows, doors and a roof, in some city? If not then where would our Jesus live, sleep, eat or rest? Does He just sleep outdoors on the ground? Does He beg to sleep in other people’s houses? Maybe He just slept in someone’s barn. I do not know why people like to think that Jesus went from place to place sleeping under the stars for at least three years? Remeber that the ministry duration of Jesus was somewhere near three years of time. I cannot only assume that people read the Bible with dark goggles on so they do not have to see what is actually written there. They have created a Jesus in their minds and are quite content with keeping Jesus in their cramped little box of limitations. You would truly be amazed at what the Bible actually says if you would open your eyes and see it! Let me give you a verse found in Matthew to start with:
Mat 9:1 And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.
What does it mean if Jesus crosses over in a boat in order to get to His “own city”? It sounds like that was Jesus’ hometown, doesn’t it? The term “own” is a possessive pronoun and this town was the town that Jesus lived in and possibly even owned a home in. If I called you on the phone and you were my friend and I said “I’m back in town”, you know from that statement that I was gone from town but that I have now returned back home. So did you know that Jesus had his own city to return to? Well I’m about to show you some additional verses that will help us confirm this reality:
Mar 2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.
Capernaum was a seaside city on the north end of the Sea of Galilee, thus Jesus entered back into the city by boat as we just read about in Matthew. This verse in the book of Mark says there went out rumors spreading everywhere that Jesus was in the house. Uh oh? Further, notice that these rumors took several days to be spread, so Jesus has been in this house for at least that length of time. Whose house was this? Who did this house belong? That sounds pretty bad for the poor homeless Jesus proponents and teachers. If you knew I was gone out of town and drove by my house, could you tell when I got back home? More than likely you could! However, in Jesus’ day you could not just drive into town incognito unless you walked in, in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep. So according to this verse Jesus comes to Capernaum in a boat and people see Him arrive and start spreading the word to all of their friends that “Jesus is home”. To be “In the house” you have to logically conclude that this was Jesus’ house that they are talking about, otherwise which house in a city of hundreds or even thousands of houses are they speaking of? You just cannot say that Jesus is in the house if you do not already know which one it is! So far this is just very basic simiple logic reached by observing what is stated in the Bible, it is not that difficult, but admittedly it can be easily explained away for those who refuse to see it.
Mar 2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.
So technically speaking it does not say this house belongs to Jesus, but then again it does not say that it doesn’t either. If you read the context there is no mention of any owner and I believe that is very important to note. So we have to use our brains in order to figure out the truth. Jesus is in a house and a large number of people hear that Jesus is present to be found there and they just happened to show up automatically at just the right house. How do all of these people know which house if this is not Jesus’ house? Uh oh? Here we have another problem for those who want to believe in a poor homeless Jesus. No this verse says so many people showed up, that they could get anyone else in the house, so they had to stand outside the door to hear His words. Then there comes 4 more men carrying a lame friend to get Jesus to heal him. How did these 5 men know what house to come to and why were they there? When they arrived at the house they could easily look at the house and all of the people knowing, yes Jesus is in the house. I conclude formthis that they knew He was home again because we can soon see that they were going to do whatever it took to get their friend healed.
Mar 2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay.
You see here is the major problem that I have discovered about this story in the Bible. If this was my house that I owned and Jesus was just visiting with me for a few days and four idiots come tearing a huge hole in my roof what would you have done to stop them from tearing up your house? Do you know there is no mention that anyone was upset that 4 guys just tore a big hole in the roof to lower their buddy down in? I find that omission totally fascinating to say the least. To me the lack of anyone complaining just confirms that Jesus the healer was in His own house and He did not mind when He saw these men’s faith to get their friend healed. That is the only logical explanation of how everybody knew where Jesus was and why no one cared when the house was broken into and modified with a huge new sky light large enough to lower a crippled man. Let’s read down now in the same chapter and see what else Jesus does in his home city.
Mar 2:14 And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.
Jesus is said to be walking in His city again and finds a man named Levi and tells Levi to “follow me”. Right there let’s analyze that statement; if Jesus wanted to go to Levi’s house would Jesus have said “follow me”? To me Jesus would have said “let’s go to your house and I’ll follow you”. Things in the Bible need to make sense when we read them. The verses present us with limited factual information and we are required to read the facts and use the information to make a determination of what is stated. L’et’s read the following verse and see what is said next:
Mar 2:15 And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
Hopefully you can see my problem? Whose house is Jesus now eating in? Did Jesus lead Levi to Levi’s house expecting Levi to feed everyone? Or did Jesus take Levi to Jesus’ house and there they all sat and ate together. The phrase “his house” is one that must be directed at Jesus and not at Levi since Levi is never mentioned in this verse. But, you see we could easily take this verses either way and almost be right. However, only one way is right and the other was must be wrong. Two truths can never exist from one statement. Did you notice how many people were present? Did you notice all of the disciples and Jesus were present and we know Levi was also there if he followed Jesus and now we can read that publicans and sinners were also there. That really sounds like a big group and not a small house at all.
Mar 2:16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples, How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners?
So poor Jesus proponents and teachers have more problems to try to explain away. I’ll start by asking you how did the Scribes and the Pharisees know where Jesus was eating? Are they following Jesus around? From my current understanding of Bible history the city of Capernaum was not a tiny 4 or 5 house community. It must have had a significant population with many families and houses in it. We can clearly see from this information that Jesus was eating in a house with a lot of people being present and while others simultaneously watching him and knowing where He was located. From what I have just read, I am convinced that Jesus was a man who owned a house in the city of Capernaum and that many people knew Him and exactly where He lived. This is really the only explanation that makes sense of how people kept finding Jesus in a big city. You of course have the option to remain ignorant and believe whatever you like.
Mar 6:4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
If you read the Bible like you want to believe that Jesus was homeless you have to ignore a lot of the Bible to establish that belief. In this verse Jesus is speaking and He says some very profound words. Jesus was the Prophet that He is talking about in this verse. Did you know that Jesus was a prophet? The prophet’s office was just one position that He held, but nevertheless that is one title that He called Himself. This Prophet was said to have no honor among the people who knew Him personally. These people were His neighbors and relatives who knew Him and knew where He lived. These were the people who recognized Him when He walks down the street. These were the people who can see when He enters into the house where He lives and they knew exactly which house it was. These were the people who look at Jesus as being a regular human like them. Because the do not know Him as the Son of God, they hold no place of honor for Him in their heart because He appears to be exactly as they were in every way. To be exactly like them meant that He works, He eats, He sleeps, He goes to the bathroom and He lives in a house just like they did. Do you understand these basic things? They do not see Jesus with a halo around His head and they do not see Jesus walking above the ground where He does not leave any footprints. Jesus was not surrounded with angels. His faced did not glow. Jesus looked normal, acted normal and lived normally. Jesus was a man in complete normalcy like everyone else in appearance. Furthermore Jesus himself just spoke some words and said that He owned a house. Did you notice that? The Greek word G3614 translated as “house” literally means a residence. The inclusion of a personal pronoun of “own” before the noun house (residence) conveys ownership responsibility and is directly associated to the speaker of the words and that was clearly Jesus.
Mat 12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.
Here is another very interesting verse that I found about Jesus. Jesus is in a house talking with some people and suddenly His mother and His half-brothers suddenly appear asking to talk to Him standing outside of the house. If this is not Jesus’ house where He lived, how do these close relatives know where to find Him? You can clearly see the difficulty that I have with people’s interpretation that says Jesus did not own a house. If His mothers and His brothers could come to exactly where He was and request a meeting, they had to know where to go. Jesus instead of going to speak to his natural family looked around the room and said those that do the will of my Father, you are my mother, my sister and and brother and then a couple of verses later you will read this:
Mat 13:1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
Again, we have to conclude that Jesus owned this house that He keeps being associated with near the sea. If Jesus is seen exiting a house and sitting by the sea, we know this is Jesus’ house in Capernaum that He is seen leaving from. There are certainly many more verses like these that I could go through to show you that Jesus did own a house, but I will leave it at that. It really doesn’t matter if you show people two verses or forty verses, if they do not want to see the truth, they will always ignore whatever you give them. Let’s change the subjecvt from houses to moeny and see another perspective of Jesus.
I want you to think about this, did Jesus ever have any money? We know there was one case in the Bible that says when Jesus was forced to pay taxes that He told Peter to go to the sea and catch a fish and use that money in the fish’s mouth to pay the tax. So stories like that are used by people to promote a poor Jesus who did not carry money around with Him. But, did you know that the disciple Judas was said to be the treasurer for Jesus and the other disciples (John 13:29)? Do you need a treasurer if you have no money? In fact if you search and can read the Bible, you will find out that Judas was a thief and he was able to steal money from Jesus and the disciples without anyone else knowing it (John 12:6). Did you know if Jesus only had a little bit of money and Judas took a little bit of it out, it wouldn’t be easily missed? But, if Jesus had a whole bunch of money in the bag and Judas slowly took out a little here and a little bit there, it would never be missed by anyone? So to me using this story of Judas alone we discover that Jesus did carry large sums of money so a little bit is never missed. Let me show you another story in the Bible about this large sum of money that Jesus and the disciples carried around with them:
Mar 6:36 Send them away, that they may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread: for they have nothing to eat.
We have an interesting story of many people following Jesus in the wilderness. In the Bible verse before this one it says that it is very late in the day and the disciples come to Jesus and ask Him to send the people away so that they can still make it home to get something to eat. However, Jesus had a different lesson to teach them and said this:
Mar 6:37 He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?
Jesus tells the disciples to get all of the people something to eat and since there were thousands of them, the disciples ask Him a very strange question for poor homelss men. If these disciples did not have in their possession 200 pennies to buy this bread they would have said let’s go take up a collection so that we can go buy them some bread. But, they did not say that did they? They asked Jesus, do you want us to go and spend 200 pennies to buy all of these people bread to eat? The Bible tells us that there were approximately 5000 men in this group and we know these men had wives and children so there could have been 15000 people there around Jesus. Let me ask you this question, what would it cost you if you took 15000 people to McDonald’s and bought them all a burger? It would take a whole bunch of money to feed that many people. So why would the poor disciples ask Jesus if He wanted them to go and buy food for all of them, if they did not already have the money to do it? You see that would really be a stupid question to ask wouldn’t it. The disciples were not stupid and they were not poor either so get over it and see what the Bible says about money. The disciples had enough money on them to feed everyone, but still there were no bread stores in the wilderness to buy this food, so Jesus goes with His original plan of multiplying the loaves and fishes of a boy’s lunch. The discipiles could have solved the problem in a natural way, but Jesus was teaching them a supernatural method of supply.
I’ll end today’s leson with one more example of how Jesus was not a poor man. When Jesus was crucified it tells us that there were some soldiers who divided up what Jesus was wearing. Since Jesus was hanging on the cross naked about to die, He would have no further need of any of the items and the guards saw a great opportunity to profit:
Joh 19:23 Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.
Jesus was wearing a seamless coat that was woven in one piece from top to bottom it says. You probably do not understand the significance to that statement. It means His coat was very valuable. This was the coat of a wealthy man, a king or someone of great status in the city or country. Not everyone possessed a coat such as this, because it took a lot of money to buy one. Evidently if Jesus was poor where did He obtain such a piece of clothing? Someone tried to tell me that this valuable robe was the garment placced upon him by Pilate, but if you go read closely that robe was not a gift but a temporary robe placed to mock Him (Mat 27:31). This royal mocking robe was removed after the mocking and it did not go to the cross. Thefore, the coat that the soldiers were gambling over had to have been owned by Jesus.
Joh 19:24 They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.
You see the soldiers recognized the value of the coat and said let’s not tear it up! Let us gamble for it so that one of us can use it like it is. For the soldiers to gamble for something that is worthless would be illogical or foolish; so they had to know that the coat was a very valuable item and something that they could not afford even with their salaries from the Roman Empire. This information about Jesus does not go along with the Mother Theresa type of poor Jesus that many people want to follow. There are many other Bible verses that I failed to mention, but I gave you enough references to get you to think and hopefully change your poverty mentality away from the poor Jesus to change it to the real Jesus. You see I do not believe that Jesus was Bill Gates or Warren Buffet while on the earth. However, I also do not believe that Jesus went about as a homeless man in absolute poverty either. You can see too many examples of Jesus beginning with His birth all the way to His death and never is it said that He was poor. Jesus is portrayed in the Bible as being more in the range of an upper middle class man and never a poor homeless man in the Bible. I hope that you can see it with your own eyes and definitely spend more time reading the Gospels for the real Jesus. Thanks for taking the time to read and study the Bible and if you have any questions or comments you are welcome to share them. God Bless!
If you would like to continue reading in this series about Myths of Jesus taught in the Church you may continue to “Part 2“.
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